Hoor e Jannat Novel By Usama Rahman Mani

About this novel

Hoor E Jannat (Urdu: حورِ جنت) by Usama Rehman Mani is a complete Urdu novel about Saarim, a wealthy college student in Lahore. His comfortable life is unsettled by a brief glimpse of a young girl begging at a traffic signal.

The novel opens at a red light in Lahore. Mani brakes, and his best friend Saarim, headphones on and lost in English music, is startled by a hand tapping on his window. When he sees it’s a beggar girl, he leans back and closes his eyes without reacting. “These beggars, too…” Mani mutters. The girl taps again, and as Saarim slowly lowers the window, Mani drives off. Saarim catches only one glimpse of her: a girl of about seventeen in dirty clothes, dust and grime on her skin, hair loose and tangled – but with grey eyes so striking they didn’t seem to belong to her circumstances, looking back at him with a questioning gaze.

Saarim and Mani are best friends and BSc students at a college in Lahore, both from upper-class families, and weekend trips to the mall are their routine. Saarim hurries Mani along because his strict father expects him home before dinner. At home his mother scolds him for being out all day when his father’s guests are coming, and he brushes it off.

چائنہ چوک کا سگنل، ایک لمحے کی جھلک، اور بے چین راتیں۔

That night, at two o’clock, Saarim can’t sleep. The image of the girl at China Chowk keeps returning, and a strange smile stays on his lips. He walks in the lawn until nearly four, then lies down murmuring a line of poetry. The next day, instead of going home after college, he rides his bike to China Chowk and finds her there again, holding out her hand to passers-by. He watches for a while, goes home, barely eats, and spends another restless night. By the fourth day of standing there, he has come to like everything about her except one thing – that she has to beg – and he starts wondering whether he could change that. Just then Mani spots him at the chowk and asks what on earth he’s doing there.

Usama Rehman Mani writes about class, compassion and an unlikely bond, and the title suggests Saarim sees something heavenly in someone the world ignores.

You can read Hoor E Jannat online here or download the complete PDF for free. Also by the same writer: Eid Saeed. You may also like Roshan Mustaqbil, or browse more romantic Urdu novels.