Ishq Mein Hari By Ana Ilyas

About this novel

Ishq Mein Hari (Urdu: عشق میں ہاری) by Ana Ilyas is a social and romantic Urdu novel about Mutiba, an honest girl from a poor home. She refuses every shortcut, and the story opens on a bad day when her old shoe breaks at the bus stop and she misses a job interview.

Her mother Rafia tries to comfort her, but Mutiba is tired of hoping. She says their qismat is simply like this, that they have never seen khushhali. Rafia, hurt, leaves the room. The writer explains why the girl has grown so bitter. Her father Faiq drinks and gambles and has never earned enough to support his wife and daughter. Rafia sewed clothes to pay for Mutiba’s education, and Mutiba gave tuitions at a coaching centre to finish her graduation. When Faiq brings his rough friends home, Rafia locks her daughter in a room. Rafia’s own parents are gone, and Faiq’s family married him off and then left him to his habits, so the only thing they own is a small, broken-down house.

مجھے ایسا پیسہ حلال نہیں حرام لگتا ہے۔

After her master’s, Mutiba left her job at a local school, sure she would find something better. Instead she found PhD holders also looking for work, and when she went back to the school, her place had been filled. Her childhood friend Hareem comes from a well-off family and has never let that difference touch their dosti. She offers to have her father arrange a job, but Mutiba won’t hear of it. She wants to be hired for her ability, not through a sifarish, because her mother kept her away from anything haram all her life. The talk then turns to Hareem’s own wedding preparations, and Mutiba walks home with an even heavier heart.

This is a quieter, more realistic start than some of Ana Ilyas’s other novels. It’s about ghurbat, self-respect and a mother’s sacrifices, and the title, “the one who lost in love”, hints at where Mutiba’s story will go.

You can read Ishq Mein Hari online here or download the complete PDF for free. You may also like Ana Ilyas’s Meri Eid Tum Sajan and Teray Meray Darmiyan, or browse all Ana Ilyas novels.