Mutbadil By Riaz Aqib Kohlar

About this novelette

Mutbadil (Urdu: متبادل) by Riaz Aqib Kohlar is a short Urdu thriller about a famous actress and the girl who looks just like her. It opens with a terrified woman alone in a dark house at night, with a dead phone, footsteps outside and armed men breaking down the door.

She crawls to the landline and finds the wire cut. A vase smashes, the men search room by room, and just as one of them finds her hiding place, someone shouts “Cut!” The armed men turn out to be extras, and the woman is Kalpana, shooting a scene. The crew applauds, the make-up artist rushes in, and the director calls it a beautiful shot.

ایک چہرہ، دو زندگیاں — اور اصل کون ہے؟

The next chapter shows another side of her. Covered in a veil, Kalpana visits a crowded government hospital and finds a poor family whose only sister has a serious heart condition. The doctors say she can’t be treated there. Kalpana quietly has the girl moved to an expensive private hospital, pays for everything, and leaves her phone number with the eldest brother in case they need anything. To that family she is an angel.

Back on set, the director Shekhar can’t stop talking about a stage performer named Saniya who looks so much like Kalpana that people confuse them. Kalpana is not pleased to hear she has a hamshakal, while Saad, who seems to have more than a professional interest in her, wants to buy tickets to Saniya’s show. The title, which means “the substitute”, says the rest: sooner or later, one of these two women will have to take the other’s place.

Riaz Aqib Kohlar keeps the pace quick, and the opening trick with the film shoot sets the tone for a story where things are not always what they seem.

You can read Mutbadil online here or download the complete PDF for free. For more from the same writer, read Snipper and Rakhail, or see all Riaz Aqib Kohlar novels.