Tu Jo Mil Jay By Ana Ilyas

About this novel

Tu Jo Mil Jaye (Urdu: تو جو مل جائے) by Ana Ilyas is a playful Urdu family romance full of cousins, mischief and first love. It opens on the roof of Malik House at sunrise, where Wahiba starts a mango-stone throwing contest that lands on a neighbour’s head.

It’s the holidays and the whole family has gathered at Malik House. After fajr the girls don’t go back to sleep. They climb up to the roof with a basket full of mangoes and settle down to eat them as the sun comes up. None of them looks tired after a night spent awake. The idea of what to do next, as always, comes from Wahiba, the girl the whole house treats as the leader, who is afraid of no one and can’t be controlled by anyone.

آموں کی گٹھلیاں، چھت کی شرارتیں، اور ایک ایسی لڑکی جو کسی سے نہیں ڈرتی۔

With a gleam in her eye, Wahiba looks round to make sure no one is watching and proposes a challenge: let’s see whose mango stone flies furthest onto the roofs of the houses behind. Nobody must tell the boys. The cousins are only a few years apart in age and famous in the whole family as the shararaton ka tola. Everyone throws, the stones fly, and Wahiba goes last, eyeing the others as if she has already won.

Her overconfidence is her undoing. Her stone sails over to a roof on the right, where a young man named Shehryar has spent the last half hour doing yoga with headphones on and his eyes closed, oblivious to the world, until a mango stone hits him in the face.

That’s the flavour of this 337-page novel: mischief, family warmth and nok jhok, with romance growing out of it.

You can read Tu Jo Mil Jaye online here or download the complete PDF for free. More by Ana Ilyas: Teri Yad Ki Aanch, Janay Na Tu and Meri Eid Tum Sajan, on the Ana Ilyas novels page.