Introducing the Urdu Short Story in Translation

This brief essay has been adapted for Pakistaniaat from the introduction to my forthcoming translation of an Urdu short story collection. The collection, entitled Do You Suppose It's the East Wind: Stories from Pakistan, is being published by Penguin Books, India. Â

The One with a Wriggly Worm

In his delightful little book Letters to a Young Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa describes the writer as someone afflicted with a “tapeworm.†His own life—why, even his own will— is forfeit to this creature; whatever he does is for the sake of this grisly monster. What about his themes? Well, he feeds off of himself, like the mythical “catoblepas.†So writing is a calling and one writes from an inexorable inner compulsion, unlike the “graphomaniacs†Kundera deplores. The compulsion arises from what some might call the wayward desire to see a different world in place of the real, with its inherited values and mores and certainties that admit of no contradiction and stifle questioning. Seen from this vantage, the fictional landscape of Urdu would appear hauntingly bleak, with only a few occasional lights shining palely in the gathering gloom, and out there, somewhere in the distance, suddenly a relentless, single spectacular starburst—Saadat Hasan Manto

The impact of surgical delay on resectability of colorectal cancer: An international prospective cohort study

AIM: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to explore the impact of surgical delays on cancer resectability. This study aimed to compare resectability for colorectal cancer patients undergoing delayed versus non-delayed surgery. METHODS: This was an international prospective cohort study of consecutive colorectal cancer patients with a decision for curative surgery (January-April 2020). Surgical delay was defined as an operation taking place more than 4 weeks after treatment decision, in a patient who did not receive neoadjuvant therapy. A subgroup analysis explored the effects of delay in elective patients only. The impact of longer delays was explored in a sensitivity analysis. The primary outcome was complete resection, defined as curative resection with an R0 margin. RESULTS: Overall, 5453 patients from 304 hospitals in 47 countries were included, of whom 6.6% (358/5453) did not receive their planned operation. Of the 4304 operated patients without neoadjuvant therapy, 40.5% (1744/4304) were delayed beyond 4 weeks. Delayed patients were more likely to be older, men, more comorbid, have higher body mass index and have rectal cancer and early stage disease. Delayed patients had higher unadjusted rates of complete resection (93.7% vs. 91.9%, P = 0.032) and lower rates of emergency surgery (4.5% vs. 22.5%, P < 0.001). After adjustment, delay was not associated with a lower rate of complete resection (OR 1.18, 95% CI 0.90-1.55, P = 0.224), which was consistent in elective patients only (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.69-1.27, P = 0.672). Longer delays were not associated with poorer outcomes. CONCLUSION: One in 15 colorectal cancer patients did not receive their planned operation during the first wave of COVID-19. Surgical delay did not appear to compromise resectability, raising the hypothesis that any reduction in long-term survival attributable to delays is likely to be due to micro-metastatic disease