Suhail Azimabadi

Patna's storyteller — the friend's stone, and the fiction writer who began as a poet. Suhail Azimabadi (1911–1979), born Syed Mujibur Rahman on 16 July 1911 at Shahpur Bhadaul, Islampur, in Patna district, was a novelist, short-story writer, journalist and critic — one of the men who carried the Progressive movement into Bihar. His mother died when he was one year old, and he was raised in his maternal grandparents' home. As a student he wrote verse under the name "Sohail Jamili"; on the advice of Jameel Mazhari he gave up poetry for fiction, and fiction became his true identity. He edited Sathi, an Urdu daily from Patna, and in 1936 he set up the Patna branch of the Progressive Writers' Movement. He worked with Hamdard, a Calcutta daily, until the paper was banned in 1936 after an article of his, and he later served in All India Radio and spent five to seven years working for Urdu in the Chhota Nagpur region. His story collections — Alao (1942), Naye Puraane (1944), Rang Mahal (1960), Chaar Chehre (1977) — and his novel Be-Jar ke Pauday (1972) made him one of the best-known fiction writers of his generation; some hundred and twenty-five of his short stories survive. He died in Allahabad on 28 November 1979, aged 68, and is buried at Shah Ganj Qabristan in Patna.