'During the 1965 war, Hamid Jalal said, "If Shastri's mother were to die suddenly, the story would be reported in the English newspapers in these words: 'The hand that rocked the cradle of the man who launched naked aggression against the sacred soil of Pakistan, kicked the bucket last night."' It is not that we think in Urdu, Punjabi, Pashtu or Sindhi and then say or write it in English. Were that to be so, our English would have both bite and colour, freshness and music, vigour and joy. It would have the tang of our earth and air. But what do we have? Cliches and metaphors that lumber through our prose like something out of the "Return of the Living Dead". We use idioms and proverbs that were archaic when the steam engine was invented...'
Originally written for a news agency, this readable and often amusing primer has since been enlarged and added on to by the author, Khalid Hasan, so that it could be used with profit by anyone interested in writing simply and correctly.
