Jo Tu Chahey To (Zohra Khalid)- Review by Shoby

Jo Tu Chahey To (Zohra Khalid)- Review by Shahbaz Ali Naqvi (Shoby)

Vanessa: Let it end. With a kiss.

Ethan: With a kiss. With love.

Vanessa: With love.

(Penny Dreadful)

Horror, mystery, suspense and thrillers are the genres, I love the most. I believe, trying any of these genres is as much difficult as writing comedy. Reason is quite visible, here, you have a vast land to explore but in the same time, you have a very less margin of getting diverted from your main pitch of ground. The intensity of the risk even more increases, when you are coping up with a psychological thriller and Zohra Khalid is a brave writer, who tried to write on this genre.

I read Zohra Khalid for the first time in The Master Storyteller (Season One) and to tell you honestly, her first story didn't impressed me much, even if I give her the margin of being a new comer. But as they say, hard work is the key to success, I have never seen someone more hardworking than Zohra and result is quite clear. From Muhabbaton Ke Jahan Mein to Jo Tu Chahey To, she has come a long way and I have witnessed immense improvement in her writing. Her thought process & brainstorming is a clear indication of how unique, she wants to write and this story JTCT has strengthened my belief that she is here to make her own mark in our literature.

JTCH deals with the complexity of human emotions and reactions of individuals on the actions of our so-called society. The more we try to hide ourselves from others by avoiding their miss-deeds, the more they try to influence us through their desperate and demotivating acts.

JTCH stands tall on depicting two major phenomenon. One, how a couple especially the ladies of our society goes through both mentally & physically, when they are lacking something and secondly, how the overall society damages their integrity & abolishes their own confidence through their negative feedback. It is a simple say, if you cant solve anyone's problem, don't try to become the part of the problem, but alas, we, collectively, does not endorse the same. On the same page, Zohra very delicately presented a nice strong bond of the couple and their cooperation with each other, while going through a dark phase of their live. This is actually what relationships require, to be with each other, in every thick & thin.

Considering the theme of TMS Darr Matt competition, what excited me the most in JTCH, was Zohra's different game plan to go with. Believe me, this was one of the genres, I wanted participants to explore but unfortunately, no one paid attention on this shade of fear. Frank Herbert says, “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

This psychological thriller was a nice compact tale of how you should overcome with the fear of uncertainty, in order to achieve the triumph. The nice little dream sequences in the story were a real winner and I just loved the way Zohra used English mono-liners. Lines like I don't live in darkness, The Darkness lives in me... All monsters are humans... I love the darkness in you... are penned beautifully and they really brought some chills in the plot.

They were more than effective in enhancing the overall flavor of the story. It was indeed a sigh of relief to see a young writer summing the whole thing up by using merely two main protagonists with a couple of supporting characters. Thankfully, she conveyed her message clearly without making any mess by using needless number of characters.

I would also like to mention a few shortcomings, that should be avoided in future by the writer in order to make her writings more powerful. No doubt, she is a keen observer and her research is visible in the plot, but she needs to focus more on dialogues structure building. It is a very bad habit of our new young lot of writers that they don't focus on grammatical & phonetic detailing. And the worst part is, they don't differentiate between narrative & dialogue writing. This is a matter of concern for Zohra as well. But I believe, she will improve in future. Considering it as the initial phase of her writing career, I must say, with a little more hard work & creative thinking, she can become a brilliant writer. You all should remember Paulo Coelho's famous saying, "Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure."

PS: Don't Forget To Give Your Valuable Feedback in The Below Comment Box