Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi – born in 1923 in United India. He got his Master’s and LLB from Aligrah Muslin University. After Indo-Pak subcontinent partition, his family migrated to Karachi, Pakistan. Mushtaq managed to join banking sector and became a career banker. He achieved greater milestones and even headed some nation institutions. Later, he became chairman of the Pakistan Banking Council. He was awarded Quaid-i-Azam Memorial Medal for distinguished services in banking.
Despite the fact that all his work involved working with numbers, financial reports and fiscal predictions considered as dry and barren yet Yousufi is celebrated among the most acclaimed humorist and satirist of the present day in Urdu literature. Yousufi was admired in the literally circles and masses for his unique way of writing and satire. Government of Pakistan also awarded him Sitara-i-Imtiaz. Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi has a waggishness with unified sensibility. He combines pre-modern, trendy and post-modern sensibility in such a way that no different author will paint the image of man and society, as he has painted it. His objects of humour are man, society and nature. He has written four masterpieces; Charagh Talay, Khakim ba-dahn, Zarguzasht and Aab-e-Gum.
Aab-e-Gum is for both lovers of Urdu language and literature in which Yousufi depicts in a travel-worn manner the sufferings and pain of a generation who witnessed the partition of united India, where they lost their homes and with passage of time their norms and values. Yousufi very skillfully intertwined the tragic and the comic. Aab-e-Gum is also translated in English.
Yousufi passed away in June 2018.