literature. He proved this not only through the films that he made but also through his writings about cinema. In his novel Boy Meets Girl he depicted the problems the strugglers in the film industry face. Realising this he chose new and unfamiliar faces for his films and gave them opportunity to show their talent. The list of such actors includes the megastar of the Hindi Cinema Amitabh Bachchan and great actress Shabana Azmi.(Shabana Azmi’s letter to Syeda Hameed, dated September,20,2013).

The stories of Khwaja Ahmad Abbas focus the much talked about “Common Man”. He is a writer who consciously depicts the tales of those ordinary people who accomplished heroic deeds simply by virtue of their undaunted spirit and the sheer will to survive. Abbas belongs to the traditionof Dr. Mulk Raj Anand who created a hero like Bakha, a scavenger, in his classic novel the Untouchable. Anand was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and his movement against untouchability. He was equally touched by the ideas of Marxist philosophy epitomised in the Great October Revolution of Russia in 1917.It was this ideological influence which motivated K.A. Abbas also to look for the real life stories of poverty and hunger, exploitation and protest, alienation and hope, patriarchy and the rise of the women’s voice. In fact, the fiction of Abbas, like his films and journalistic writings, brings the common man and his concerns centre stage.

Khwaja Ahmad Abbas is known as a film maker and a journalist all over the world. Not many people know that he wrote some