Umro Ayyar – the thug of Hoshruba

If you grew up in Pakistan, the name ‘Umro Ayyar’ is bound to bring a flickr of a smile to your face.  First introduced by Mohammad Jah in Tilism E Hoshruba (The enchantment of senses) series,  Umro was probably one of the most famous storybook characters along with Rustam and Sohrab, Aladin, Sindbad, Chacha Chakkan etc, and was definitely the most intriguing.  I still remember the small,  50 paisa or 1 rupee colourful and intriguing story books I would buy and collect as a child which contained one adventure after another of Umro Ayyar.  I, like many others, had no idea where Benares was, but we all knew that Umro Ayyar was from Benares – he was a Benarasi Thug. ( I later found out Benares was a city in northern India). In Urdu, the word ‘ayar’ means cunning. And that’s exactly what Umro was – sharp and cunning. His signature element was a ‘zambeel’ : a basket which could carry anything. Umro would pull out armies from his zambeel (Zambeel is the word for basket in both Urdu and Persian, another fact I found out as I grew up.)

A little trivia: Umro’s name was never Umro. It was actually ‘Amar’, an Indian name. Probably a spelling mistake in Urdu (and the fact that Umr is a well known name in Pakistan but Amar isn’t) possibly led Amar to become Umro.  Funnily enough, he had a son in the book named “Chalak bin Ayyar” literally translating to “Clever, son of Cunning”.

More info about the book: http://mafarooqi.com/hoshruba/index.html

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