Jamal Abro life and biography

Jamaluddin Abro, also known as Jamal Abro was a Sindhi writer. He was born in May 1924 at Sangi, a small village in Mehar Taluka, then part of Dadu District.

Jamal Abro had 7 children from his wife Noor-un-Nissa. One of his daughters died at a very young age. His children, all residing in Karachi, are Shahida Sikandar (married to Sikandar Hayat), Badar Abro, Dr. Azhar Jamal Abro, Athar Abro, Rabail Vaka (married to Babar Vaka), Sajid Abro and Shababana Khaskheli (married to Niaz Khaskeli) from oldest to youngest.

Abro was one of the generation of Sindhi writers that came to the literary forefront immediately after independence and infused a new consciousness into Sindhi literature. Abro's first short story was published in 1949 and was followed by a some others. Pishu Pasha aroused much debate and discussion, and this was the name given to the collection of nearly a dozen short stories published in 1959. This nearly brought to a close Jamal Abro's work as a short story writer and was followed by a long gap of silence. An invitation to contribute a story for a university magazine being edited by Shaikh Ayaz, the leading Sindhi poet who was a close friend, led him to write his first story in fifteen years. This story was a poetic and haunting narrative focusing on karokari, the ritual murder of a woman accused of immorality, written as only the author of Pirani could have. It was followed by a story, written during the Writers' Conference, Islamabad, in the days of General Zia ul-Haq's Martial Law; it describes the conference as a setting for an encounter with the Angel of Death.

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