people believe, Rehman Abbas raises the art of story-telling to a new level." Short stories (afsanah nigari) Urdu literature has included the short story form for slightly more than one hundred years. During this period it has passed through some major phases including the early romantic period, progressive writings, modernist writings, and the current phase. Although a number of male and female writers wrote short stories during the first phase(including both romantic stories and social criticisms), the short story crystallized as a regular part of Urdu literature in the growth of the writings of Munshi Premchand. His notable short stories include "Kafan" and "Poos Ki Raat". The Urdu short story gained momentum with the phenomenal publication of Angare, a collection of many writers towards the end of the life of Premchand. Writers like Ghulam Abbas, Manto, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Krishan Chander and Ismat Chughtai, to name but a few, turned the short story into a major genre of Urdu literature. The next generation of Urdu short story writers included Qurratulain Hyder, Qazi Abdul Sattar and Joginder Paul. The short story tradition continues with younger generation writers like Zahida Hina, Paigham Afaqui, Syed Mohd Ashraf, Salam Bin Razzaq, Naeem Baig, Akhlaq Ahmed Khan, Moinuddin Jinabade, as well as notable women writers like Afra Bukhari and Wajida Tabassum. Urdu short stories have dealt with a wide range of the dimensions of life, but the most famous stories concern the trauma of the partition of the sub-continent and the violence generated out of it. Towards the end of the last century, short stories became grounded in the complexity of daily life which can be seen in the unique collection of short stories in Paigham Afaqui's Mafia. An entirely different approach is seen in the collection of short stories T'abir by Moinuddin Jinabade and Taus Chaman Ka Maina by Nayyer Masood. Drama Urdu drama evolved from the prevailing dramatic traditions of North India raas as practiced by exponents like Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh. His dramatic experiments led to the famous Inder Sabha of Amanat and later this tradition took the shape of Parsi Theatre. Agha Hashr Kashmiri is the culmination of this tradition. Urdu theater traditions have greatly influenced modern Indian theatre. Among all the languages, Urdu (which was called Hindi "meaning:Language of the Hind" by some early writers), along with Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali theatres have remained popular. Many Urdu dramas