Does the most intensely felt love go beyond the age-old gender specifications? Does the captivating emotional and physical bond between man to a man put a question mark on the very existence of a binary gendered society? Does it create space for the sensual appreciation of another man's physical charm that human and divine laws forbade? Does the sexual orientation articulate hegemonic phallic narcissism? Why is a celebration of the exquisite shades of male beauty taken as a professed act of perversion meant for destabilizing the age-old social order? Does the fluidity of gender, long felt but never expressed explicitly in the public domain, upset the patriarchal heterosexual man's apple cart? Does the vacillation from one sex to another, not a rare or unnatural phenomenon, get the difference between the penetrator and penetrated blurred?

It looks incredible that these axiological questions about sexuality subsumed by religion and social practices are nuancedly articulated in a standout novel, “Us Ne Kaha Tha” in Urdu which is large, though erroneously, known as the language of poetry revolving around the wistful experience of the unrequited love. Ashar Najmi, a poet and distinguished editor of the reputed literary journal, Esbaat, in his debut novel, upends the prevalent thematic mannerism and storytelling tropes. His breezy narrative poignantly narrates the dilemma of a high-strung protagonist whose titillating overtures defy the social grammar of gender. The narrator seeks to assert that one can act as a person outside the discourse of gender as true love lives in a state of bliss and ecstasy far away from the bounds of gender.