Writers' Forum

Munir's article on the launch of Gul Afshaani e Guftaar

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:21:00 +0000

I read this article at the launch of Zamin's Jafri collection of satirical poems in Urdu. You may read it at the following link:

http://tinyurl.com/37rxbef

Naqsh ber Aab : Urdu Poetry by Abrar Hasan

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 03:03:00 +0000

To read Abrar Hasan's poetry collection please click here:

http://tinyurl.com/2cvjyv9

Column Niggar Ka Mansib - Stature of a Column Writers

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 03:01:00 +0000

I share the Url of an article on Urdu Column Writing that I read in Toronto:

Kalam Nigar Ka Mansib

Noon Meem Rashid's Hasan Kooza Gar Poems 1 to 4

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Sat, 29 May 2010 19:45:00 +0000

You may read Noon Meem Rashid's Poem Hasan Kooza Gar all 4 poems at the following link:

http://tinyurl.com/2e8eqox

An interview with Urdu poet Azm Behzad

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Sat, 08 May 2010 23:59:00 +0000

Jasarat of Pakistan has published an interview with Urdu poet Azm Behzad on May 09, 2010 in its Sunday Magazine section. You may read it and download from:

http://tinyurl.com/2a5w4qy:

Just scroll a bit in the PDF reader window at the above link.

Rhythms of Freedom

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:53:00 +0000

Rhythms of freedom

By Munir Saami
Dawn: Sunday, 25 Apr, 2010

Sadequain is among those rare artists in history who adopted painting as well as poetry as their medium of creative expression.

In the western arts only a few prominent names can be mentioned who were painters as well as poets of high repute. These include William Blake who was a mystical romantic poet and an engraver of great fame, and Dante Rosseti was also a recognised poet and a master painter. Both hailed from England.

Pablo Picasso composed poems which were published under the title The Burial of the Count of Orgaz and Other Poems around the mid-1930s. Interestingly, it is said that when Picasso was composing poems he was experiencing a mental block towards painting.

Among the painters of the Eastern and Middle Eastern tradition, Sohrab Sepehri of contemporary Iran was an accomplished poet and painter.

Sadequain is the only iconic painter of South Asia who could also claim a name in the domain of serious verse. Renowned Indian artist M. F. Hussain has composed some poems that have been included in his autobiography; these may be considered as lighter poems which may not be at par with the genre of rubaii that Sadequain chose.

To fully comprehend Sadequain’s poetry we need to be sufficiently familiar with the poetry and philosophic traditions of Persia, India and the Middle East. To grasp the metaphors and meanings that he wove in his verse we need to reflect upon the thoughts and art of Mani, Behzad, Sarmad, Khayaam, Mansoor Hallaj and other mystics, poets and painters.

We cannot fathom the depths of Sadequain’s poetic imagery unless we know the principles of struggle at Karbala that Imam Hussain, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), stood for and acquired martyrdom for.

Sadequain respected and derived his inspiration from great Urdu poets that include Mir Taqi Mir, Ghalib, Mir Anis, Josh Malihabadi and Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

Canadian scholar Northrop Frye, who is considered among the great critics of English literature, has theorised about two major themes in literature. He identifies these as the Myths of Concern and the Myths of Freedom.

The Myths of Freedom are the narratives that talk about liberty, equality, dissidence, resistance, exercise of fundamental human rights and breaking of chains that Rousseau has so elaborately discussed in his Social Contract. It is interesting to note that Frye’s major work on the above two themes began when he visited Pakistan for a conference in 1972, and it was included in Critical Path which encompasses the ideas of writers, artists and society.

Modern Urdu poetry has also adopted the Myths of Freedom under the influence of the Progressive Writers’ Association in India and Pakistan. It is the metaphors of resistance, dissidence, struggle against religious hypocrisy and freedom from tyranny that are the common themes in the poetry of Majaz, Makhdoom, Sahir, Josh and Faiz. The same can also be detected in the inspiration of Mir Taqi Mir, Ghalib and Mir Anis long before the advent of the Progressive Writers’ Movement in India.

Sadequain chose rubaii for expressing his poetic thoughts. In Urdu poetry rubaii is the form of poetry that consists of four lines of a very precise metre. It is considered to be a difficult classical metre and very few Urdu poets have adopted it and even fewer have excelled in it. Mir Anis, Mirza Dabir and Josh Malihabadi may be considered among the masters of rubaii.

While composing his rubaiis — or rubaiyaat, which is the plural of rubaii — Sadequain has adopted various themes that reflect upon the motifs in his poetry, his imagery and philosophy as a painter. He has arranged these in multiple sections of his poetry collection. All of these reflect the Myths of Freedom that were alluded to earlier.

I will share some examples of his rubaiis that specifically target the hypocrisy of religious orthodoxy that influences all religions equally. While reading Sadequain’s rubaiis, we are able to conjure up images that are universal in all religions.

In one rubaii he writes:

A religious scholar was lecturing on morality, keeping a religious book before him awhile, when I split his prayer rug and discovered a nude picture hidden underneath.

In another he says:

Religious scholars are debating the religious laws in their room. A beautiful girl has come to visit me and I have hidden her behind the bookshelf of religious manuscripts

At another occasion he speaks to the religious leaders and declares:

All of you are afraid of Allah, and ready to die for your faith. In these hypocritical times, I am the only one who is proud of his heresy

Sadequain’s daring challenge to the hypocritical practices at the pulpit can be witnessed in this rubaii:

The infidel is not weak in his heresy. He does not befool anyone in the name of faith.

In my opinion a true infidel is much better than a Muslim who tells lies and deceives others

We find many examples of Sadequain’s challenges to hypocrisy of religious orthodoxy spread throughout his poetry. He has followed the examples of many daring saints, poets and philosophers of Islam who gave up their luxuries and lives to uphold the truth.

Sadequain hailed from a region that is currently engulfed in religious and sectarian strife, as well as communal violence and bloodshed in the name of faith and religion. It was in this very region that Sadequain and his other contemporaries opposed bigotry and injustice not too long ago.

He not only led by example but also paved the way for others so that the struggles for resistance against tyranny, freedom from religious intolerance and professing of free expression could continue and succeed.

The following sums up his passion and spirit:

Carrying my own head in my hands, I flutter like the flag of victory. I go to the hanging ground with such happiness, as if I am going to meet my beloved

Sadequain’s poetry, along with his paintings, requires and deserves serious and focused scholarship that will explore the deeper meanings that he strived for throughout his works. Such scholarship will lead to mutual understanding and pluralism that is the requirement of our times and a necessity for mutual global coexistence.

This article was read on the occasion of the launch of a deluxe edition of Rubaiyaat-i- Sadequain at Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Is Urdu a religious language? by Syed Mohsin Naquvi

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:45:00 +0000

Syed Mohsin Naquvi has penned a polemical and debate provoking article on this very controversial subject.

While some major writers and intellectuals have tried to propose that Urdu is a language of Muslims of India and by corollary a religious language.

At the same time there have been major Urdu scholars who steadfastly opposed this point way.

The article by Syed Naquvi invites debate. Readers may get it from the following:

http://tinyurl.com/ly6pjt

Articles on Urdu Prosody at Columbia: Frances Pritchett website

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:14:00 +0000

This link leads to several useful resources on Urdu Prosody.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/pybus/pybus.html

An article on Urdu Prosody

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:03:00 +0000

Hello Friends,

I came across this excellent group of articles on Urdu Prosody. One of its kind in English about the essentials of the system of Urdu poetry.

It is definitely educational.

http://www.geocities.com/roshbaby/prosody/basics.html

Saqi Farooqi's Jaan Mihammed Khan Safar Aassaan NahiN

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:58:00 +0000

Saqi Farooqi can be considered as one of the finest contemporary Urdu poets . His poem Jaan Mohammed Khan safar aasaan nahiN, is among the classics of modern Urdu poetry.

I share it with all. Please click the link:

http://tinyurl.com/kmb2ce

Aik Soor Say by Saqi Farooqi

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:55:00 +0000

I read Saqi Farooqi's poem Aik Soor Say, and share it with all:
http://tinyurl.com/lnk287

Munshi Prem Chand : Adab ki Gharz o Ghayat

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:31:00 +0000

Munshi Prem Chand, one of the greatest writers of Urdu literature, delivered a historic address at the inaugural session of the Progressive Writers Association (Anjuman Tarraqi Pasand Mussanifeen) in 1936.

This was later added the the collection, Tarraqi Pasand Adab edited by Qamar Raees and Ahsoor Kazmi on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the association in London.

I am enclosing the link to this address which can be considered among the classic writings of Urdu literature. Please select the full screen view when the Ipaper is presented. It is located on the top right hand tool bar on the Ipaper display.

http://www.esnips.com/doc/4fdd8847-407e-491a-9520-5fe7932a9b5b/Adab-ki-Gharz-o-Ghayat---Prem-Chand--1936

http://tinyurl.com/kvoef2

The blogosphere slugfest

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:04:00 +0000

The blogosphere slugfest
http://tinyurl.com/n89chd

By Amir Hamid Jafri

Monday, 15 Jun, 2009 | 02:35 AM PST |

FREQUENTED and animated mostly by people of our subcontinental diaspora, The Writers Forum is an internet discussion site out of Toronto.

The forum is the brainchild of my friend Munir Saami who over the years has tried to shepherd the written discussions towards literary greens rather than letting them veer into the more belligerent badlands of political brinkmanship or, worse, into the narcissistic pools of personal posturing by self-styled au courant contributors.

A recent flurry of exchanges about the substance and style of postings on the forum got me thinking about the two positions: literary expression and, the more voguish, blog-fest. Some members, basically, accused the moderator of being Nero-ish by insisting on writings with literary merit while, they reminded him — vehemently in some instances — that Swat was burning, citizens were being killed indiscriminately, children kidnapped, foreign cricket teams, hotels and police academies blasted by rocket launchers. You get the idea.

Evidence suggests that, unlike Nero, Saami is neither fond of the fiddle nor did he torch Swat as the famed emperor is rumoured to have done in Rome. If his commentaries are any evidence, like most of us he is rather distraught by the devastating conflagration in our homeland. The Nero reference, in my view, may demonstrate the limitation of arguing by analogy but still carries strong pathos, a powerful emotional force for addressing the increasingly dire exigency that glares at us Pakistanis. So should we all who are affected by the calamitous situation react in frenzied abandon or contemplate and consider in sacred inner spaces, and then express ourselves in language becoming to the gravity of the situation?

I am a sucker for the polemics of the day but in this case I found myself sympathetic to those who thought, no matter how dire the political situation may be, our forum shouldn’t degenerate into the rapidly emerging hyper-animated blogosphere slugfest. The lowest common denominator in any such free-for-all is, invariably, the ad hominem attack which, if nothing else, is a sure recipe for taking one’s eyes off the essential problem.

According to Plato, the highest arguments are those that derive their rhet

orical force from genus or definition where the assumption is that certain mutually exclusive classes or essences inhabit the world, classes on which there is consensus, a classification already established and accepted in the mind of the audience. Since The Writers Forum is a literary forum rather than a music or cricket or, yes, political forum, in my view the issue of definition and the forum’s content should be a settled matter. Except that we are still left with the age-old nag about taste and quality in matters literary.

As in most such areas, here too Aristotle provides some guidelines. In Poetics he asserts that literary work should concern itself with form, material, technique and purpose. Surely, all postings on our modest forum cannot live up to these Aristotelian ideals. So, to expand the notion, I thought the contributors might be asked to delve into commentary and informed criticism about the concerns of the day, and literature. Now, literary criticism may be among the most exalted and edifying of human impulses but Matthew Arnold held it to be “a baneful and injurious employment.” I have a suspicion Arnold wanted to add ‘potentially’ in there somewhere but I am not sure.

Since Faiz’s weltanschauung and, more importantly, poetry have been a formative influence of my own stance towards life and literature, I take heart from the fact that literature can subsume politics. Simply put, issues of politics and ideology can be and have been elucidated in literary ways.

For us, the way Faiz utilised the metaphor and diction of Urdu ghazal for such purposes is as piquant an example as can be of this conjecture. Hikmat, Neruda, Darvaish, to name a few, also infused their aesthetic expression with the anguish of their times. As is being done by, I am sure, by men and women who are expressing themselves with tender intelligence, pointed arguments and passionate words in Pushto, Punjabi, Sindhi, Seraiki, Potohari, Balochi, Urdu and a host of other languages spoken amidst the mayhem in our hapless land.

Even though we have seen that political writings can aspire to the condition of literature, they are by definition utilitarian. The use of language in such enterprises is primed to explain, prove, predict and control rather than to express and touch emotions. In political writings, even if language makes appeals to the emotions it does so with the calculated aim of co-opting its readers to its arguments. Literature, however, can address political issues within the ambit of the relevant aesthetic criteria; it does not have to stoop to political writing or media-speak in order to sustain itself or to delight readers.

In our immediate context, I am quite sure people like Intizar, Qasmi, or Faiz — all newspapermen at one time or another, and rather good ones at that — would prefer to be remembered as litterateurs rather than journalists or political writers or even patriots (for by definition, I believe all poets are cosmopolites, their passions and concerns transcend the arbitrary nature of political boundaries). I know my uncle Ali Sardar Jafri, a giant of literary criticism and political commentary and one of the finest literary orators of Urdu, identified himself as a poet; a poet sensitive to the angst of the collective but a poet nevertheless.

The key difference between the plethoric outpourings on the blogosphere and the leisurely pursuit of literature is well demonstrated by Ezra Pound’s pithy comments about literature being news that remains news. Literature, as the cliché goes, has shelf life. Literature’s magic lies in its potential to enlighten and enrapture, to enthral the soul on each immersion. Such magic eludes polemics.

Not too many among us, for example, browse newspapers from the times of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia but some do, still, dedicate their summers to a wholesome immersion in the vivid narrative of War and Peace or the fragrant byways of Remembrance of Things Past. Quratul Ain Haider defined news as that which is hard to sell the next day — it is, she said, hard to dispose of today’s fresh newspapers as raddi (from rud, literally reject) the next day. But Homer sells. So do Tolstoy and Proust. Hafiz of Shiraz and Mirza Nausha of Delhi remain perennial bestsellers.

Immanuel Kant, always a trusted guide in the labyrinths of aesthetics, pointed out that all art aspires to the condition of music. To which let me hazard that all writings, even political writings, aspire to a condition of literature. Some like Faiz’s attain sublimity and become literature.

The writer teaches at Kutztown University in the US and is the author of Honour Killing: Dilemma; Ritual; Understanding.

amirj5@hotmail.com

Tarraqi Pasand Adab

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:59:00 +0000

Tarraqi Pasand Adab, Munir Saami's article read at the Writers Forum.
Please click the link below to download and read the PDF file.

http://www.esnips.com/doc/17b303b9-7102-4721-b5fb-e2c20f08c458/Tarraqi-Pasand-Adab

http://tinyurl.com/op5e53

Munir Saami on Faiz

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Sat, 30 May 2009 05:27:00 +0000

Hello Friends,
Please allow my to humbly share my intro speech that I delivered at the Faiz
Tribute organized by the KAMA Reading series of World Literacy Canada. It
was written for a learned Canadian Audience of over 350 people.

Canadain author Anne Michaels, Past President of Pen Canada Reza Baraheni,
Faiz's transaltor Naomi Lazard, and Writers Forum President Nuzhat Siddiqui
also spoke.

We are getting a video of the event and will be able to send it to those
who wished to receive.

Thanks and best regards. Munir
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Writers_Forum/message/793
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Writers_Forum/message/1186

-----------------
Friends of Kama Reading Series,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Writers_Forum/message/1460

It is a great honour for me to stand before this learned assembly to
introduce one of the major poets of not only Urdu and Pakistan, but a poet
who according to Edward Said was among the great poets of the last century.

Before I do that, I take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank my
fellow Pakistanis who have joined us today from far and wide in this
tribute to one of their best.

Faiz once wrote that, the bonds of our pains are so strong that every one
will come when my name is taken.

To introduce Faiz Ahmad Faiz in a very short time is, as William Blake
said, to put the world in a grain of sand, or as Ghalib said, is like
squeezing the ocean into a drop of water.

But I will try, and I will try to introduce Faiz to you in several
perspectives.

Faiz’s ideals are also the ideals of those who are honoring him
today. Removal of Ignorance and spread of literacy has been a major
mission of Faiz.

He wrote a dedication of his works to all the disadvantaged of the world,
and I share these lines;

To the seekers of knowledge,
who with extended hands,
went to the doors of their lords,
begging for books and pens,
and never returned.

Those naïve little souls,
who in their innocence,
with lanterns in their hands
went seeking light,
where only the darkness
of unending night
was their destiny.

Faiz had a special bond of love with Mahatma Gandhi.

At the time of Mahatma’s death, the Indian sub continent was burning in a
fire of religious hatred between the citizens of India and Pakistan.

Defying major objections, Faiz flew over that fire to attend the funeral of
Mahatma Gandhi. And that is why this tribute to Faiz is also important.

He later crossed another river of blood, and went to Bangla Deshis after
their independence to embrace them with love.

And there is a Canadian literary perspective. Great scholar Northrop Frye
has discussed the myths of concerns and myths of freedom in literature.

Faiz’s narrative was the narrative of freedom. Freedom from ignorance, from
tyranny, from religious dogma, from injustice, and freedom from imperialism
were always the underlying currents of his poetry.

His archetypes and metaphors were the archetypes and metaphors of love, and
hope, and peace, and harmony. He wished and hoped for all the humanity.

There is also a relationship of Faiz with the Canadian literary tradition.

Faiz chose the forms of Ghazal, as well as free verse for his expression.

It is interesting to note that Canadian poet John Thompson introduced the
form of Ghazal to the Canadian literary community.

And later Phyllis Webb drew upon the Ghazal tradition of great Persian
poets, Rumi, Saadi, and Hafiz .

The latest poetry collection of renowned Canadian poet, Lorna Crozier
consists of 41 Ghazals. These are inspired by the same traditions and the
tradition of Urdu poet Ghalib. This was also the tradition and inspiration
of Faiz.

Students of new forms of poetry in Canada may greatly benefit by choosing
Faiz as the model of modern Ghazal, in their works and discourses.

Lorna Crozier also recognizes the efforts of Agha Shahid Ali for promoting
Ghazal in North America.

Agha Shahid Ali has also published his translation of Faiz under the title
of, Rebel’s Silhouette. He was inspired by Naomi Lazard in translating Faiz.

Faiz came Canada twice. Once in 1978 during a self imposed exile against
the dictatorship of Gen. Zia ul Haq. And later as a guest at the Shastri
institute.

He was free to visit Canada but was barred from entering the US on many
occasions.

Faiz could draw from the finest Sufi traditions of love in Islam and also
joined the company of those who would drink wine and recite Khayyam and Rumi.

In one of his visits to Canada, he left an autograph on a bottle of whiskey
that is the prize collection of a restaurant at the Roncessvalles in Toronto.

In the international literary context, Edward Said equates Faiz with Garcia
Marquez, in his ability to evoke appreciation by the literary elite and
popular acceptance by the masses.

Edward Said also finds a synthesis of sensuality of Yeats and power
of Naruda in Faiz’s poetry. I take the liberty of adding Adonis, and
Mahmoud Darwish’s, names for comparison of Faiz’s verse.

Faiz possessed a universal vision. He filtered the thoughts of Socrates and
Mansur Hallaj, and invoked the pain of Karachi as well as Karbala. He stood
for truth and justice for all.

To prove this, he sacrificed his anti imperialist principles by joining the
British Imperial army to fight against the Nazis and the Fascists.

He also had a special closeness with the struggle of the Palestinians and
before his death he spent several months in Beirut with the beleaguered
Palestinians.

He wrote songs for Mandela and the elegy for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg at
their execution.

Faiz was born in Sialkot in the pre partition Punjab in February 1911.

It is the same town where Mohammed Iqbal the Philosopher poet of Pakistan,
who was one of the greatest Urdu and Persian poets, was also born.

Scholar Eqbal Ahmad in his interview with David Barsamian said that,
Mohammed Iqbal brought Urdu to the center of the history and Faiz Ahmad
Faiz took it to even greater heights.

Eqbal Ahmed also finds that Mohammed Iqbal’s inspiration came from
Nietzsche and Rumi. And Faiz found his inspiration in Marx and Ghalib.

After acquiring education in English and Arabic literature, Faiz became the
editor of major literary journals and also taught for a few years.

He was also one of the members and organizers of the Progressive Writers
Association. Some of the finest Pakistani and Indian writers evolved under
the socialist philosophy of this association.

After partition he decided to live in Pakistan and became the editor of
Pakistan Times. He promoted a socialist vision for the newly founded country.

His lyrical and musical poetry inspired the masses without any hint of
slogans.

He was arrested on the charges of treason in 1951 under the threat of death
sentence, and was jailed for four years.

Faiz spent most of this time in solitary confinement. He wrote some of
his most influential poems during these lonely times.

After his release he became the unofficial poet laureate of Pakistan. Some
of the finest Pakistani singers sang his poetry.

Even the army dictator General Ayub Khan recognized his stature and was
compelled to present his name as a major poet whose work should be
translated by UNESCO.

That was the time when his first English translations were rendered by
Victor Kiernan. His poetry was also translated into Russian, Hindi, and
other languages. He won the Lenin Literary Prize in 1963.

More than 10 collections of English translations of Faiz have been
published. Victor Kiernan, Naomi Lazard, and Agha Shahid Ali are his
principal translators.

Like Northrop Frye, Faiz believed in an Educated Imagination, and founded
several major cultural institutions of Pakistan.

He spent some of the final years of his life as the principal of a college
in Layari-Karachi, one of the poorest sections of the commercial capital of
Pakistan.

He died in 1984. After his death Pakistan finally conferred its highest
honor Nishan e Pakistan on him.

Faiz knew that the tyrants have a habit of pulling the sweeter tongues, and
crushing the softer hands of scribes under stones. He conquered them with
his disarming smiles and melodious songs.

In the end allow me to share these lines from one of his finest poems.

He said,:

Let us also raise our hands,
we who have forgotten the ritual of prayer,
we who do not remember any God, any Idol
Let us pray that our poisonous days
be filled with the sweetness of tomorrow.

Thank you.

Hasan Kooza Gar 4 by Noon Meem Rashid, audio recited by Munir Saami

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:06:00 +0000

Hello Friends,
This is the fourth and the last of four Hasan Kooza Gar poems by Noon Meem Rashid. The link to the audio and to my blog is shared here. Please review and share your comments.
Note: If you are unable to download the audio, please advise me at; munirsaami@yahoo.com

DOWNLOAD LINK:http://tinyurl.com/pwuj8m
FILE NAME: hasan kooza gar 4 by noon meem rashid-recited by munir saami_music.mp3
FILE SIZE: ~5.69 megabytes

Hasan Kooza Gar 3 by Noon Meem Rashid, audio recited by Munir Saami

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:47:00 +0000

Hello Friends,
This is the third of four Hasan Kooza Gar poems by Noon Meem Rashid. I will also share the fourth. I have also added these to my blog. The link to the audio and to my blog is shared here. Please review and share your comments.
Note: If you are unable to download the audio, please advise me at; munirsaami@yahoo.com

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://tinyurl.com/r823kc
FILE NAME: hasan kooza gar_ 3 by noon meem rashid -recited by munir saami_music.mp3
FILE SIZE: ~6.09 megabytes

Munir Saami's Blog:
http://tinyurl.com/r823kc

Thanks. Munir

Hasan Kooza Gar 2, by Noon Meem Rashid recited by Munir Saami

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:30:00 +0000

Hello Friends,

This is the second Hasan Kooza Gar poem by Rashid. He wrote four of these poems. The first was include in his collection, LA = InsaaN, and the other three appared in GumaaN ka Mumkin.

Note: If you are unable to download the audio, please advise me at; munirsaami@yahoo.com

Please send me your feed back. Thanks. Munir

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://tinyurl.com/ry2lc9
FILE NAME: hasan kooza gar_ 2 by noon meem rashid -recited by munir saami_music1.mp3
FILE SIZE: ~5.03 megabytes

Raqs by Noon Meem Rashid, audio recited by Munir Saami

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:29:00 +0000

Hello friends,

Here is another famous poem of Noon Meem Rashid in MP3. I can off course not recite like great presenters or vocalists, however I do this only in the spirit of sharing and remembering great poetry.
Note: If you are unable to download the audio, please advise me at; munirsaami@yahoo.com

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://tinyurl.com/orkqhm
FILE NAME: raqs by noon meem rashid -recitation munir saami_music.mp3
FILE SIZE: ~1.77 megabytes

Thanks . Munir

Hasan Kooza Gar by Noon Meem Rashid, audio recited by Munir Saami

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:28:00 +0000

Hello Friends,

After my sharing of Urdu script of Noon Meem Rashid's iconic poem, Hasan Kooza Gar, our friend Akbar Hussain (a Bengali speaker) who loves Urdu poetry, asked me to share it in Roman.

It is a large poem, and difficult to trnasliterate retaining the power of this poetry.

I have recited and recorded it as an audio in MP3. I am now sharing the link for all to download.

Please click the link. There is one correction and I have repeated that line. Please listen and share your comments, so that I may imporve upon and share other great poetry.
Note: If you are unable to download the audio, please advise me at; munirsaami@yahoo.com

Here is the link:

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://tinyurl.com/o7l686
FILE NAME: hasan kooza gar by noon meem rashid_music1.mp3
FILE SIZE: ~5.07 megabytes

Enjoy! Munir

The Sardar of Urdu literature

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:11:00 +0000

This obituary written in 2000 is still as valuable and informative as it was at the death of this icon of modern Urdu literature:

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/fline/fl1717/17171020.htm
---------------------

The Sardar of Urdu literature

Ali Sardar Jafri, 1913-2000.

KULDEEP KUMAR

IT was perhaps in the early 1970s that I first heard Ali Sardar Jafri at a mushaira (poetic soiree) in Delhi. I do not have a very vivid recollection of all he chose to recite on that evening because the dais had a galaxy of eminent Urdu poets. Ye t I still cherish the memory since he had made a great impression on me and other young men on account of his fiery poetry. What struck me most was the freshness of imagery, the transparent commitment to the man-on-the-street, and the intensely felt love for this country and its composite culture.

VIVEK BENDRE

When the Sardar recited "har aashiq hai Sardar yahan, har maashooqa Sultana hai" (Here, every lover is Sardar and every beloved is Sultana), I was struck by the boldness of expression. I knew that romantic poetry was all about self-expression, b ut this was something absolutely new. Normally, lovers fashion themselves after Majnu and their beloveds after Laila, but here was a poet who identified himself and his beloved Sultana, who later became his wife, with every lover and beloved. Majnu and L aila were no longer the measure, the yardstick. It was the poet himself and his love that became the new symbols of lovers. This was a startling example of transmutation of literary symbolism. Here, one was faced with a totally new aesthetics.

So much has been written about Ali Sardar Jafri's contribution to the progressive writers' movement. He was one of its leaders, and insofar as Urdu poetry is concerned, its tallest leader in India. He belonged to a generation that began with participatio n in the freedom struggle and gradually moved from nationalism to Marxism. This was no fashionable Marxism embraced for its intellectual attraction. This was a Marxism that dislocated them from their comfortable aristocratic or upper middle class existen ce and compelled them to live the hard life. The many possibilities of fundamental social and economic change opened up before this generation, which remained unsatisfied with the attainment of political freedom alone. This was a generation that produced the likes of Shambhu Mitra, Bijon Bhattacharya, Mrinal Sen, Utpal Dutt, Balraj Sahni, Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Shailendra, Salil Chaudhury, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Ramvilas Sharma, Kedarnath Agrawal, Nagarjun, Shamsher, Makhdoom Moh iuddin, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Ismat Chugtai, Krishen Chander and a host of other equally eminent creative talents.

It was not without reason that the legendary Premchand had presided over the first ever conference of the Progressive Writers' Association held in Lucknow in 1936. The clarion call he issued then, to "change the measure" of beauty, remains to this day a landmark event in the evolution of Indian literature.

Ali Sardar Jafri never forgot Premchand's call. In fact, he uses this as an epigram to begin his celebrated poem Samandar ki Beti (Daughter of the Ocean) with. Unlike many other writers and poets, Jafri did not go to Bombay (now Mumbai) to write for Hindi films. He went there to work as a full-time activist of the undivided Communist Party of India (CPI). His involvement with writing film lyrics came much later and he was to set a standard of lyrical beauty that has remained unique. His composi tion for the film Footpath, "Shaam-e-gham ki kasam, aaj ghamgeen hain ham", rendered in Talat Mahmood's silken voice, remains memorable even today. Jafri even produced a film Gyarah Hazar Ladkiyan (Eleven Thousand Girls) in 1960 for friend Khwaja Ahmad Abbas. Incidentally, it was Abbas to whose film Anhonee Jafri lent his pen for the first time in 1952.

BORN in an aristocratic Muslim family of Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh in 1913, Ali Sardar Jafri plunged into politics early and joined the national movement. He went to jail several times on account of his political activities. He left for Bombay in 1942 and spent most of his life in this metropolis. A friend of revolutionary Turkish poet Nazim Hikmat and Nobel Prize winner Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Jafri remained the leader of progressive Urdu writers till the end. He began his literary career with a coll ection of short stories Manzil (Destination) in 1938 and made a mark as a poet with Parvaz (Strength to Fly) in 1943. His Nai Duniya ko Salam (Salute to the New World) and Asia Jaag Utha (Asia has awakened) were translated int o many Indian as well as foreign languages.

Jafri also came to be respected as an editor of critical editions of the works of Mir Taqi 'Mir' and Ghalib, the two poets who influenced the course of Urdu poetry the most. He also edited the works of Kabir and Meera. Jafri wrote erudite introductions t o all these books, establishing himself as an extraordinarily perceptive critic. As a poet, his unique contribution was to get the free verse its rightful place in the Urdu literary world. Josh Malihabadi, his senior by many years, had effected a sort of shift from the dominant form of ghazal to nazm, which was not bound by the rules of rhyme. Yet, even Josh's nazm followed conventions of literary metres and was not exactly "free". It was Ali Sardar Jafri who, like Suryakant Tripathi 'Nira la' in Hindi, freed the nazm from its metrical shackles. If Josh was hailed as Shair-e-Inqilab (The Poet of Revolution), Jafri came to be known as Shair-e-Awam (The Poet of the People).

While Marxism permeated his whole being and writing, it never became an ideological cage for him. Jafri encompassed the great humanistic traditions and compassion of the Sufi and Bhakti movements, the love of nature found in the works of Kalidas, and an assimilative vision of India's composite culture. In no other Urdu poet - perhaps with the sole exception of Nazir Akbarabadi who lived in the 18th century - would one find quite the same kind of effusive celebration of Krishna with his Gokul, Gautam Bud dha with his disciple Anand and Chandalika, glory of the Vedas, the Radha of Vidyapati's poetry, and so on. True to his commitment, he penned beautiful poems on Karl Marx and Paul Robeson too.

Several honours came to Jafri during his long literary career. These included the Padmashri, the Pakistan government's Iqbal Award, the Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy Award, the Kumaran Asan Award and the Toronto Urdu Literary Academy Award. The irony of it was that in 1986, the same Aligarh Muslim University that had expelled him on account of his participation in the freedom struggle, honoured him (or rather itself), by conferring the D.Litt. on him. In 1998, he won the Jnanpith award.

Such was the force of his personality and the power of his pen that even Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, a life-long member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had to concede in his speech while giving away the Jnanpith award that one could di ffer with Jafri's views but not with his vision. When Vajpayee made his bus trip to Lahore last year, Jafri went along as a special invitee, chosen since he best symbolised the essential unity of mankind. Among the Indian Prime Minister's main gifts to h is Pakistan counterpart was a collection of Jafri's poems entitled Sarhad (Border).

Ali Sardar Jafri was steeped in the best traditions of secularism. He fought against imperialism all through his life while remaining aware that imperialism had a great capacity to take on newer forms. His Marxist convictions gave him a strong sense of s ocial justice and equality between classes, castes, religions, languages, and sexes. With his demise at the age of 86, Urdu literature has lost a man who broadened its horizons and deepened its perceptions. Truly he was the Sardar of Urdu literature.

Jon Elia: Prometheus chained

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:33:00 +0000

February 6, 2005

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/books/archive/050206/books7.htm

AUTHOR: Prometheus chained

By Ali Shameem
ACCORDING to Dr Mohammad Ali Siddiqi, Jaun Elia was among the most important and popular ghazal writers of the second half of the 20th century. I agree. Yet, in the following lines, I would like to add that he was one of the most neglected nazm writers of the same period, as part of the unfortunate general phenomenon of neglect of nazm by critics of Urdu poetry as well as the poetry lovers in the general public.

This trend has led to an amnesia-like attitude towards such stalwarts of nazm like Josh Malihabadi, Noon Meem Rashid, Akhtarul Iman, Meeraji, Majaz, Faiz, Wazeer Agha, Majeed Amjad, Sardar Jafri, Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Azmatullah Khan, Balraj Komal, Ibne Insha, Muneer Niazi, and many others, including the sole female nazm poet of major significance, Fahmeeda Riaz. The supremacy of ghazal over nazm in criticism and the public mind has its roots in a more fundamental intellectual and cultural underpinning.

Jaun Elia also became a victim of the ghazal and mushaira culture and, in spite of his unparalleled preparation for it, lost his motivation for nazm, to me a higher, broader and more vital expression of poetic endeavour. That is why I regard Jaun as a great poetic promise not completely fulfilled.

Jaun’s excellent formal education in Arabic and Persian poetry and prose, his father’s high scholarship in the same intellectual environment, as well as the intellectual and poetic shadow of his famous bothers Raees Amrohvi, the poet, and Syed Muhammad Taqi, the philosopher-journalist, laid the foundations of his poetic development. Very important to note is his father’s and his own life long and deep rooted preoccupation with charismatic and prophetic personalities of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim milieu, like Moses, Christ, Yohunna, Yermiah, Hallaj, and Gheelanay Damishqi.

All this contributed to the style of his nazm poetry. His early 1960s’ epic nazm ‘Nai Aag ka Ehed Nama’, which he did not complete, and somehow lost, could have qualified as one of the greatest poems in Urdu. Poems published in his three collections are also very significant compositions, and do reflect his intensely messianic, mythology-inspired, oratorical and lyrical style, to a level not found in any Urdu poet.

Great artists have very strong egos, explicitly expressed in social interaction and relationships (van Goh and Gaugain), or implicitly internalized, leading to high achievement motive, as well as humility and tolerance of other’s achievements (T.S. Eliot, Faiz Ahmed Faiz). Jaun belonged to the first category, with contempt for all poets past and present except Khusrau, Urfi and Meer. His tirade against Ghalib was a result of his highly egotistical competitiveness.

Three other major characteristics of Jaun’s personality were intensity of feeling (seen in Josh and Majaz), a continuous internal state of inellectual and emotional agitation, and a dramatic romanticism about life and love; he was fascinated and identified with Keats, Shelley and Byron.

To me, the most effective way of analyzing a poet’s contribution lies through a study of his or her attitudes towards beliefs about the cosmos, society and self, all three overlapping in the actual organic expression, yet separable for analytical purposes.

Jaun’ life long internal state of intellectual agitation, manifested itself in his emotional depression. This lay in his not finding any coherence, meaning and order in the universe. He was agnostically inclined and an existentialist to the core. This is reflected in most of his poems composed in his last 15 years. “Boodish”, “Burjay Babel”, “Ramzay Hamaysha”, and “Waqt” are representative examples.

Yet, the most complete and internally coherent, and powerfully metaphorical statement from him about his view of universe and man is “Wilayat-i-Khaiban”, which qualifies him for the deserved company of T.S. Eliot, whose “The wasteland”, “The hollow men” and “Prufrock” are replete with Jaun’s themes in “Wilayat-i-Khaiban” which is based on the powerful existentialist metaphor of a city whose inhabitants are in a state of deep sleep and dream and are sleepwalking when they get up for their chores.

This bustling foreign land, all its knowledge and vision, all its lofty culture

Its every success, every dazzling light, are born of

The fountainhead of daydreaming/sleepwalking Sleepwalking, indeed.

Romanticizing of gloom, noise of silent voices and half-lit ambience

Directions of confusion, warps, fear of darkness

Who knows what these are? The entire being of ours: perhaps a perpetual gloomAll this a deception; deception perhaps.

It seems as if Eliot and Jaun have met on a path, headed in opposite directions, Eliot the Catholic lamenting the death of certainty of cosmic beliefs in his western world and Jaun rejecting a system of cosmic beliefs he inherited and giving intense expression to his feeling of lack of meaning and coherence in the universe and man’s existence within it. I had heard Jaun say many a time that he was a seeker after certainty but he would not accept any intellectual illusion only to silence his agitation after finding a false facade of spiritual peace of mind. The following excerpt from ‘Waqt’ is again a beautifully composed statement of Jaun’s perception of lack of meaning in the universe:

Feeling is many a life’s problem

Expression is many a tongue’s trouble

A mist from the nucleus of faith

Up to the great summit of doubts

From the East of profit and the gain of flash-glimpse

To the west of darkness and losses

It is difficult to neatly place Jaun in the pigeonholes of the literary movements of his lifetime. Like Jean Paul Sartre, he was committed to two major literary camps, without one casting a shadow on the other. Sartre was not only a devotee but also a pioneer of his own brand of existentialism; yet, he worked with great fervour for Marxist causes. Jaun started his poetic career at the age of eleven under strong influence of romanticism. At 16, he began to be affected by the strongest literary movement of that time, that had swept through Urdu poetry, fiction and criticism, the movement pioneered by the Progressive Writers Association. On the ideological level, his poetry began to be strongly Marxist, particularly under the influence of the famous communist revolutionary activists, Naazish Amrohvi and Sultan Niazi. At 20, he wrote his famous poem “Shahrahai Tamaddun par Do Aawaazai(n)”:

You, on the payroll of capitalism, tell your Master

You, keepers and merchants of bones of the old order

Against your wishes a new civilization shall rise

A new romance, a new song, a new era shall dawn

Your Master was saying all these people are but mad

They are the voice of democracy, leaders of the world

No, they have not gone mad.

Jaun’s conviction that capitalistic society exploits and oppresses the weak, remained with him till his last years. In his last major poem “Darakhtay Zard”, he tells his son about his own childhood:

I was the most attained lad of my city

Most spontaneous, most daring of them all

I kept the foul-doing aristocrats a kick away

Placing the shoes of the working class on the pulpit

His strongest statement of his view of society is in these lines from his preface of Shayad:

I want to say that our arts and

learning duty-bind us to drag those out by the collar

Who run the casinos of capitalism. For, alongside political democracy,

Economic freedom has been and shall remain our hallmark.

In spite of all this, the fundamentalists among the left leaning writers and magazine editors of Karachi, who were his friends from youth, have not published a thing on him nor did they arrange a single condolence meeting after his death; again, in spite of the fact that Jaun lived the life of a poor man even after he was financially well off in the last five years of his life, practising what he preached. I am unable to fathom the reason.

Jaun spent the last decades of his life writing and living like Meer Taqi Meer; yet, his concept of love remained close to that of Ghalib. Meer says,

Idol, you we worshipped to such lengths

That all proclaimed you god

while Ghalib says,

Desire the idiots proclaimed worship

Do I worship that idol of no requite?

Jaun’s narcissism and ego formed his concept of love. Cosmic loneliness, alienation and a romantic sadness were the foundations of Jaun’s inner personality:

Name and name only all around, and a multitude to face

Let someone else be there too; none’s there but me

My forehead I knocked at several times today

Am I there? No, not a trace of me

To me, a great loss of Urdu poetry lies in Jaun not rising to his full potential for writing poems of epic proportions, only because of his near total surrender to fame and acclaim that the ghazal-mushaira culture gave him. His Prometheus stole the fire from the gods but could not fully deliver it to the world.

Jaun wrote his own obituary in Meer’s style:

These mad utterances we let out

Be warned, will be everlasting

We won’t keep you company

But our tales will n

— Translation of Urdu verses by Murtaza Razvi

Jon Elia : A wasted genius

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:31:00 +0000

A wasted genius

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030525/dmag11.htm

By Syed Husain Bin Khamis
Jaun, verily, was a philosopher, a scholar, an intellectual, a learned man and, above all, a poet. And he would have done much more had we taken care of him. Whatever he had done could be better understood and utilized if we knew him better

MY heart sinks in grief — and in shame. Another man wasted — Jaun Elia died on 8 November 2002. But who was Jaun Elia?

In a society where cast, creed, religion, and ethnic background is the primary determinant of one’s rights, duties, and stature — indeed the name might evoke surprise, incompatibility, and for some, even animosity.

But who am I to write about Jaun? I am a penitent — the favourite pastime of my kind for over a millennium — for I never had the courage to atleast walk upto him and say, ‘look — you are one of the most learned persons of my country — why don’t you share your anguish, if not your knowledge, with your countrymen’ — leave alone owning and patronizing him.

This article is only an attempt at redemption — an effort at atoning the guilt which I feel as a member of this society, which I shared with Jaun Elia — by simply talking about him. My knowledge of his work is limited to his only readily available published book of poetry — Shayad.

He was a perennial skeptic — for doubt is the first step towards certainty. Yes — I enjoy reading his poetry for it stirs in me emotions which take me a step closer to humanity and it smoothers cracks in my soul, which I never even knew existed. But what is even more fascinating in this book is the poem which is so unique in its style and content that it duplexes the pleasure of his verses. It is as if he has taught the reader what to expect in his poetry. And even more impressive is the fact that you find exactly what he teaches you, to expect in his poetry.

What we should expect in his poetry emanates from his discussion on poetry and its comparison with other areas of intellectual activity like religion, philosophy, and science. Let us first see how he defines poetry.

According to him ‘when someone rises above temporal needs and rhymes his own silence — then he is writing poetry’. He goes on to say that ‘all art is natures attempt to rise above itself’ and that ‘art is the spontaneous skilled expression of an artist’s desires’.

This is quite different from Faiz for whom ‘a poet writes under the influence of an unknown irritation or sentiment’ but similar to William Wordsworth for whom, ‘poetry is the instantaneous overflow of powerful feelings’. This spontaneity is evinced in his poetry in all its colours:

About rising above nature:

Explaining the Urdu word for verse, shair, he says that it is often mistaken by people to be an Arabic word — but the fact is that it comes from the Hebrew word, skier, which means rhyme, musical voice, or rhythm. The primary condition for poetry that he lays down is iambic rhythm (Vazn) which for ease of understanding may be referred as harmony. ‘I cannot think of poetry without harmony and musical rhythm’ he says.

The two elements of poetry which Jaun Elia has expressed i.e. ‘transcending nature and spontaneity of expression’ could not be more true. In fact all creativity that communicates is about going beyond the obvious — whether it is science, philosophy, history, or religion. We cannot say anything (except for stating what every one already knows) till we go beyond the obvious — and poetry provides us the best medium for going beyond the obvious. Because poetry is a form of expression which is free of most external influences. Prose, in any form, whether fiction or non-fiction, is demarcated and delineated. Fiction is bound by characters and fact is leashed by the confines of the writer. Poetry is almost free of connectivity, reference, and context.

Even nazm has less connectivity than prose — because it may be connected in motif (mazmoon), but is still free in locution (Tarz-e-biar).

Metaphysically speaking, there are two parts to mans existence — the spiritual and the temporal. In the words of A.K. Brohi ‘to begin with he (man) is of the earth — earthly, but in him is lodged the spirit of God which is the transcendent element’.

Whatever Jaun might have said informally — his concept of rising above nature, transcending the earthliness in poetry is only manifest of his deep understanding and recognition of the spiritual part of man.

But this does not mean that poetry is bereft of logic. Jaun says, ‘poetry is related to mind, and the purest condition of mind is manifested in logic’ — and thus poetry is not beyond logic. While he wants poetry to be free of confines of prose at one end — he also does not want it to be lost in the limitlessness and obscurity of metaphysics at the other.

Iqbal calls it ‘higher poetry’. For Jaun, ‘higher poetry’ is religion. In the same line of argument, while declaring the essence of the character of a poet to be moral he does not differentiate between morals and ethics in art. For him, morality which is extra-aesthetic is not morality — it is belief. Some might misconstrue this as lack of belief which could be wrong.

Mark his words, ‘I, as a poet, reject all inclusive concept of morality. Beliefs have a contradictory relationship with unconditional beauty, goodness, and art — therefore poets of metaphysical realities may deserve a higher position (as compared to a poet of the physical) but they could not be called poets’. And his argument is simple ‘because the most abiding and deep relationship of a poet is with aesthetics — and aesthetics are not beyond space-time’. How could one differ? But again — it must be reiterated that this is not a negation of the metaphysical. Note the words ‘metaphysical realities’. He does admit the metaphysical to be real but is not ready to admit in poetry what is not within the realm of esthetics. Even if he indulged himself in metaphysical motifs he ended up materializing it:

In fact he once said that all human beings are the same as far as reality, as perceived by our mind, is concerned. It is in fact our superstition (vahm) which makes us different from each other. Our signature and our identity are not the views which we express; because these are always the ones which we can defend — and we can only defend what we learn about reality through cognition. Our icon, in fact, is our superstitions which we do not share with anyone — for they are not cognitive — and hence not defendable. How honest, how purely honest was this man.

He was honest to admit the conflict of the physical and the metaphysical. The external association of our consciousness with reality is what we look — our superstitions are what we are.

Let us now turn to another aspect of his views on poetry. Jaun points out four elements of poetry. Cognition (Ta-aqqul), sensation (Ehsas), imagination (Takhayyal), and emotion (Jazba). Science, according to him, whether directly or indirectly, is related to sensations, or senses (which Iqbal calls ‘the manifest’ — julwat). Religion is related to conception, whereas philosophy deals exclusively with cognition.

Poetry, however, deals with all these and adds to them to the moisture of emotions, which blends the three into an amalgam, which is far more palatable to human mind and soul than the stand alone forms i.e. science, religion, and philosophy.

Explaining this amalgam he says that, ‘in poetry the mind acquires an extra-ordinary functionality which provides a qualitative jump to (bring) proportionality between sensation, conception, and cognition, which has the vein and tone of the quality and quantity of emotions’.

In simple words, he believes that emotions provide a synergy to sensation, conception, and cognition — and that poetry is in fact an expression of this synergy. It is this synergy which creates an element of wonder in poetry, and it is this wonder which is the hallmark of all art. Science is powered by research, religion by certitude, philosophy by doubt, and poetry by emotions and it is emotions which provide creativity to all research, certitude and doubt. All good art must create wonder, must fascinate, must fertilize minds, and must leave behind a lingering longing which forces us to create more.

Poetry must ‘surprise and delight’ at the same time. It must express, knowledge, certitude, and doubt in a manner so holy that analyzing it would be ‘as cruel as dissecting a humming-bird’.

About this dissonant nature of poetry Jaun says that poetry demands a bi-farious or twofold person, who could ‘creatively interact with reality through cognition and emotions’ (at the same time).

Jaun talks of three dimensional relationship of our consciousness with reality. In one dimension it creates philosophy, religion, and history (PRH). In the second dimension it creates science (Sc.) and in the third poetry (P). For him PRH, Sc, and P are three dimensions of interaction between our consciousness and reality. He also refers to these dimensions as past, present, and future and claims that poetry is the only art form that brings coevality to past, present, and future.

What has been stated above is a minuscule part of the poem of Shayad. Jaun has discussed politics, history, religion, philosophy, science, literature, linguistics, and many more disciplines. But the best thing about Jaun Ella is that he does not insist on his version of any thing. Having an opinion is one thing and considering it to be the last and correct is another. He was a diehard skeptic and could never be dogmatic. For him ‘dogmatism is the obscenity of mind’.

Jaun, verily, was a philosopher, a scholar, an intellectual, a learned man and above all a poet. What burns ones heart is the fact that our society abates what men bring to it. Jaun could have done much more if we had taken care of him and whatever he had done could be better understood and utilized if we knew him better. However, the stark fact is that except for Shayad we are not even sure of access to his other work leave alone putting it to constructive and educative use.

Between loneliness and solitude

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:29:00 +0000

July 20, 2003

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/books/archive/030720/books18.htm

Review: Between loneliness and solitude

Reviewed by Peerzada Salman

“I SUFFER therefore I am. When someone hurts me, only I feel the pain.” This is a famous Jaun Elia dictum. One may not go along with that, but Yani, his second collection of ghazals and nazms published posthumously, endorses the fact that ‘suffering’ is the centripetal force towards which Jaun Elia’s seemingly colloquial words (and high-falutin phrases) move.

Jaun Elia died last year at the age of 71. His first collection of poetry, Shaed hit the newsstands in 1990 when he was 59. Why he was averse to the idea of getting his poetry printed, only he knew best. The reason for Shaed’s publication was that some of Elia’s diehard fans, including late Saleem Jafrey, had railroaded him into doing so. Yani has appeared for more or less the same reason. However, inexplicably, the foreword (or preface) to the book couldn’t be published, something that Elia aficionados were zealously looking forward to. He was busy penning it for quite a number of years, delineating his philosophy of life and repudiating others.

An understatement: The ghazals that have been included in Yani are stupendous. It was Jaun Elia, the blood-expectorating poet. He was bound to produce such stuff. Shaed had made everyone anticipate astounding verse(s) in his next collection. And he didn’t disappoint them.

The ghazals in Yani are suffused with an acute sense of loneliness. It is poetry that has emanated from being alone. For almost a decade Jaun Elia hadn’t been living with his immediate family. Nor did he have any permanent abode. He sorely missed his children, his ex-wife and some of the friends who used to circumambulate around him in order to learn how to fit a line into a certain metrical composition or to know the root of a particular Persian or Arabic word. He found none around him.

Not asking how I am; nor even a greeting/Am I that close to your heart?

I am in the business of longing for you/My request: Please give me more

O’ the party of life, strange are your people/First they never came; then they went away annoyed

The cut is deep, comrades, friends/Hold me! What, have you all left?

Remarkably, this sense of loneliness, just when it begins to have a placebo effect, turns into a longing for solitude. This particular aspect of Jaun Elia is a tad difficult to fathom. He was a perpetually dissatisfied individual. Happiness to him was an evanescent commodity. Surprisingly, he despised grief with no less disgust. This is an aspect that’s not to be found anywhere else in Urdu literature, but in Elia’s poignant poetry. One of Shaed’s ghazals carries the couplet:

These moments begrudge each and every condition/Don’t put your trust in sorrow

With the same creative force Jaun Elia yearns for solitude, albeit implicitly, in Yani.

Desire for empathy and favour is oppression indeed/And oppression it is to be proud of these

That someone who set time to see me today/Made me happy by not making it

Strange is my nature; see, today/I felt relieved when you didn’t come

What needs to be noticed minutely is when two lines of a couplet contradict one another in a poetic manner, imperceptibly sliding loneliness into solitude.

I await myself day and night/Now, you send me back to me

This ‘tanhaee’ leads him to compose poetry. And when he dips his quill in ink to doodle, Jaun Elia actually expectorates blood — his definition of writing verse. Even in his first collection, the most unique poet of Urdu language churns out many a couplet involving the phrase ‘khoon thookna’ (spitting blood). Yani is no exception.

O’ blood-spitting Jaun/ What trick are you going to show now?

Blood I have spat in mocking always/Do always mock me for it

Those who harbour the notion that they were close to Jaun Elia or knew him intimately are deceiving themselves. He was a loner; a compulsive one, but a poet to his fingertips who constantly needed to know that he was a creative entity and that his suffering was not a futile exercise. He used those who wanted to achieve immortality by attaching their names to Jaun Elia by making them help him in everyday chores. And his aversion to other poets was no secret, for their grief was/is being marketed to optimum success.

The short-sighted now make all decisions/That is to say the far-sighted are well

Skill has been destroyed quite skillfully/And the skillful are well

But this is nothing. Jaun Elia commits intellectual blasphemy in Yani.

Though Ghalib was utterly ignorant/But original he was among us many

One shouldn’t take offence here. There is some semblance of reverence underneath the crude exterior of blasphemy. It’s not that Yani is replete with bleak creations. The incorrigible romantic that Jaun was doesn’t lag behind the grief-nurturer that we know. He manages to produce the weirdest, yet convincing, of praises for his beloved that one can imagine in Urdu poetry.

Why do you look into the mirror?/You’re more beautiful than yourself

Who would say to his beloved that ‘you are more beautiful than yourself?’ What would that signify? Still, it appears to be the most powerful way to eulogize the ‘mehboob’. The nazms in Yani are explicitly personal, but equally articulate. There are also some pieces that tackle delicate issues of existence in an overly profound and exaggeratedly eloquent fashion. “Boodish” and “Wilayat-i-Khaiban” are two nazms that would need a man of T S Eliot’s learning to unravel their meaning. Having said that, a commoner should not refrain from delving into them.

Despite not being Jaun Elia’s true representative work, Yani is a masterpiece. That’s why it pains his admirers to know that the bulk of Jaun Elia’s unpublished ghazals and nazms (which would amount to at least half a dozen collections like Shaed and Yani) has been missing ever since he passed away. Whoever has kept it is an enemy to a genius — a genius who was neither a skeptic nor an agnostic, but a God-fearing perpetual sufferer.

The day I rendezvous with End/All decked up shall I be sent off n

English translation of verses: Murtaza Razvi

Yani

By Jaun Elia

Alhamd Publications, Rana Chambers, 2nd Floor, Lake Road, Lahore

Tel: 042-7310944, 7231490

200pp. Rs150

Jon Elia

noreply@blogger.com (Munir Saami) — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:27:00 +0000

December 1, 2002

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/books/archive/021201/books7.htm

By Zulqarnain Shahid
“This is the poetry of a person who was always a failure,” Jaun Elia, who died on November 7, wrote in the foreword to his poetic collection. “Why should I shy away from the fact that I wasted myself. In fact, it was my destiny to waste myself. A son, whose imaginative and idealist father had taught him no skills to lead a successful practical life, and had instead instructed him that knowledge is the finest honour bestowed upon a person, and books the dearest treasure, was bound to waste himself.”

In one of his couplets, Jaun, the innovative master says:

Scenes become heavy on the eye/ Stay often away from where you live

Jaun Elia was blessed with a most influential nexus of the traditional and the modern verse. His ghazals had the golden touch of that most sensitive short-meter master, Meer Taqi Meer, after whose sehl-i-mumtana Jaun fashioned his couplets.

How will life pass?/ When love has no appeal left

Meeting me so cordially/ Have you totally erased my memories?

Jaun looked at life from his own scholarly trajectory, but wished to converse with the common man. This incredible difference of elevation made him reach out with his particular vocabulary, to touch terra firma from his literary desk. He loved his people, he felt their innate sadness, but at the same time, he despised the levels of mediocrity to which the people had descended. Thus, the eternal romantic poet with a vision, and a grasp of historic realities, endeavoured to take along that layman in his literary pursuits. That produced something very fresh, tinged with the same bitterness that revolves excruciatingly in the heart of the afflicted mankind.

Strange has become the city of mystics of late/ Of majesty everyone is wary, you heard?

The youngest son of Allama Shafiq Elia, a respected scholar and writer, Jaun who had been named Jaun Asghar at birth, took his father’s pen name when he started his literary career. Of his brothers, Jaun himself tells us in the preface of his collection, Shayad: “Both my elder brothers (Raees Amrohvi and Syed Mohammad Taqi) were nationalist communists and wore khaddar clothes. If I had been mature at that time, I would also have been a nationalist communist.” Being a nihilist and an anarchist, he flouted the norms of the conformists in his poetry.

All the brothers from this distinguished family of Amroha carried the cultural essence, literary flourish and a distinctive imprint of a rich heritage. This is a very important feature of their contribution to Urdu language and literature, making their works a treasure trove for posterity. The departure of this last member of this family of brilliant litterateurs has left a vacuum in our cultural life.

In Pakistan, the major disciples of Meer were Nasir Kazmi, Ibn-e-Insha and Jaun Elia. Both Nasir and Jaun were gifted with their own distinctive styles, although they wrote the same school of verse. Nasir Kazmi, for most part, can be called a poet of the shehr aoshob (urban sensibilities), while Jaun Elia fully encompassed the existential essence of the universe. Nasir Kazmi’s tragic world had taught him to store all his pathos in the depths of his thoughts, putting them into poetic words with spontaneity, but with the delicacy of an artisan. Jaun Elia had the poetic license of being bitterly critical of his surroundings.

Nasir said:

Where will you go in this city of no lights?/ Night of separation, come home with me

Jaun exclaimed:

Recitals, at the palace of pleasure last night, Jaun/ Were all the treasures belonging to the poor

Jaun Elia, with his immense potential and fascinating capabilities, has a standing of his own. His poetry collection, Shayad, holds enough masterpieces to prove that. This will soon be further affirmed when his next collection, Ya’ni storms the market shortly. As for the test of time, his 60-year-long career is crowned with almost perpetual applause. Wherever he appeared in a mushaira, throughout the country, he literally dominated and startled the listeners with ghazal after ghazal.

In this context, it must be said that Jaun bhai, as he was lovingly known throughout the literary community, wrote brilliant poems, which reflected his ideological views. In the fame and hype built around his ghazals, it is quite unfortunate that his poems were neglected. A man with socialistic ideals, Jaun was forever hung between the two literary poles, like most of the literary people are prone to be. The existential underpinnings of his poetry slowly nudged him towards nihilism and anarchism, which is always noticeable in his poems like “Saza”, “Aziyyat kee yaddasht”, “Burj-i-Babul”, “Shehr Aashob”, “Jashn ka aaseib”, etc.

A very pertinent point revealed through his prose in the preface of his only collection is that Jaun was highly addicted to theatre in his teens. According to him, in 1943, when he was 12 years old, he wrote poetry and idolized Kahlil Jibran. There was a small drama club in Amroha, named Bazm-i-Haq, where stage plays based on Islamic history were presented regularly. Jaun also got involved in it, and would memorize the dialogues of some of the Islamic heroes who were portrayed.

He was so influenced by it that he tried to establish his own drama club, and even wrote and presented his play for it. Jaun wrote many strongly vocal, socialistic poems in those days, and admitted later that the dialogue and conversational element that had become his style in his poetry, was drawn from his involvement in drama. Those who saw him closely through life would know that his personality was attuned to theatre.

What people thought to be his antics were actually his love for timing and spontaneity, with even punchlines for the occasions, and above all, a most exciting conversation that mesmerized the people. In the mushairas, he would make a small introductory speech before reciting his poetry. This never failed to reinvigorate the listeners, even during the most boring of proceedings. To his credit, he never used this theatre in a negative pursuit, to undermine or bring down anybody.

But neither did he shower praises on the top men in office. His cheerful remarks made the mushaira a pleasure for the listeners. During one such function, when he started to recite his poetry, he felt he should take off his glasses. To fill that awkward moment, he said: “Ainak kee zuroorat naheen. Jamaliyat par claim khatam ho jata hai”

Despite all such evidence, he boldly declared: “Very respectfully, I’d comment that drama, in all its potential manifestations, is a secondary genre to poetry!”

And talking of his boldness and commitment, one can’t forget the most unfortunate incident during a mushaira, when some ruffians of a local ethnic party beat him up, for saying, “mushairay ke kuch adab hotay train. Kalam ke beech mein yeh kya hullarbazi hai?” (Mushairas have an etiquette. What is this raucousness in the midst of recitation). Everybody knows what a thin and weak man he was, and such physical violence could hurt him fatally. Those who were present during the incident, tell us that when he was rushed to the hospital, he was bleeding profusely.

Jaun was a man of principles and would not compromise on them. Even though he knew that his elder brother, Raees Amrohvi, to whom he was greatly devoted, was killed holding his fort, Jaun never faltered. He boldly voiced his dissent when he didn’t agree with the ways of society and its so-called guardians.

During the mushairas, he would address his colleagues, contemporaries and young poets to draw their attention to the couplet he was reciting. “Bhai Mohsin, yeh maqta dekho” or “Himayat bhai aap kee nazar hai” were his typical lines to liven up the proceedings. His style of reciting poetry became such a rage that many young poets tried to imitate him. One could detect a hint of theatre in that as the rhythm of his verses cast a spell on the audience.

At times this spell was broken when having had one too many he lost control and uttered abuses which he didn’t mean. Like some of his ilk, he was also ready to spark a controversy, but again, not without any substantive reason behind his claims. Due to his fondness for thought-provoking discourse, he was always surrounded by youngsters with whom he conversed like a friend. Only that we had such literary figures around so that the youth of this country would develop an interest in literature.