KARACHI: Poet Mustafa Zaidi died in October 1970. A man of calibre and highly talented poet that Zaidi was to some persons, he still remains unwept and unsung. However, he was remembered by some of his longtime friends who were close to him during his tenure as a civil officer also popular with mushaira audience.

It was like a page torn from the Arabian Nights; the speakers in the dimly lit hall of the cool Sindh club rising one after the other recalling their association with the poet back in the 1950s and 60s, and presenting Zaidi’s verses and ghazals to the calm and dignified audience with utmost admiration. Hussain Haroon compered the proceedings.

Zaidi died young, so was Shelley and some others, said Abu Shamim Arif who was chairing the proceedings and had many things to say about the person whom he had seen from close quarters.

The main paper came from Yusuf Jamal, a former civil servant, or ‘serpent’ as he described himself. He provided a reason for recalling Zaidi at the present time. Quoting lavishly from Zaidi’s verses, particularly ‘Mosafir’ and ‘karbala’, he said the young poet was as relevant today as forty years back.

“Look at the war-torn karbala, drought, Basaera going without water with malaise and poverty everywhere.

Paying tributes to the great Imam, Zaidi at the conclusion had asked;

‘Karbala terey yeh gham khaas kahon tak pohoonchey’.

Zaidi had a great sense of history, his many verses are futuristic in nature with such powerful images of the coming era as ‘doop ka harf-i-janoon, lu ka waseet nama’.

He lamented that the cause of Zaidi’s death remained even to this day shrouded in mystery.

“Remember, Stalwarts like Josh, Firaq and Faiz had paid glowing tributes to their young contemporary, but he was not acknowledged the way he should have been by the critics, there is not even one doctoral thesis on him,” he said.

He remembered other young geniuses who died young— Akhtar Shirani, Manto, Majaz— as if consumed by their burning passion.

At the beginning Wajid Jawad recited Zaidi’s verses and ghazals— including the five written for ‘Shahnaz, the lady he loved.

The selection was admirable and represented the poet well. With his enviable memory, former Mehdi Masood, former diplomat also presented Zaidi’s verses.

Rest of the proceedings were revelation to many of us. Abu Shamim Arif introduced the young officer as a daring and venturesome person who was trained in aviation, got pilot’s a commercial licence and used helicopters in official visits to various districts. Once he had to do a crash landing in Sialkot. He was also a reckless driver.

Zia Shafi Khan, a loving friend of Zaidi since the later’s student days and very close to him in the last fateful years of his life, disclosed the circumstance which led to his fall from grace in the ruling hierarchy.

He was popular, ‘unfit’ for the civil service, lacking in the art of sycophancy and intrigues. He once annoyed a powerful senior with a derogatory couplet taunting him for total sellout of the sanctity of pen. His radicalism was too much.

In a poem about Vietnam, he found there ‘payambron ki chamakt hur jabeenain hain’. That was enough to earn the ire of the rulers, so first came suspension from service and later came dismissal.

Mr Khan disclosed that Zaidi had received offers of job, one from Canada for teaching and the other from Luftahansa Airlines. But somehow he was without a passport. So was the sad end of a courageous genius.—Hasan Abidi