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| May 10, 2003 | Saturday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 7, 1424 |
A pleasant ‘literary evening’
ISLAMABAD, May 9: Poet Ahmad Faraz may give you, to use the cliche, “food for thought” through his revolutionary and romantic verses. However, on Thursday night he decided to give some of his fellow writers real good food instead. He invited them to a quiet, non-poetic evening at the hub of serving and retired bureaucracy (and, of course, a number of others (including the newly celebrated graduate politicians), the rendezvous of the Islamabad’s relatively well-placed intellectual and the scholar, that goes by the name of the Islamabad Club.
The occasion was the presence of writer from Karachi Mushfiq Khawja in Islamabad, whom Masud Mufti insisted on calling a “muhaqiq”, the researcher. Every one may not be aware of Khawja’s researches but if one has seen the recent collection of Yagana Changezi Kulliyaat-i-Yagana Changezi compiled by the gentleman, one would know the kind of research that must have gone into the preparation of this magnum opus, which, in its 959 pages, carries almost every thing that the poet wrote. There was no poetry from Ahmad Faraz — also the Managing Director of the National Book Foundation — that evening, but there was a lot of debate and discussion on everything under the sun. Senior, and some junior writers, that formed the exclusive crowd at a relatively newly-built and renovated quiet corner of the Club exchanged not merely the literary and the not so apparently literary jokes. They also discussed a lot of mundane matters that seem to be developing around some writers who took the city by storm not merely by the their pen but also their power (of money) and pelf, and account of some of the legal cases thrown in arising of out of their association with some bigwigs. There was mention of some literary magazines from Islamabad.
Dr Javed Iqbal’s autobiography attracted a lot of attention. There were all kinds of comments, good and bad; some of them may better be left unreported lest habitual mischief-mongers have their cake and eat it too. Allama has an aura around, based on his great poetry and other great writings, which no one can steal from you.
And then, of course, there was the hot-favourite topic everywhere these days: of the new “thaw” in Pakistan-India relations. (By the way how many such thaws we have been having in relations between these two “great neighbours” during the last fifty six years! remarked some one). And every one was trying to base his judgment on his “historical” sense of the sub-continent. Some one talked of the BJP culture. Some in earnestness and some in jest thought of the differences that were difficult to bridge quickly. Some talked of the Indian intransigence on some issues. Others saw a silver lining on the horizon.
One could see poets Zia Jallundhary, Kishwer Naheed, Muqtadara Chairman Prof Fateh Mohammad Malik, columnist and poet Zahurul Haq, poet and critic Prof Aftab Iqbal Shamim, poet Ziauddin, Begum Sarfraz Iqbal of Majlis-i-Faiz short-story writer Nilofer and some others.
The evening appeared pleasant not only because it belonged to a pleasant night of May in Islamabad, but with so many writers, critics and researchers around “great” theories of literature and philology, that are normally quoted ad nauseam to prove one’s literary philosophy, were somehow not there in plenty to make everything, however big, appear small.—Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad
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