KARACHI, March 3: Harf-i-Mazahemat, a collection of quatrains by elderly poet Mohammad Azeem Aaqil Barelvi, was launched on Wednesday.

Chief of the Muttaheda Qaumi Movement Altaf Hussain in his telephonic address from London paid lavish tributes to the poet, saying "truth shall never die."

Editor of daily Amn Ajmal Dehlavi presided over the function as his paper had published those Qataat from June 1992 till recent time on a daily basis, "recording the oppression launched against the mohajirs" in Karachi and elsewhere.

With the coordination committee of the MQM as the host, among others who addressed the assembly included prominent poets Mohsin Bhopali, Manzer Ayubi, Khawja Rafiq Anjum, and Gulnaar Afreen. Aasim Siddiqui did the compering.

The poet Aaqil Barelvi also briefly addressed the congregation attended by city poets and writers. Aaqil Barelvi was born in Bareli in 1930, migrated to Kotri in 1950, again came over to Karachi in 1979 and was employed with the daily Amn.

Hadis-i-Shauq (ghazals) Afkar-i-Pareshan, Naqoosh-i-Zindagi are some of his poetry collections published over the years. He started writing qataat, for the paper soon after the death of its first editor, the late Afzal Siddiqui. Aaqil Barelvi undertook the assignment.

He was inspired by teachings of his chief Altaf Hussain and aggrieved to see the Mohajir youth being killed, as the extra-judicial killings and ruthless army action were going on unabated.

At the outset, ex-Senator Nasreen Jalil in her brief discourse recounted the services of the Muthaheda in the task of social welfare, collection of donation for Tsunami victims and distribution of cash and kind to the afflicted population in Northern areas.

Khawja Rafiq Anjum, in his paper, briefly surveyed the history of Urdu poetry from Mir, Mir Dard, Ghalib, Daagh and others only to prove that literature always reflected the pain and sufferings of people and that Aqil Barelvi did the same by depicting the conditions of the traumatised Mohahir population of the Urban Sindh, including Karachi.

His resistance poetry, as the title of the book tells us, was the fine piece of literature, spontaneous and appealing and the truthful history of his time, a service no other poet, with rare exception, did.

Where were the "great poets" at that time when brutality was unleashed in Karachi and the streets were red with the blood of the Mohajir youth, Altaf Hussain questioned? In his speech, the main theme being 'Truth never dies', he contended that civilizations may die but the truth never dies.

Quoting the examples of the great thinker Socrates and Jesus Christ and the greatest of all a martyrs Hazrat Imam Hussain, he said truth in loud and clear words were at all times alive.

Altaf Hussain had all admiration and regards for Aaqil Barelvi, the ailing and elderly poet for whom he directed the Rabita Committee to provide Rs 200,000 cash immediately. He also awarded Rashid Jamal who compiled the book and got it published.