KARACHI: Lying on a bed in the courtyard of her home on a starry night, young Shahida Hasan looked at the constellations adorning the sky and wondered how big the universe was. She had learnt at school that some of the stars and planets were many, many times bigger than our lowly earth. But comparing her small house with the earth, she prayed that she see the world extensively enough. Her prayer was answered. Now, name any country worth seeing and she has seen it.

When I visited her Gulistan-i-Jauhar apartment on Tuesday afternoon, she had just arrived from the Gulshan-i-Iqbal government degree college where she is the head of the English department. She was upset because of clashes that took place there earlier in the day. The disturbance was not something new for her, but every time it happens, it distresses her.

Agitated, she says the students of today have lost respect for teachers. They have become growingly insolent, intolerant and violent. “It is not a matter of political awareness. We as students also had a lot of such awareness. We also had disputes. But we accommodated one another’s points of view,” she says, adding that “When I saw the classroom empty, tears welled up in my eyes. I was there to teach but no student was in the classroom to be taught.”

She, however, soon rallies to defend the students’ behaviour. “When feelings in a society are suppressed indefinitely, such behaviour is its natural consequence.” She apportions the blame of unpleasant situations in colleges and universities to teachers also. “A majority of teachers are no longer interested in teaching in government institutions, thanks to the commercialization of education. Neither students nor teachers attach due importance to attending classes because of the scourge of tuitions.”

She also laments the lack of co-curricular activities on campuses. “In some institutions, teachers as individuals do encourage their students in healthy activities. In most city colleges, however, there is no such activity at all. In our times we had a lot to do besides studying. Students need means to channel their energies. When they have no outlet, their sentiments go haywire.”

It is not only the local conditions that disturb her. She is perturbed over the crises gripping the whole Muslim world, including Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. Her latter day poetry is replete with sentimental comments on the current issues.

With two poetry collections already published and a third one almost ready for publication, Shahida’s verses are highly popular among lovers of Urdu poetry. Several renowned critics, including Dr Jamil Jalibi and Shamsurrehman Farooqui, have praised her poetic genius and style.

Although she is very selective about mushairas, attendance increases if her name is among the invited poets. “I think poetry is a serious matter. What you read at the mushairas is only aimed at thrilling the audience. If you recite something meaningful, the audience rarely appreciates it.

The decade of ‘70s >

The poetess says the decade of the 1970s was highly productive. It saw many budding poets earn prominence. They included Ayub Khawar, Tajdar Adil, Parveen Shakir and Saleem Kausar. She, however, appreciates some young writers saying they are contributing considerably to modern Urdu poetry.

She says her first verses began appearing in newspapers when she was in university. But even when she had not started composing poetry, she knew she could do it. “I have a very compassionate heart. I believe everybody has some characteristics in their genes; with the passage of time they are attracted to it. I was never attracted to things that were meaningless, ugly, dirty and rubbish.”

Parveen Shakir was a cousin, senior by two to three years. They both played in the same courtyard. They both took part in events together and won trophies at various colleges. They both did their Master’s in English at the Karachi University, two years apart, of course. They both, in their separate times, taught at the Abdullah Girls College. “We attended literary functions together. If she presented a ghazal at a poetry recital, I presented a poem and both were appreciated by the receptive audience and our seniors.”

When Parveen died in a road accident in Islamabad, she was shocked beyond measure. Her grief poured out in the form of a moving poem in memory of her beloved cousin and was printed by Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi in his literary magazine Funoon.

Family life

She is married to an airline officer, Syed Ali Hasnain Jafri. How obedient he is may be realized from the fact that he agreed to the choice of his elder sister, who happened to be teaching in the college where Shahida was also a lecturer. “I saw her only after marriage,” says Mr Jafri, basking in the glow of marital bliss.

The family receives periodical passes for foreign tours. Besides, she visits places to attend mushairas and other events. When she asked her husband if he had brought her ticket, he pulled out an envelop from his back pocket and placed it on the table. So in a few days, she is about to fly to Bahrain where she is invited to attend a mushaira.

Two of their sons have completed their education and settled down abroad and the youngest is an IBA student. The couple have no plan to swap Karachi for any other city in the world. “Whenever I am abroad, I feel as if I am living in another house.” That all mothers love their children is a universal phenomenon. But she is unlike most mothers. She can advertise her love for her children. Dedicating her second poetry collection Yahan kutch phool rakhay hain to her three sons, she says:

Apnay dada par he giya hay mera beta bhee

Pehlay such kehta hai phir iss par dutt jata hay

She has also written a biography of renowned poetess Ada Jafri – Shakhsiat aur fun – published by the Academy of Letters Pakistan.

She has won several national and international accolades. These include the Faani Badayuni Urdu Award in New Delhi and the Nishan-i-Aizaaz for poetry by the Women Writers Forum, Columbus City, USA. In 1999 she was invited by the Montclair State University to present her Urdu poetry with poets from Japan, England, Nepal and Bangladesh. She was also given the Honorary Citizenship and Goodwill Ambassador Awards by the mayor of Houston, Texas.

She has visited Denmark, Norway, the US, Canada, China, the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Iran, India and Nepal. Her longest stay was in the US, where she spent two-and-a-half years at a stretch. However, wherever she goes, she feels the pull of “Karachi, sweet Karachi,” with all its associated problems and fears.

Shahida Hasan insists she is not a feminist and believes in mutual respect between men and women. “As my father was a man, my husband and sons are men, how can I consider someone hostile on the basis of gender alone?” she says.

But she does write for women’s causes abundantly. One of her poems in translation goes like this: A fiction character I am no more/neither a queen of beauty/nor a pretty goddess on the throne/neither Naheed nor Shireen/nor Laila nor Ishtar/a new woman I am.