Fifth poetry collection of Mazhar Tirmazi, whose poem ‘Umran Langhian Pubban Bhar’ has become a Punjabi classic, has been published recently.

The book, titled ‘ Adh’ (Half), contains 182 poems, including unpublished ones, besides those from his earlier books.

Tirmazi moved to England in 1975 where he remained involved in writing, journalism and translation. He also worked as an editor of a bilingual weekly, Akhbar-i-Watan.

Now he moves between England and Lahore and so does his poetry as seen through his poems that he wrote in England, describing his experiences.

The poems have many a recurrent theme and metaphor of dreams, night, roads, travel and traveler and disillusionment.

“Night breaks the torture of the whole day, disconnects man from the world and its noise and connects him with himself. Its mystery haunts me. Roads are everywhere they are never-ending, it’s a whole journey. There are many subjective reasons for using such metaphors,” Tirmazi says.

His famous poem first sung by Asad Amanat Ali Khan in the late 1970s is making rounds in Coke Studio Season 8. Talking about the poem, titled ‘Song’ that is also included in Adh, he says, “the metaphor of ‘Pabban Bhar’ (on the tiptoes) has painful connotations and it’s the best metaphor that I could find for mystery of time. It has pain and nothingness like something that passed without any significance. It also refers to the time that has passed stealthily”.

Before coming to Lahore in the early 1970s, Tirmazi lived in Sahiwal until he completed his graduation and he has fond memories of those days and friends, including Manzoor Ejaz, Sajjad Mir, Saadat Saeed and above all Majeed Amjad.

“I was close to Majeed Amjad. When I went to the Sahiwal college in 1968-69, he used to have sittings near the stadium. I would leave hostel and go for a walk in the college ground which he frequented. I used to borrow magazines and books from him. I still have one of his books, Camus’ The Stranger, that he had given me to read,” Tirmazi recollects.

“I started writing Urdu poetry initially, the first Mushaira of my life was an Urdu Mushaira where my ghazal was very much liked by Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi,” he reveals, adding that Najm Hosain Syed used to come to the Punjab University New Campus where Mushtaq Soofi, Raja Anwar and he (Tirmazi) used to meet.

“Najm urged me to write Punjabi poetry. I wrote a poem which he took liking to and after that I wrote only Punjabi poems.”

“Majeed Amjad touches my heart most and his way of looking at the world and universe haunts me. Except him, no other poet in any language impressed me though sometimes one gets a good piece of poetry here and there,” says Tirmazi.

He thinks language of poetry should be easy and understandable because it’s a means of communication. There is always a distinction between the spoken and written language but it’s not that big. You can’t create a language you can just add flavour to it.

“I want common man to understand my language (in poetry), besides a scholar. I ask those who use heavy words and ornate diction whether people don’t understand Waris Shah, Bulleh Shah and Shah Hussain even in our times.”

Tirmazi says some Punjabi writers claim to be purifying the language and laying its foundations, saying the foundations were already laid by the masters like Bulleh Shah, Shah Hussain and Mian Muhammad Bakhsh. He says some people mistake something they can’t understand for a classic. To him a classic is refined and gets its status with the passage of time.

Trimazi thinks Punjabis themselves have damaged their language by considering the Punjabi as a language of the illiterate. “I have no bias against any language, I like Urdu, English and Hindi but I don’t like when a Punjabi talks to me in any other language.”

He says Punjabis in the East Punjab have also damaged their language by mixing so much Hindi and Sanskrit in it that it’s hard to understand now.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2015

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