— Virgil (70 - 19BCE).

THE life of Shafiqur Rahman, who died 10 years ago, is an allegory of crowded hours of a glorious life fading into losses, aches, pangs of love and attendant throes.

He was a humourist par excellence. The outstanding quality of his humour was its simplicity without compromising on sagacity. He created characters that are earthy and lifelike, couched in a language that is familiar to a person of any caliber.

He was born into an upper middle class, educated and well-bred family. His father was a qualified engineer with a taste of poetry, and his mother was a well-educated lady. According to Shafiq's own account, he acquired his passion for reading from his mother. He adored his two brothers and one sister, it was a love which endured for the rest of his life. In short, his was a happy, well-adjusted family.

He distinguished himself as a student, and after passing his FSc (medical) examination from Government College, Rohtak, secured enough marks to gain admission in the prestigious King Edward Medical College, Lahore. In the inspiring environment of Lahore he blossomed not only as a student, but also as a stage actor. His prodigious reading habits, acquired from early childhood, goaded him to start writing. This is the period when he wrote his first story titled Chocolate.

In the early 1940s Lahore was the centre of the Indian literary scene. With the publication of another short story entitled Fast Bowler, he became quite well-known and was welcomed into the literary circles. He had the benefit of being in the company of literary giants such as Faiz, Krishan Chandr, Manto, Bedi and Sahir et al, which fine-tuned his talent for writing.

The heroes in most of his stories are tall, handsome, athletic, a tad narcissist and bright, excelling in both studies and sports; the protagonist in Fast Bowler, was indeed Shafiq himself.

The year 1942 was a land mark in his life. He qualified his MBBS examination and the first collection of his short stories, Kirnain, was published that year. He was 22 years of age and rightly considered a blessed person to have excelled in two distinctly diverse fields — medicine and literature.

He soon joined the army as a lieutenant. The British-Indian army was embroiled in the Second World War at the time and the young lieutenant was sent on assignments abroad. He travelled to Burma, New Zealand, Australia and various countries in Africa on tours of duty. At the time of independence he opted for the Pakistan Army.

In 1950 he was sent to England for higher studies. On completing course, he travelled all over Europe and later recounted his experiences in an excellent travelogue, Barsati (Rain Coat), which to this day serves as a model for travelogue writers.

He had an ambivalent attitude towards marriage. Marriage to him symbolised a shift from profusion to singularity. This attitude is reflected in one of the parodies he wrote entitled Tuzk-i-Nadri Urf Seyhat-i-Hind.

The nearest thing to death in life is the death of one's child. It was only after the suicide of two of his sons that awakened Shafiqur Rahman from the dream of life. He loved his sons intensely, treated them as friends and actively assisted them in their education and cultivation. Thus no one could explain what diabolical force drove the two of them to commit suicide.

A devastated man cannot possibly possess an inclination to write humour, and so the humourist in him died along with his sons.

His agony is reflected in the letters he wrote to Dr Safia Bano between April 1981 and April 1991. The letters were published in the literary journal, the Mukalma. Each succeeding letter depicts growing anguish, depression and fatalism in him. In the letter written soon after his brother Khaliqur Rahman's death, Shafiq describes him as a supplicant saint.

On his first death anniversary Shafiq expresses that contrary to common belief there was no lessening of the grief.

Then, in 1987 his young niece Nusrat died. She and Khalique were the two young persons in the family who would always be cheerful.

Both were gone, he noted with a deep-seated sadness. At the same time his wife started suffering from asthma and heart palpitations. He ascribed these symptoms to their grief. Soon after she came down with polycythaemia, a rare disease in which blood multiplies and has to be periodically extracted from the patient's body. Then, his kid brother Atiqur Rahman died of a heart attack.

Today the only survivor in the family is his eldest son, Attique. Yet his tragedy is that his two sons and two daughters are not together because he and his wife are divorced.

In his letters Shafiqur Rahman repeatedly wrote of the personal nature of grief. 'Every one has to carry his cross', he remarked. The words of solace or prayers failed to alleviate his suffering 'in the noise of cascading pain.'

The circumstances of human life are such that we are all heir to varying degrees and periods of grief. But far more calamitous is the fall from the heights of glory to the abyss of melancholy. This is what happened to Shafiqur Rahman.

How soon the film of death
obscured that eye
Whence Genius wildly flashed...

— John Keats