IT is not unusual to find a son writing about his father. Mothers have been a favourite subject for character-sketches with our writers. A number of sons have written with a warmth of feeling about their mothers. And so we have in Urdu a gallery of lively portraits on a variety of mothers.
Our fathers have been far less fortunate in this respect. Their sons seem to have developed certain reservations about them. While writing about them, they were content to pay compliments to them. In general, they have been reticent in portraying them as living human beings.
Why is it so? Perhaps it is because of the dominating personality, a father in general, likes to be. In consequence, the son finds himself at a respectable distance from him. Hence the warmth of feeling we find in the mother-son relationship is seldom discernible in the father-son relationship. So, K.K. Aziz is very right in saying that it is very difficult for a son to write about his father. And yet here is a son, who with full consciousness of the difficulty of the job has chosen to write about his father.
K.K. Aziz is known to us as a historian. But with his book Woh Hawadis Ashna, his first in Urdu, he has come out as a son. And with this he has stepped in a field which is very different from that of a historian. Here, he talks of human relations, with which he is little concerned as a historian. A historian has to be objective in his treatment of events as well as human beings. Human beings mean to him like people contributing to a historical process. Human relations, too, mean to him, if they mean anything at all, to the extent they contribute to this process. But writing as a son, K.K. Aziz need not be objective in his treatment of men and matters. He can well afford to be sentimental in relation to his father and can have the luxury of dabbling in all kinds of emotions — sadness, sorrow, anger, vengeance — in accordance with the dictates of a situation. His illustrious father, Sheikh Abdul Aziz was, as depicted here, a kind-hearted and soft-spoken soul. He felt unhappy at the wrongs done to him, but never retaliated. However, the son is seen here in a different light. He is all praise for those respected personalities who had friendly relations with his father. He is respectful to them. But those, who had done anything wrong to his father are not allowed to go scot-free.
The son seems bent upon settling scores with all of them. Dr Baqar appears to be the most villainous among these wrongdoers. So he must expose them. And K.K. Aziz does it with vengeance. But let us first talk a little about Shaikh Abdul Aziz, a true scholar, a gentle soul and a motherly father. While in London, Sir Adul Qadir and Allama Iqbal stayed with him in his rented house. These three young men, or to be more precise, young Sheikhs from Punjab, had gone there for further studies. Sheikh Aziz belonged to a rich family and could afford an expensive lifestyle. The three young Sheikhs became friends. In later years, he developed friendly relations with Mahmood Shirani, Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Sir Sultan Ahmad and the Bilgrami brothers. Syed Amir Ali and Thomas Arnold were his mentors. His mental growth, as pointed out by K.K. Aziz, owes much to this learned company.
So when he returned to Lahore, he was not just a barrister. He had grown into a devoted scholar with chief interest in history, fine arts and the French and German languages.
In the field of history, Sheikh Aziz had specialized in the Mughal period. He wrote seven books on its various aspects. His eighth book was a research work on a subject very different from Mughal history. It all began with him listening to Warris Shah’s Heer recited by a dervish. He was so moved by it that setting aside his studies in German, French and Persian poetry, he preoccupied himself with Heer. He took upon himself to discover an authentic text of the legend. It consumed thirty precious years of his life. But, alas, during these years, fate played tricks on him. He was now an old man with no means of livelihood.
For the publication of his researched text, he contacted a number of publishers. None of them agreed to oblige him. Willy-nilly, he found himself at the mercy of Dr Baqar and his Punjabi Academy. The treatment meted out to a research work which had consumed thirty years of a scholar’s life is a sad tale told by K.K. Aziz. He is in an angry mood and has serious doubts about Dr Baqar’s intentions. He bewails the insensitivity of the government-aided academic bodies, private publishers and society as a whole, that has no respect for its scholars and his oblivious of the importance of art and literature.
But this book, which has been published by Al-Faisal, Urdu Bazar, Lahore, is not an account by a scholar alone. Here is also a portrait of a father, who is very different from the traditional fathers known for their domineering behaviour. The son, after the death of his mother, discovered an alternate mother in him. Perhaps his excessive sentimentality in relation to the father was born of this feeling.
IT is not unusual to find a son writing about his father. Mothers have been a favourite subject for character-sketches with our writers. A number of sons have written with a warmth of feeling about their mothers. And so we have in Urdu a gallery of lively portraits on a variety of mothers.
