I HAVE now been left with no choice but to write an anti-obituary on this occasion of a fake death in our literary world. The obituary has already been written by Dr Afzal Mirza, who paid glowing tributes to Asrar Zaidi, praying for a soul which was supposed to have departed. An obituary written prematurely is perhaps more genuine than those formally written after one’s death. Believe me, I was moved to tears while reading this obituary, where Afzal Mirza was seen bewailing “a rich voice gone silent”. Under the stress of emotions, I even forgot that during the week gone by I had seen Zaidi walking in and out of the Tea House in defiance of all rumours of his death. Such is the magic of words.
It all started with a fateful phone call by Dr Agha Suhail to Ashfaqu Naqvi. He regretted the insensitivity of the Pakistani press, which had chosen to ignore the sad demise of Asrar Zaidi. And lo!, the Pakistani press readily responded by splashing the news and the obituaries. As Dr Agha Suhail is a responsible man, I believed him via Ashfaqu Naqvi and reached the Tea House on Sunday evening, expecting a condolence meeting in the Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq. But as I stepped in, I saw Asrar Zaidi sitting in his favourite corner, with a cup of tea before him.
I was stupefied for a moment. I was reminded of a scene from Macbeth. He had been duly informed about the death of his general. But the same evening as he entered the banquet hall, he was stunned to see the said general at the dinner table. It was not the real man. It was his ghost. But I found to my pleasant surprise that the man sitting there was not a ghost, but Zaidi himself. I sighed with relief. I was saved from going to the Halqa and was free to join friends for a cup of tea, who, oblivious to the supposed death, were hotly discussing the possibility or the impossibility of an atomic war between India and Pakistan.
Asrar Zaidi need not worry about the fake news of his death. It may well be taken as a good omen for his health, ensuring him a new lease of life as it had proved to be in the case of Muneer Niazi.
About five or six years ago, men sitting in All India Radio, Delhi, while listening to Radio Pakistan heard the news of the death of an artist named Muneer from the NWFP. They confused the deceased Munir, the artist, with Muneer Niazi, and the Radio’s Urdu Service made haste to broadcast a condolence programme in memory of Muneer Niazi. A number of distinguished writers living in Delhi participated in the programme. One writer was heard sobbing while paying tributes to the ‘deceased’ poet. After a few weeks, I received the newly published issue of Jamia carrying an obituary of Muneer Niazi, written by Shamim Hanafi. It was no less poignant than the one written now by Afzal Mirza.
On my visit to Delhi, I asked Shamim if he or any gentleman from All India Radio had cared for a confirmation of the news. “Yes, we had,” he said and added, “Ahmad Hamaish had reached here the same evening by a PIA flight coming from Lahore. We wanted a confirmation of this news from him. He in response began weeping. We took his tears as the confirmation we needed.”
However, the condolence programme and the obituary did no harm to Muneer. It rather helped him in knowing about his popularity in the literary circles of India. In addition, it appeared to give him a new lease of life. So, we still find him hale and hearty amidst us.
Professor Agha Suhail proved to be a source as reliable as Hamaish turned out to be. As for me, my sorrow was two-fold. I was sorry at the so-called death of Zaidi and had the same amount of sympathy for Zahid Dar. But how, one may ask, Zahid Dar is related to this episode of fake death. Seemingly not in any way.
The two souls, though sitting under the same roof, are poles apart. Each appears confined within his own corner, seemingly reserved for him with no traffic between the two. If at all there is any relation between them, it is that of apathy of one towards the other. But, fortunately or unfortunately, it has been so ordained that they are constrained to sit under the same roof and are fated to pull on willy-nilly what is left of a tradition they are remnants of. They are the common products of a fast vanishing intellectual tradition which, for decades, had flourished in the restaurants and coffee-houses. The intellectualized restaurant culture has been overtaken by the newly-emerged McDonald’s culture. The two souls sitting in the Tea House, each sticking to his own corner, have been left far behind by the changing times.
So these two souls, apathetic to each other, are locked in a ‘No Exit’ situation. Each one draws, wittingly or unwittingly, sustenance from the other. But the Tea House itself, where they sit at a respectable distance from each other, has turned rudderless. The three are delicately placed in relation to each other. Their motto seems to be what Mir Dard defined:
I HAVE now been left with no choice but to write an anti-obituary on this occasion of a fake death in our literary world. The obituary has already been written by Dr Afzal Mirza, who paid glowing tributes to Asrar Zaidi, praying for a soul which was supposed to have departed. An obituary written prematurely is perhaps more genuine than those formally written after one’s death. Believe me, I was moved to tears while reading this obituary, where Afzal Mirza was seen bewailing “a rich voice gone silent”. Under the stress of emotions, I even forgot that during the week gone by I had seen Zaidi walking in and out of the Tea House in defiance of all rumours of his death. Such is the magic of words.
