February 16, 2003

AMIDST the Basant festivities, I feel sad to rememberer those of my friends and contemporaries who have lately passed away in quick succession. In fact, prior to the Basant season, we had a season of sorrow caused by the deaths of Aali Rizvi, Riaz Batalvi and Tauseef Ahmad Khan, who had made a mark for themselves in the field of journalism. These deaths were preceded by the sad demise of the distinguished poet Jon Eliya. In the meantime, news came to us from across the border that the leading short story writer of Urdu, Suraindar Prakash, who lived in Bombay, had passed away. And in the past two weeks, I was fated to read a number of obituaries and to participate in two condolence meetings, one for Riaz Batalvi and the other for Jon Eliya.

I carry with me the sweet memories of those days of the Daily Mashriq when Aali Rizvi, Tauseef and Riaz were working together under the same roof.

Tauseef’s case appeared to me a bit interesting. Belonging to a family of writers, he chose to distinguish himself in the field of journalism. The field of fiction had already been monopolized by his three sisters — Aisha Jamal, Khadija Mastoor and Hajra Masroor. And he found his younger brother, Khalid Ahmad, making a mark in poetry. So, leaving literature to his sisters and brother, he tried his luck in journalism and succeeded.

Riaz Batalvi deserved all the compliments paid to him at the condolence meeting. He had distinguished himself as a feature writer. What distinguished his features was his novel way of investigating the real facts of the case under study. He had excelled in the art of disguise, that helped him in his investigation.

To cite an example, for investigating what actually happens in the Railways department, he disguised himself as a coolie and in this capacity worked for about a week at the Lahore Railway Station. Or just to know the conditions in hospitals, he pretended to be a patient and got admission to a hospital. This was how he investigated the conditions of government departments and brought to light the corruption in an authentic way.

While dealing with social problems, his investigations in different cases brought out facts, which read like fiction. The revelations were sensational, but he did his job in a purposeful way, which often led to the removal of the cobwebs of misunderstanding. In a number of cases, his features helped in the reunion of the estranged members of a broken family.

In fact, in such situations, he was not content to just write a feature. He went a step further and played the role of a mediator. And thus, we saw a feature writer gradually turning into a social worker. Mashriq did not fail to recognize the significance of this kind of work. Soon, a section for social work was established under Batalvi. And we saw here the emergence of a kind of journalism that envisaged a combination of social reporting and social work.

But with the closure of the Mashriq, this work came to an end. Riaz Batalvi no longer enjoyed the facility to pursue this kind of journalism so dear to him. However, the passion for social work persisted with him. It now found expression in his devotion to the cause of patients. He found the Ganga Ram Hospital more co-operative in this respect, and so was more attentive to the needs of its patients. His services to the patients here included a routine on his part to bring flowers to them every morning. He was particular about heart patients.

On that fateful morning, too, he was on his way to a hospital to present flowers to the patients when he had a sudden heart attack. He breathed his last at the hospital gate. The flowers remained undelivered.

And now, a few words about the man who was an extension of his poetry. Here, we can hardly differentiate between the man and the poet. Jon Eliya was a phenomenon, where the man, the poet and the intellectual were fused into one. This fusion, or to be more exact, confusion, did not allow him to lead a normal life. And he was painfully conscious of this situation. This feeling compelled him to say that his was a life gone waste. And he held his father responsible, for it was he who, being an idealist, urged him to believe that knowledge was superior to everything else in the world. This belief, that he inherited from his father was, according to him, the root cause of his failure in life.

But the failed man achieved success in the realm of poetry. He wrote poetry and he lived poetry. And this is what few poets in our time have been able to achieve.

Jon Eliya lived poetry and lived for poetry. But there was one more domain that equally charmed him — philosophy. His love for knowledge led him to develop a craze for philosophy that provided a philosophical depth to his poetic expression.

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