TEA House in Lahore, which till recently had been the haunt of writers, now gives the look of a deserted place. No group of writers will be seen here engaged in a heated discussion on any topic, literary or non-literary, any longer. Dialogue over a cup of tea has come to a stop. The whole literary crowd appears to have migrated. The remnants are two poets, who perhaps out of their love or their sense of loyalty to the place, did not accompany the migrating crowd. They chose to be left behind. With the punctuality peculiar with them, these two lonely souls stick to their old schedule of arrival and departure. Each evening, they are seen entering the place at the appointed time and each to his own table, at a respectable distance from the other. This respectable distance speaks of the mental distance between them.
Out of the two, one is Zahid Dar, who in the late 1950s had staged his entry in the Tea House as a poet writing modern verse. He has to his credit two collections of poems. But that is an old story. He is no longer a practising poet. He stopped writing verse with a purpose in view. “Why waste time,” he argued to himself, “by writing mediocre verse when so much poetry of high order is already there waiting to be read.” So it was better to read than to write.
With this line of argument, he convinced himself in favour of not writing verse. He is now content to be purely a reader. So now he is seen here at his table with a cup of tea before him and a book in his hand.
The other soul is Asrar Zaidi, who is seen here daily in the evening during fixed hours, sitting in his own corner on a table seemingly reserved for him. His personality seems to have in it something in addition to his old age, which attracts younger people demanding a certain kind of devotion from them. Even now when the Tea House is a desolate place, he is seldom alone for long hours. His brooding mood must attract a few visitors, who gather gradually around him with a sense of awe and respect for him.
He is a poet and the admiration of his fans has helped him to have full confidence in his talent. He has lately brought out his collection of ghazals and poems under the title, Wohi Tizgi Wohi Roshni.
Asrar Zaidi is primarily a ghazal writer. But the collection also includes a number of poems. This section of the book is dominated by verses which speak of the religious sensibility of the poet.
A tea-houser was seen asserting that the Tea House was itself a school of thought dominated by poetry, and that now Asrar Zaidi deserved to be acknowledged as the representative of this school. If so, mark the difference, which has come about with the passage of time. In decades gone by, the Tea House had earned the reputation of being a cradle of modern verse.
The modernists from the Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq were the first to make their appearance in this restaurant. Under the influence of Miraji, they wrote modern verse and chose the Tea House as their meeting place. It was because of them that this small restaurant gradually turned into a haunt for writers in general. After a decade or so, a new generation of verse writers staged their entry there. They were in a rebellious mood. They rejected the modern verse of the Halqa modernists and asserted that what they were writing was in fact genuine modern poetry. At least within the four walls of the Tea House this revolt made an impact. A number of youngsters were under the sway of their jargon trying to write verse in accordance with their dictates.
Mubarik Ahmad stood for the cause of prose poetry. It was in the Tea House that he founded the Poetry Forum with the sole purpose of propagating this newly introduced poetic form. Prose poetry was an article of faith with him and he fought for it with the zeal of a missionary. Mubarik Ahmad was the last musketeer in the Tea House fighting for the cause of modern poetry. With his death, this chapter was closed resulting in the reassertion of traditional verse in the Tea House. So what we have been left with in the name of poetry in a desolate Tea House is Asrar Ahmad.
Of course, credit goes to him for standing firm against the onslaught of modern verse during all these years. He refused to be swayed by any of the waves of modernism gurgling around him in this sanctuary of poetry. He stuck to the form of ghazal, choosing for himself the brand manufactured by the progressives poets. The progressives made amendments in the ghazal in accordance of their ideology. It was now expressive of Kuch Gham-i-Janan, Kuch Gham-i-Dauran. Asrar Zaidi with his progressive thinking has chosen this kind for his ghazal. So his ghazal carries with it an acute contemporary consciousness. He responds promptly to the political situation in his times. This vein of political awareness expressed in a blunt way qualifies his ghazal for being considered under the category of resistance poetry.
TEA House in Lahore, which till recently had been the haunt of writers, now gives the look of a deserted place. No group of writers will be seen here engaged in a heated discussion on any topic, literary or non-literary, any longer. Dialogue over a cup of tea has come to a stop. The whole literary crowd appears to have migrated. The remnants are two poets, who perhaps out of their love or their sense of loyalty to the place, did not accompany the migrating crowd. They chose to be left behind. With the punctuality peculiar with them, these two lonely souls stick to their old schedule of arrival and departure. Each evening, they are seen entering the place at the appointed time and each to his own table, at a respectable distance from the other. This respectable distance speaks of the mental distance between them.
