September 26, 2004

BANO Qudsia and Ashfaq Ahmad were like a pair of royal swans, silently floating on the dark blue lake of creative literature, only making ripples amongst the Urdu and Punjabi readers throughout the world. Last week the pair was separated after the leading swan sang its last song and left its lifetime companion mourning the loss.

Whenever I saw Bano Aapa and Ashfaq sahib together and they were always inseparable I called them a Hanson Ka Jora and they enjoyed my comment.

During his funeral, while thousands of admirers were inconsolable, crying and sobbing, strangely enough I felt unmoved. At peace with myself and at times smiling, sadly, just because I did not feel that he had gone, I felt his presence all around me as I had done for the last fifty years. He did not leave a vacuum, which cannot be filled because he had not left. People like him do not leave but hide themselves behind a veil and anyone who visits their written word can see them alive and smiling behind that veil.

While we were burying his mortal remains in the G block Model Town graveyard, where Faiz sahib also rests, there was much talk of his being a Pir or a saint. Pirs and saints are in plenty, but there was only one Ashfaq Ahmad, the writer who was on a much higher pedestal.

However, he was a “Baba Collector”. I don’t think he ever approved of my crude expression, but then, he never disapproved either. He would go to any lengths to meet a new found ‘Baba’. He would give him the utmost respect, sit at his feet and listen to his utterances with utmost reverence and the moment he realized that the Baba is now repeating himself, has been extracted fully and has nothing new to impart, he will desert him for a better ‘Baba’.

Mostly the ‘Baba’ left behind was influenced by him to such an extent the he would become a little Ashfaq Ahmad for the rest of his life. This was the magnetic charm of his presence.

It is well nigh impossible to sum up and express an association spanning fifty years in a short write up of this nature. Yet, I will try to summarize.

I first heard of the name, Ashfaq Ahmad when I was introduced to a gadget called a tape recorder. Ashfaq sahib had brought it for Professor G.M. Asar, from Rome, and his son Javed was recording his hoarse and vastly out of tune singing voice. When I finally met Ashfaq sahib, he was a picture of manly grace with curly hair, fair complexion and a bewitching smile. After meeting G.M. Asar he would go and meet Saadat Hassan Manto if he was around.

Some years passed and then one winter morning I found him sitting across the table with my father Ch. Rehmat Khan Tarar in our seed-shop near Gowlamandi, discussing his agricultural problems with him. He was a regular visitor and a friend of my father. On certain days he would go to a carpenter inside Mochi Gate to learn his craft, enjoy at least a dozen of Khalifa’s heavenly kebabs and then come to our shop for a chat.

Then one day, without any intention, I found myself thrust into the world of acting. And there, at PTV Lahore, he was the king, comparing, indirectly directing and of course writing the very first memorable plays that have now become classics. I was pitched against Roohi Bano and Qavi Khan in his series Hairat Kadah. I carried myself slightly with honour and he approved of it. Then came his classic Ek Muhabbat Sau Afsane and I was cast as a father in the very first play Quratulain which was telecast last week by PTV during the channel’s tribute to him. I must admit that at that time I was slightly upset; as a young man I wanted to play a ‘hero’ and here I was whitening my jet black hair playing an old man. But Ashfaq sahib and producer Mohammad Nisar Hussain assured me that it will be a turning point in my acting career and it was.

Initially the play was named Ankh Ki Putli. However, during the recording Ashfaq sahib changed his mind and decided to call it Quratulain. He came up with a very strange logic: “All the plays in this series will carry very laborious and difficult titles so that people will remember only the themes and not the name of plays!” I must also pay tribute to the producer Mohammad Nisar Hussain (MNH to his friends) whose casting and production brought out the spirit and sentiments of the plays in such an artistic way that even Ashfaq sahib was amazed. Although latter on, Saira Kazmi, Mohammad Azim and Arif Waqar also proved to be brilliant. But MNH was the person who blazed the way.

My marriage was another factor that brought me still closer to Ashfaq sahib. My mother-in-law had an inkling that I dabbled in some dubious activities, like writing books etc. So one of the days she asked me, “Mustansar, do you know this young man Ashfaq?” Naturally I said no ammiji. How was I know that she was referring to Ashfaq sahib? But then she stressed, “Ashfaq, the son of uncle Mohammad Khan Salotri, he also writes something.”

Actually my mother-in-law’s father and Ashfaq sahib’s father were very close friends and belonged to the same town in East Punjab. Uncle Mohammad Khan was a vet; doctor hence the local village term, Salotri. From then on, Ashfaq sahib and Bano Aapa treated me as a relative of some sort. As a matter of fact, whenever I surpassed my limits, he would lodge a complaint with Memoona, my wife. For instance, once Zulifqar Tabish, a common friend and I were discussing his latest short story Dhor Dunger Ki Wapsi and I commented that rarely I have read such a powerful description of cattle returning to the village nearing sunset, bathed in colours. Truly a moving piece. But, in the end Ashfaq sahib’s heroin starts offering Namaz. Why did he have to do it so directly?

To my ill luck, Ashfaq sahib got the wind of it and complained to my wife. “Memonna look at this husband of yours. He objects about offering the Namaz in my short story.”

A debate ensued during his lifetime as well that Ashfaq sahib should have given more time to his short stories and novels; instead he concentrated more on the media side. He was working on his autobiography, some parts of which I had he occasion to enjoy. A complete novel Khel Tamasha was born out of it. But alas, he could not complete it.

Mumtaz Mufti a very capricious person once admonished me in Islamabad, “Tarar you are also following the footsteps of Ashfaq. You are basically a writer, why are you wasting your time in media in the pursuit of vulgar fame. Look what it has done to Ashfaq.”

Mufti sahib and Ashfaq sahib were the closest possible friends, so how could I evaluate his statement. If Ashfaq sahib were just a run of the mill writer, which he was not, his readership would have been limited. He chose media because he wanted to reach the masses and those masses were there in his funeral procession to thank a man who did not hide himself in the cloak of intellectualism but reached out to them and shared their dreams and sorrows.

In some newspaper interview, I casually declared that a virtuous man cannot be a great writer (Ek sharif adami bara adeeb nahin ho sakta) and the next moment Ashfaq sahib was on phone, “Oi Tarar, what sort of statement is this? It means that I am not a great writer,” and he laughed heartily.

“Sir you are my ustad and you are a great writer,” I said sheepishly.

“But you have stated that a sharif adami cannot be a great writer!”

“Sir I do not consider you a sharif adami in the usual sense of the word,” and he gave another Ashfaqian laugh.

Last time I visited his abode, Dastan Sarai, he was not feeling too well. Even then, he would entertain visitors who flocked around him worried about his health. He was in high spirits, but looked pale, “Tarar these doctors are a strange breed. They have forbidden me to indulge in two things which I love most, talking and eating.”

A Persian couplet comes in to my mind, which says that a city without a Maikhana is a desolate city. The Maikhana of the city of Lahore is no more and the city is desolate, empty without him. The weaver of dreams and sorrows has abandoned us and a lonely swan is in the black robes of sorrow.

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)