LAST week I had the good luck to participate in a function held in memory of a poet who is admired for his poetry and adored for his idiosyncracies. I’m referring to Jaun Elia. His admires and adorers had gathered at the Art Council of Karachi to recollect their precious moments spent in his company and paid glowing tributes to his departed soul. The function was presided over by Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi.
Jaun Elia was no doubt a rare bird among us. The breed he belonged to is now extinct. In days of yore, our literary world used to accommodate such souls. Their distinct behaviour was deemed to be something akin to poetic madness. A poet possessed with this kind of madness was considered a genuine verse-wielder and hence was held in high esteem. Iqbal calls this trait Zauq-i-junoon and yearns for it:
Merey maula mujhe sahib-i-junoon kar de
But times have now changed. We are now living in an age of commercialization, which has no tolerance for this kind of demeanour. It has produced its own brand of man — a creature pragmatic and calculated in his behaviour. Even poets of our time have grown worldly wise. They have learned to make a distinction between poetry and practical life. They do not allow their poetry to intervene in their daily lives. Instead, they look to it that their poetry proves helpful in their business affairs. This pragmatism on their part has also turned the tradition of Mushaira into a big profitable business.
The difficulty with Jaun Elia was that he could not keep his poetic self at a distance from his practical life. The dividing line between the two was blurred. Precisely speaking, he was not content merely to write poetry. He wanted to live poetry. And therein lies the reason for the troubles he faced in his real life. To validate what I am saying I feel tempted to quote from what he has written in the preface to his first collection of verse entitled Shayad. He tells us about an awkward moment in his early life when he was going to eat food. But it so happened that the moment he put a morsel into his mouth, the girl he loved made her appearance. He felt embarrassed, as according to him, it is something very indecent and unromantic to chew on a morsel in the presence of the beloved. He writes: “How will the girl feel if she comes to know that this boy, a romantic soul, has within him something most dirty and unromantic known as stomach. The very idea brought shame to me.” And he adds: “If you begin to think that the fellow you revere as a hero or a woman you imagine as a goddess, when alive carried within him or her a digestive system, you will certainly get shocked.” With this kind of thinking this romantic fellow could not afford to chew on a morsel in the presence of a girl. He hurriedly gulped it down. This attitude persisted throughout his life. Always living up to his romantic image, Jaun tried his best to save his admirers and adorers from the kind of shock mentioned above. But how unfortunate it is that the bitter realities of life have no respect for the sensitivities of romantic souls. The beautiful world they live in sooner or later clashes with the ground realities causing troubles for them.
The dominant components of Jaun Elia’s romantic world were two: poetry and philosophy. Apart from poetry, he was equally well-versed in philosophy. For his interest in astronomy he, according to his own version, was indebted to the intellectual discussions that used to take place at his ancestral home. The entire constellation, stars and planets, were so heatedly and consistently discussed by his elders that he felt Mars, Jupiter, and Venus were his family members. This kind of preoccupation influenced his poetry as well.
His ghazal is predominantly love poetry. But off and on he is seen delving into philosophical thoughts, which seem to be pointing towards a cosmic vision of his own. But it too finds its expression in a finely carved poetic idiom. I feel tempted to quote one such couplet from him:
Hasil-i-kun hai yeh jehan-i-kharab
Yaihi mumkin tha itni ujlat main
The poet seems to be saying that it was in a moment of haste that the world was created. Just one word was uttered and the universe came into existence. And hence we have the kind of world that today we are all associated with.
But as said before, Jaun Elia’s ghazal is primarily love poetry. It may also be seen as the sad tale of a lover suffering from the pangs of separation.
LAST week I had the good luck to participate in a function held in memory of a poet who is admired for his poetry and adored for his idiosyncracies. I’m referring to Jaun Elia. His admires and adorers had gathered at the Art Council of Karachi to recollect their precious moments spent in his company and paid glowing tributes to his departed soul. The function was presided over by Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi.
