Now when Munir Niazi is no more with us, I am reminded of a couplet from Ghalib:

Koi nahin hai ab aisa jehan main ghalib
Kai jagnai kau miladaivai ja-kai khwab kai saath

This couplet may on one level be seen as a foreseeing of our modern age, which brought with it some new poetic theories. These theories, while rejecting the truth of human imagination, laid stress on reason, realism and socio-political consciousness.

And poets in our times, excepting a few, have in general tried their best to come up to what these theories demand. Munir Niazi is one big exception of this kind.

His verse may be seen as remembrance of things lost and evocation of age-old fears and superstitious suspicions lurking in the inner most layers of our beings. With this substance creatively felt and unalloyed with any ideological tinge, his verse seems qualified to be treated as pure poetry.

So Munir Niazi was purely a poet with no involvement in any social or political activity. And yet he carried with him a dream of a new social order poetically conceived in the form of an ideal city. So often while talking he expressed his dislike for people around him.

“They all are ugly people,” he would say. His dislike for people around him soon would grow to the extent that the whole city appeared to him ugly. That would lead him to the dream of founding a new city, a city in accordance to his liking. In those moments his imagination appeared hovering on the borderline of reality and fantasy.

Amused by his poetic idea of a new city, I once asked him, “Munir Niazi, you have no tolerance for people around you. They all appear to you ugly. The people in your imagined city will not be very different from these people. How will you be able to reconcile with them.”

He thought for a while and then said “Every lonely soul has to face this dilemma. In fact every lonely man earnestly wants or rather dreams of a congenial social atmosphere full of gaiety. But how to translate this dream into an actuality? With this purpose in view he sits under some banyan tree or takes his seat in any cave and begins contemplating.”

He paused and added, “Not everybody can dare face loneliness. Daring to undergo this terrible experience asks for a lot of courage. It was left for Buddha alone in his times to face loneliness with courage and boldness.”

But he denied that he is allergic people. “I don’t rely on the intellectuals alone,” said he adding, “City people’s heart is the abode I live in. It is from among them that at times when I need help any good soul comes to my rescue. I remember the times when I travelled in buses. A nice girl with a beautiful face made it a point to accompany me daily in the appointed hours in the city bus and discuss Buddha with me.”

“Who was she?” I asked

“I don’t know” he said “For months she travelled with me. But it never occurred to me to enquire about her name and address.”

“Should this relationship be deemed as something akin to love?”

“Frankly speaking,” he said, “I have now forgotten the meanings of this word. But when I was living in Khanpur I fully knew the meanings of this word along with all its implications. How beautiful was that land! It inspired you for love. During my days in Khanpur I was a great lover.”

While he was talking in this vein I was reminded of Halqa’s evening where Munir had presented his poem beginning as Khanpur, Ai Khanpur.

At the end of the poem he, overwhelmed with emotions, burst into tears. Khanpur for him was a paradise lost. It was, as he said during this talk, after migrating from Khanpur that the idea of founding a new city struck him. He nurtured the idea within him to the point that it grew into a passion with him. And the passion gained substance from what he saw and experienced in Pakistan.

While talking about the creation of Pakistan he had his own interpretation for it. “The general impression is that the confrontation with the Hindus led to the creation of Pakistan. No, it is not so. In fact we had a desire for establishing an ideal city on the soil of South Asia capable to emanate a sweet smell in the whole region.”

He paused and then spoke as in a trance, “The city as I have conceived it should rise to the heights bordering the sky. It should appear vying with the city of paradise. I am not going to be reconciled with anything less than that.”

That is the way Munir Niazi talked in his inspired moments. And he had evolved a vocabulary of his own in accordance to his idealism. He was an idealist par excellence. He hoped that his ideal city will be ruled by God-loving citizens possessed with an aesthetic taste.

“I don’t want people like Changiaz Khan in my city. Those elected to the assemblies should be persons who are God-loving and are aesthetes. They will see to it that no repressive law is passed. His poem Aik naya shehr daikhnay ki arzu may be seen as a portrait of this city:

Aik nagar aisa bas jai jis main nafrat kahin na hau

Apas main dhoka karnai ki zulm ki taqat kahin na hau

Uss kai makin haun aur tarah kai maskan aur tarah kai

Uss ki havain aur taraha ki, gulshan aur tarah kai haun

When reminded of the actual situation in Pakistan, he said, “I know that the whole trouble is that the dialogue among us has come to a halt. When there is no dialogue, people resort to Kalashnikovs and bomb blasts. What we need is the revival of the suspended dialogue.”

Munir Niazi was in fact a great dreamer of our times. In him we have lost a dreamer and an idealist so precious for any society. What a great loss.