WITH the death of Mushtaq Ahmad Yousufi, Urdu literature has lost a great writer. There are stylistic qualities which set apart Yousuf sahib’s wittiness from the rest of the leading satirists and humorists.

His academic background — philosophy — elevates his wit from being banal and tawdry. In his preface to Khakam Badahan, he defines the nature and function of humour as a “wall of laughter” between man and the “bitter facts of life.” Moreover, it is not the function of the humourist to advise or admonish. His primary obligation is to stir joy and elation in the minds of his readers. It was in continuity of this idealism that Yousufi sahib’s biting burlesque — at times uncomfortably close to truth — is above all malice and remains characteristically marked by its suave mannerism.

From the point of view of literary criticism, humour can be broadly distinguished into two categories: humour of situation and humour of character. The former may provide a limited perspective by its reliance on mere discomfiture. On the other hand, humour of character has a wide scope. Yousufi sahib employed this genre to its fullest and like Rathan Nath Sarshar based his humour on practical jokes and satirical unveiling by bringing forth the follies of both individual and society alike.

His characters, like that of famous Mirza, are not necessarily idiosyncratic; he looks at them with a detached eye, isolates them from their background, and magnifies their small oddities of behaviour. At times he even makes himself the subject-matter of hilarity as is evident from his lively and amusing autobiography Zarguzasht.

Yousufi sahib specialised in sketching his characters like a miniature artist and his satirical imagination digs out the incongruous from the congruous to excite delight and joviality. Yet there is nothing irksome or superfluous in his writings and what one gets at the end is the artistic equivalent of a highly refined and stylised prose. By his departure he certainly leaves the contemporary literary landscape of Urdu poorer.

Inayat Atta
Dera Ismail Khan

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2018