KARACHI: It is sad to see how important events are often marred by mismanagement and semi-preparedness. One had expected a programme on a literary giant such as Mir Anis held to mark his 144th death anniversary at the Arts Council of Karachi on Saturday night to be a well-attended or at least a well-structured one, but a small number of audience and, most of all, the late arrival of scholars, one or two didn’t even turn up at all, didn’t speak much of the seriousness on the part of the organisers. To boot, the traffic situation, which someone used as an excuse, wasn’t bad either on Saturday.

Thankfully, Dr Alia Imam, who was the chief guest on the occasion, spoke so well about Anis (1802-1874) that it compensated for the situation. She, graciously, began by saying that she didn’t mind a small crowd because:

Mehfil araai hamari nahin afraad ka naam

Koi ho ya keh na ho aap to aaey huay hain

[My sense of get-togetherness has nothing to do with numbers All I care is that you’ve come and are part of the gathering]

Dr Imam said we lived in dark times, as only a few days back blood had been shed in Balochistan. In such a scenario, arranging an event to commemorate the memory of Anis was a sign of maturity of thought and a vindication of the truth that Anis’s poetry spoke about. His personality symbolised purity in a human and his character came across like a diamond.

Dr Imam said once in Canada students asked her about why Anis chose to write on the tragedy of Karbala while living in Lucknow. To which she replied that after the war of 1857, gloominess had enveloped the subcontinent. The British executed 80,000 Muslims. To date, there’s a place in Lucknow known as Phansi Ghaat. At that important juncture in time, Anis felt that the nation needed a philosophy that could revive its dampened spirit, and there was no better way to do that than by recalling what happened in Karbala in his marsiyas.

Dr Imam said in order to understand Karbala one needed to understand human beings.

There were two kinds of people: one turned life into ashes, and the other created light out of those ashes.

There were three important aspects to the tragedy. The first was about the significance of the household or family (kunba). Today, families were divided into units. But Karbala highlighted the importance of a kunba.

The second aspect, Dr Imam said, was of the younger lot going shoulder to shoulder with the older generation. When all had the same purpose and followed the same ideology, they tended to come together for it. The third aspect was that Karbala spread the message of peace. However, when war was thrust on Imam Husain and his companions, they fought valiantly. “Clarity of thought and clarity of action go together… A small band of determined souls who have staunch faith in their ideology can alter the course of history,” she remarked. Dr Imam quoted profusely from Anis’s marsiyas during her speech.

Earlier, Tabassum Zohra Rizvi, who belongs to Mir Anis’s family, said at a time when Ghalib had cast a spell with his ghazals, Anis wrote marsiyas and the entire subcontinent echoed with his poetry.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2018