TAUNSA is a town in district Dera Ghazi Khan, south Punjab, in today’s Pakistan. It is one of the backward areas even today. Imagine what it must have been like about a century ago when it was part of British India and when Fikr Taunsvi was born there.
Fikr Taunsvi was a prose writer, dramatist, columnist, poet and journalist. He wrote in Hindi as well, but he is known for the satirical articles and columns that he penned in Urdu. Fikr was a leading satirist and he wrote his column ‘Pyaaz ke chhilke’ for about 32 years in Milaap, an Urdu newspaper published from Delhi.
Born Ram Narain on Oct 7, 1918, in Shuj’aabad, near Multan, Fikr Taunsvi did his matriculation from Taunsa, but his father died a year after Fikr took admission to Multan’s Emerson College. So he could not continue his formal education. To earn a livelihood, Fikr had to do many odd jobs, beginning at the age of 18. He worked as a calligrapher, commercial painter, schoolteacher and agent for a hair oil company.
After a few years, he went to Lahore and the first job he landed was that of an office boy at a publishing house. This gave him an opportunity to read books, something he loved. Living a life of an ordinary person and being a part of the downtrodden must have given him a different perspective as in latter life Fikr developed marked tendencies towards communism. Common men became the main topic around whose lives he wrote his satirical pieces.
Soon Fikr joined a magazine Man ki mauj, published from Sheikhupura, and took the penname Fikr Taunsvi. In 1942, Fikr joined Lahore’s famous literary magazine Adab-i-lateef as a clerk and was made editor a year later. In Lahore, Fikr befriended Mumtaz Mufti, a rising fiction story writer who was to become a literary star. Soon the duo launched an Urdu literary magazine Sawera from Lahore and took the literary world by storm. What made Sawera a smashing success was its modern layout and the literary pieces contributed by legends like Manto, Ismat Chughtai, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Shafeeq-ur-Rahman, Akhter-ul-Iman and many more.
In Lahore, Fikr was living a dream life. His writings were being appreciated, his magazine was booming, he had got married, he had made many friends in Lahore, most of whom were celebrities and he too was a literary figure. What else one could desire for? But in 1947, the five rivers of Punjab became red, so to speak, as the post-independence riots unleashed the beast in humans. Fikr was a Hindu, but he never felt threatened in Lahore because his friends, mostly Muslims, were with him. According to Fikr, he used to roam around the streets of Lahore as usual during the 1947 riots, as he was in the company of his friends, especially Mumtaz Mufti, Qateel Shifai and Arif Abdul Mateen.
But the situation was worsening and Fikr could not decide whether to stay on in Pakistan or migrate to India. He loved Lahore but decided to leave because, as put by himself, he wanted to serve humanity and he could serve anywhere, India or Pakistan, it made no difference. With the help of his Muslim friends Fikr safely migrated to India, but what he saw and was told during the riots shocked him. To record his impressions, he wrote a remarkable book Chhata darya (1948), or ‘the sixth river’. It was an allusion to the river of blood that flowed in Punjab beside the other five.
In India, Fikr joined the Communist Party. To earn a living, he launched some literary magazines which could not survive. He worked as a freelancer for All India Radio Jalandhar. Notwithstanding the meagre remuneration, Fikr could not stand certain restrictions and quit All India Radio. In 1953, the Communist Party launched its newspaper Naya zamana from Jalandhar and Fikr began writing a daily satirical column for it. In 1955, the newspaper closed down, but his column had become quite popular. So Milaap asked him to write the satire column, which he named ‘Pyaaz ke chhilke’, or onion skins, an illusion to a trivial task bringing tears to eyes.
It was one of the most popular satire columns in the history of Urdu. Fikr would satirise the social and economic woes, indicating common men’s hardships. Once he wrote: “I have been living in Delhi for two decades now, first of which passed waiting for communism to arrive and second waiting for a Delhi Transport Company’s bus. Both are running behind the schedule”.
Fikr Taunsvi’s other books are Hiule (collection of poetry) (1947), Saatvaan shaster (1950), Chand aur gadha (1960), Fikr nama (1977), Modern Aladin, Aakhri kitab (1980), Baat mein ghaat (1983), Chhilke hi chhilke (1984) and Fikr bani (1985).
Fikr Taunsvi died in Delhi on Sept 12, 1987.
Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2018
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