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Main ke meri ghazal mein hai aatish-i-rafta ka suraagh
Meri tamaam sarguzasht khoe huon ki justujoo
THIS couplet, taken from poem ‘Zauq-o-Shauq’ in Iqbal’s Baal-i-Jibreel, can roughly be translated as: my ghazal has traces of a bygone fire, my entire life account is but a quest for the lost ones. Here Iqbal alludes to the wayfarers of history, while actually mourning the lost glory of the Muslims.
Indeed Muhammad Hamza Farooqi had this couplet in his mind while naming his new collection of pen sketches: Aatish-i-Rafta Ka Suraagh. Through this carefully chosen title Hamza Farooqi has implied that he has tried to trace the remains of a bonfire that a caravan had set up and then left, with all those luminaries who were fellow travellers — poets, writers, scholar and intellectuals — whom Farooqi rubbed shoulders with. These pen sketches invoke fond memories of a departed caravan from a bygone era, studded with stars like Mushfiq Khwaja, Shaukat Siddiqi, Dr Muhammad Hameedullah, Dr Zawwaar Husain Zaidi, Dr Ahsaan Rasheed, Prof Abdulkerim Germanus (the Hungarian scholar of Islamic Studies), Maulana Hasan Musanna Nadvi and some others.
Pen sketch writing, or khaka nigaari, as it is called in Urdu, is a genre that tries to capture the essence of a personality by highlighting the peculiar traits. A pen sketch or pen portrait is not a biography so it covers only the glimpses of a person’s life events along with his or her demeanour. But the art of writing successful pen sketches consists of recording, preferably in a lighter vein, the glimpses of a personality’s defining traits as well as discovering the real person behind the persona, thereby creating a vivid picture through candidness.
And Hamza Farooqi knows this secret of writing interesting sketches as he is a veteran sketch writer. Hence, the book is a collection of delectable sketches written in a lively and flowing prose. Published by Karachi’s Fazlee Sons, Farooqi’s book is an effort to remember the members of a caravan that is no more, but has left behind a trail of memories. So Farooqi’s book too, in a way, is an effort to recall the past glory of our society. It records the events of an era when in the 1960s and 1970s he was a student at the University of Karachi, and then at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, highlighting the luminous personalities that he crossed path with and befriended quite a few of them.
In his foreword, and sketches too, Farooqi lets the reader know where, when and how he met the personalities that he has written about. He had met, for instance, the erudite Zawwaar Husain Zaidi at the SOAS, who proved to be very helpful in Farooqi’s admission to the SOAS and later on guided him in his studies. The selfless Saleemuddin Qureshi, a member of library staff at India Office Library, met at the library and soon became a friend. Farooqi had gone to see the renowned palmist and sociologist M. A. Malik to have a peep at the future but he became a lifelong friend. Renowned fiction writer Shaukat Siddiqi used to be Farooqi’s neighbour and appeared to be a friend already. And the unforgettable Mushfiq Khwaja, whom he met at Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu’s office and remained a fast friend ever after.
As put by Najeeba Arif in her crisp intro to the book, we cannot truly find the traces of the caravans that have left and if at all, Farooqi has narrated it with a tinge of melancholy, mourning the loss and mixing the sense of grief, with affection. But then Hamza Farooqi is a humourist too so the sketches are peppered with a generous sprinkle of wit and his sense of humour can amaze you at the oddest of moments, being pensive at one moment and naughty the next.
The memories of his studentship at Karachi University sound like Farooqi had love-hate relationship with the varsity and teachers, writes Najeeba Arif. But one feels that this can be said of some the personalities as well and these memories can be described as bitter-sweet. One of the reasons is that Farooqi does not believe in mincing his words and writes what he feels, sometimes barely bothering to tone down the thinly-veiled insult with his usual witty remarks.
In these sketches, the writer has intentionally recorded the political and social aspects of our society. Some of these pieces of information are important indeed but at times they affect the tone and colour of a sketch. Here one has to agree with Najeeba Arif when she says certain portions of the book read like memoirs or sound autobiographical. But Farooqi’s iconoclastic one-liners are something to relish.
Muhammad Hamza Farooqi is a Karachi-based researcher, travelogue writer, humourist and an acclaimed expert on Iqbal Studies.
Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2024
