A good man fondly remembered
THERE could be no person better or more qualified than Dr Khwaja Zakariya for the purpose. Last week the Lahore Arts Forum invited him to speak about Majeed Amjad, the poet who never received any accolades for his work during his lifetime. Even his collection of verse, Shab-i-Rafta, published in 1958 went unnoticed.
Dr Zakariya’s family came from Amritsar to settle down in Jhang when he was hardly seven years old. That is how he came in contact with Majeed Amjad early in life. He spoke about the poet’s early years and how he had come from Chiniot to settle in Jhang. After graduating from the Islamia College, Lahore, he assumed the editorship of the weekly Dehat-sudhar and then another weekly, Urooj of Jhang. Finally, he joined the civil supplies department as an inspector. In that capacity he served at Gojra, Rawalpindi and some other cities but spent the major part of his service in Sahiwal where he died in 1974. He was married to a cousin who was serving as a teacher in Jhang. She, however, never left the city with the result that Majeed Amjad lived alone in a small quarter for most of his life and never had a child.
Talking about Majeed Amjad’s poetry, Dr Zakariya said that he started writing it at a very early age and remained more occupied with the nazms than the ghazals. However, he never asserted himself and hence could not gain popularity or fame while he lived. All the same, it is now being accepted that after Allama Iqbal, he is one of the topmost poets of the country. He added that he was the only modern poet whose verse had a lot of variety although he did lay a lot of stress on humanism. In addition he had a vast vocabulary as is evident from the frequent use of Arabic, Persian and Hindi words in his poetry.
Dr Khwaja Zakariya had earlier collected all the published and unpublished poetry of Majeed Amjad and got it published in 1989 in chronological order. That evening he disclosed that another book he had written about the poet would be out very soon.
IN order to grab his property, a Hindu living in Sialkot was pushed down by his cousins from the third storey of his house but survived miraculously. At the suggestion of a Muslim friend, he said goodbye to his religion and converted to Islam in 1940. Married to a Muslim, he named his first born Allah Rakkhi and the second Allah Rakkha. The latter now lives in Sharjah. Adopting Farooq as a takhallus, he has been writing poetry for quite some time, both in Urdu and Punjabi. He has now come up with his maiden collection in Urdu, Karb-i-Farooq. This book was launched at a function arranged by Halqa-i-Aijaz-i-Adab in the new gathering place of the literate, the Chaupal. It was presided over by the resident director of the Pakistan Academy of Letters, Kazy Javed.
As it appears from his poetry, Allah Rakkha Farooq is deeply religious and patriotic. However, it was interesting to note that this maulvi-looking poet was extremely popular with the fair sex as there were as many as six of them that evening vying with each other in paying him compliments. Apart from Kazy Javed, only two other males, Azhar Ghauri and Niaz Soofi, spoke on the occasion. Soofi was specially appreciative of the fact that the poet had shown great strength of character by maintaining the name given to him by his parents and not tried to hide it like AR Khatoon or change it from Allah Rakkhi to Nur Jahan.
WHEN I received a dainty little parcel with the sender’s name in a familiar handwriting, I thought it was the second collection of verse by Mansoora Ahmad. However, on opening the packet I found that it contained the maiden poetic collection of Shahnawaz Zaidi produced by Mansoora’s publishing house, Asateer.
I have known artists who were also poets. The late Sadequain was a good poet as well and so is my friend, Aslam Kamal. But it is for the first time that I have come to know of a third dimension of a painter. Now everyone knows that Shahnawaz Zaidi is the chairman of the Fine Arts Department of the Punjab University and is a renowned portrait painter. Some people also know that he is a good singer. But that he is also a poet of merit has been revealed to me by this book, Aaina-dar.
The contents of the book, spread over 224 pages, consist mostly of poems in blank verse interspersed with a few ghazals. The muarra nazm is a suitable mode for the apt expression of not only the poet’s inner conflicts but also the external, worldly ones. However, it is as difficult to write as it appears easy to read. With command over language and expression, the flow in Zaidi’s lines makes the reading all the more enjoyable.
He appears deeply affected by the tragic happenings in Bosnia. He has literally cried in his poems while describing what the women, children and unarmed men had to go through at the hands of the marauders backed by the so-called custodians of human rights. It seems he has been provoked by the subversion of all cherished ideals in the world. In fact, Shahnawaz Zaidi feels hurt wherever he sees something unsavoury. His poems on the plight of women in our society stand out as an example.
Although the number of ghazals in the book is far less than the nazms, they are commendable. They bespeak his versatility as he has kept himself away from the conventional and prosaic poems of love. There are some clear ideas and ideals in his mind to which he has given expression.
P.S: The erroneous news of the death of a senior and popular poet of the city has not quite been forgotten. Earlier this week, Azhar Javed together with Dr Khwaja Zakariya and Yunus Javed invited the ‘deceased’ to tea at a local hotel together with his well-wishers. Abid Minto was there that evening together with his wife, Tasneem, and so were Kanwal Feroz, Dr Anwar Sadeed, Ashfaq Rasheed, Akthar Shumar and others. On the ladies side were Dr Attiya Syed, Sultana Munawar, Naila Raza and Zohra Batool. It was no occasion for any kind of speeches; it was just to see Asrar Zaidi sitting happily among friends. But when coaxed into reciting some verses he came up with something very apt. He said:
Meri hasti ka afsana bhi likhiye
Khud apna ta’ziatnama bhi likhiye
Vahan ja kar jo wapas aa gaye ho
To phir apna safarnama bhi likhiye.
— Ashfaque Naqvi
The Cycle of Life
IT’s a relief that cable operators show both the Discovery and National Geographic channels because both these networks can sometimes end up showing the most fascinating programmes. On Thursday night, the National Geographic channel had a one-hour documentary on animals living in parts of the Amazon basin of northern Brazil and the Orinoco river in the neighbouring Venezuela.
The Cycle of Life began with the tapirs of the region running around the banks of the river in search of food. Native to South and Central America and part of Southeast Asia, tapirs belong to a family of hoofed mammals that are active at night. They are known for the peculiar shape of their nose which is in the form of a protruding snout used for feeding on vegetation. The tapirs of the Amazon basin have a hard time surviving in their habitat because the area is known for many predators. Foremost among such natural enemies of the tapir is the cayman, a long reptile that pretty much resembles an alligator but has its own genus or specie. Caymans inhabit the Amazon and prey on the fish and smaller animals of the area and since tapirs don’t have any natural defence against these predators they always end up on the losing side.
Other than the cayman, the river has an even more dangerous and perhaps sinister predator: the piranha. Most of the two dozen or so species of piranha are harmless and only a handful are known to be flesh-eaters. The red piranha is perhaps the deadliest of all the flesh-eaters and is found in abundance in the parts of the river where the water is relatively still. Less than a foot long, the red piranhas are ferocious hunters with a ravenous appetite for animal flesh. In the pecking order in this particular area, the piranha rank just below the cayman because the latter, like their alligator cousins, have very tough skins which even the very sharp teeth of the piranha are unable to penetrate.
However, there is one exception to this rule, and that is when the cayman are very young. And sure enough, the programme showed an underwater scene with the baby cayman trying to learn the rudiments of swimming and being suddenly attacked by the red piranha. Literally, in a matter of seconds, several piranhas pounced upon the cayman and the feeding was so violent that one couldn’t even get a glimpse of the dying animal. In fact, after twenty seconds or so all that remained of the baby cayman was part of a left claw or hand slowly sinking through the water.
The other reason why the red piranha are such voracious flesh-eaters is that they hunt and attack in droves and once they taste flesh they literally become frenzied and go on the rampage, biting out chunks each time they attack the victim. And because they all attack together and have such large and sharp teeth, they are often impossible to shake off.
The narrator mentioned that humans are seldom, if ever, attacked by thee fish since they prefer to feed on weaker injured animals or on their dead bodies passing in the river. In another scene, the piranha were shown feeding on a young heron which while waiting for its mother strayed too far from its nest — situated on a branch above the river — and fell into the water.
However, the rule of the piranha takes a dramatic turn when the weather changes and the rains disappear. The arrival of the dry season means that the streams and smaller tributaries that empty into the mighty Amazon gradually dry up and disappear. Rivers become large ponds and eventually even these shrink to become pools of water. Some riverbeds become so dry that owls use them to burrow holes and make nests. For the fish living in these shrinking bodies of water, this means a slow death. The piranha eventually become trapped and have no where to swim because these ponds are now cut off from the main river. The other predators quickly move in for the kill. The cayman now lead the way in eating the piranha. So the fish who just a few months earlier were busy eating the baby cayman are now themselves eaten up by those who survived. And yes, the heron whose baby was devoured by the fish during the rainy season is there too, picking out piranha from the dying streams and ponds. And with the heron are vultures, egrets and other birds, all with their beaks pointed toward the cornered fish.
And next season when the rains will come, the rivers and the streams will swell up again. And the remaining piranha will spawn and new piranha will be born who will again feed on the cayman and the heron, only to be eaten by their survivors when the dry season comes. And so goes on this fascinating cycle of life.
Makes you wonder sometimes of how the animal kingdom resembles the human.
— OMAR R. QURAISHI
All the talk of war and terrorism
ISLAMABAD, June 7: The ambassador of Sweden and Mrs Tejler hosted a reception on Friday evening to celebrate the National Day of their country.
The function was held on the lawn of their house and was fairly well attended, with political entities, members of the business community, local elite and diplomats.
The unusual aspect of the reception was there was no guest of honour and no cutting of a cake as is done on such occasions.
Security was strict but not to the point of being annoying and on the whole the atmosphere remained quite pleasant and even at times cheerful, despite all the talk of war and terrorism. In spite of many families being evacuated, there were a fairly large number of women present to negate the theory that they had all gone away.
Some of the conversations was light, some political and centred round the visit of the US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage and if there would be any result from the visit; the Indian suggestion that there should be a joint patrolling of the Line of Control by troops from both sides and exodus of foreigners from both the countries.
A few guests were of the view that nothing would come of the Armitage visit, it was just part of the planned sequence of visits that the US was arranging to show that they were doing their best to defuse the tension. In their opinion if results were expected, further visits by more senior members of the Bush administration would not be in the pipeline.
An expatriate standing with a group wanted to know why Pakistan was not agreeing to the proposal of joint patrolling along the LoC.
A Pakistani gentleman replied that there had been no definite refusal of the suggestion and it was still under consideration, though he was of the opinion that it was just a ruse by India, who needed a face saving tactic at this point to show it was making some effort to ease the situation.
In his view, with so much distrust between the two sides this joint patrolling would just be an exercise in futility.
Discussing the evacuation, a Canadian diplomat said that the Canadian government was liable if anything happened to someone who was posted anywhere on its orders and that is why they had evacuated the families and non-essential staff.
That probably applies to governments of most countries, but in troubled times, most families like to be together and it is very stressful for them to be separated.
Not many of the women wanted to leave, particularly those who did not have young children, since there was talk of them being away for at least six months; others who had hoped to stay on till the completion of the tenure of their husbands, packed and left very reluctantly, for good.
Most people agreed though, that it was not so much the danger of war that had made the foreigners evacuate, but rather it was to put pressure on both countries, especially India, which would suffer much more as it depended on its tourism industry.
— Diplomatic Dispatcher