Old boys at work
His new book ‘Adabi Tanqeed Ke Nae Dareeche’ contains essays. It is divided into four sections captioned as debates, personalities, the Urdu language and poets of the modern era. Some essays deal with important literary and historical issues such as enlightenment in literature, literature and sex, Quaid-i-Azam’s concept of culture, and the literary skirmish between Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Akber Illahabadi.
Being a discerning observer of the changing landscape of Urdu language and literature for over five decades, Farman Sahib in these brief essays has lucidly described some interesting personalities and poetical attributes of some well-known and some not-so-well-known poets. Commenting on a poet or giving an account of historical development of a literary genre, Dr Farman Fatehpuri, unlike many critics of our times who employ ostentatious jargon of criticism, tries to be as clear and as to-the-point as possible. Since he has spent most of his time imparting knowledge at higher seats of learning, he is always successful in getting his point across.
In the book’s foreword, he says, “This book is a collection of my brief essays on Urdu’s literary traditions and personalities, written on different occasions and published in newspapers and journals but not included in any collection of my essays. Scattered, these essays were not out of my mind but were out of my sight, let alone readers’ sight. Memory kept reminding me that these essays contained some useful hints and some important issues were dealt with and collecting them in one volume would not be devoid of utility; hence this book.”
Published by Al-Aijaz Publications, Lahore, the book provides the reader with a large number of brief but crisply written literary and critical essays.
AHMED Hussain Siddiqi is a strange fellow. An architect by profession, he retired from KDA as director-general. But literature is his passion. His autobiography, ‘Siyahat-i-Maazi’ is written in a simple and plain language yet it is amazingly absorbing. His other books are ‘Kishwar-i-Aulia’, a history of Amroha, and ‘Gauher-i-Buhaira-i-Arab’, a history of Karachi.
But aside from these books, he has begun an extremely important work: recording the lives and achievements of Karachi’s men of letters. He has published two volumes of ‘Dabistanon Ka Dabistan: Karachi’, giving brief life-sketches and details of books of authors either born or having lived in Karachi. He is working on the third volume these days.
At the age of seventy, he works tirelessly for hours at a stretch. He not only carries out research on literary figures but composes and proofreads his own books on computer and is quite good at page-making and scanning photographs and mounting them.For the third volume, he is looking for some photographs and biographical data of Karachi’s men of letters; and would welcome any assistance in collecting such information.
While one cannot deny the importance of this work, one wishes that he would not limit himself to Karachi and prepare similar volumes on prominent authors of Urdu and regional languages of Pakistan, regardless of geographical boundaries or time period. Some accurate research work on some of the giants of Urdu literature is yet to be done and there are scores of writers whose correct date of birth is still not determined or the details of their lives are obscure. Taking into account Ahmed Hussain Siddiqi’s penchant for such work, it would not be unreasonable to expect a volume giving brief biographies and details of works of great men of letters.
drraufparekh@yahoo.com