Imrana and Anwar on their wedding day. —Photo from the book
Uljhey Suljhey Anwar (BIOGRAPHY)
By Imrana Maqsood
Pakistan Publishing
House, Karachi
ISBN: 978-96941907601224pp.
RITER Anwar Maqsood, like all creative individuals of high merit, is an enigmatic character. It is never easy to understand writers’ personality traits — what ticks them off, what makes them feel overjoyed or, for that matter, how their creative energies work, etc. Only if you get to live a considerable period of your life with them — as a friend, fan, or partner — can you claim to know them better than those who have admired their work from a distance.
Imrana Maqsood’s book Uljhey Suljhey Anwar defies categorisation. It is about her husband, but not entirely. It is about herself, but not entirely. And it contains some of Anwar’s works that ought to have been published, but not entirely.
First things first, though. Initially the title of the book was different. It was Anwar who suggested to his wife to take a phrase from one of Mir Taqi Mir’s verses and use it as the title of the book: Laag gar dil ko nahin, lutf nahin jeeney ka/ Uljhey suljhey kisi kakul ke giriftar raho [If the heart is not attached to someone, there’s no joy in living/ Entangled or free, keep falling for the beloved’s strand of hair].
The woman beside Anwar Maqsood provides a glimpse into his life
The two lines, in a manner of speaking, give away a bit of how the popular writer (who specialises in satire) sees life. He is a free spirit and yet not detached from Pakistani society. This is why whatever he chooses to write about is related to the people, the environs, and the norms that are an inalienable part of our society. This is where Imrana, the author of the book and his wife, comes in. She knows that her husband is a writer, a painter, a connoisseur of music, and a playwright. He has larger issues to mull over and to express his opinion on. It is difficult for him to concentrate on household chores (not that he shies away from them). So she steps forward and — as by her own admission at the launch of the book at their residence — negates her personality to enable the family to stand on its feet.
Imrana’s book, therefore, is not Anwar’s biography. It is an account — beginning with a brief introduction to her pre-marriage life in India — of certain aspects of their lives together, especially the periods when they struggled to put a roof over their heads.
Today, the Maqsoods come across as a well-heeled family. The perception may be real. But it was not always like that, as the author tells her readers. She mentions, without a modicum of hesitancy and with a fair degree of pride, the first time Anwar got a salary of five thousand rupees as a columnist for the Urdu daily Hurriyat. As a reader you know that this is coming right from the heart. They’ve seen some tough times, and they are not living in the past, but moving ahead, exuding a positive energy that rubs off on those who know them.