ISLAMABAD, Aug 2: Blessed are those writers who leave an impact on the reading public and are remembered as an icon in the place of their birth.

This was stated by Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) chairman Iftikhar Arif while speaking as chief guest at a memorial meeting held in remembrance of eminent writer, playwright and journalist Hameed Kashmiri in Murree on Friday.

The event was organized by Murree Literary Circle at the Iqbal Memorial Library. Hameed Kashmiri died two months ago after protracted illness.

The PAL chairman said Hameed was a genuine writer who survived critical evaluation. Measured against this valued judgment, he emerged as a successful writer, who did not lower his scale. His dramas and short stories will always be included in any good anthologies of Urdu writings, he added.

Both Iftikhar Arif and Hameed Kashmiri worked at Karachi PTV, at one time. Here Hameed wrote more than 500 plays to feed the demands of ‘one drama a day’ that the public desired to see on the TV screen.

The PAL chairman said a play called Pat Jhar (The fall) was an admirable one. It won the first prize at the International Drama Festival held at Munich in 1989. The success made it possible for Hameed to gain access to the closed literary world, which is, at times, disdainful of new writers.

Mr Arif described the late writer as an outspoken ideologue who arrived in Karachi in 1948, in search of a bigger world from where he would be able to broadcast inner longings of his class of people who acutely felt the denial of decent living. Hameed was able to find fulfilment of his desires in the city where he worked.

Even otherwise, he was a sensitive and soft spoken individual, and one who showed consideration to others. Mr Arif said Hameed Kashmiri was a loving husband and a loving father, and he intensely loved his daughters. Here, Poet Yusuf Jamil remembered the high standards set by Hamid in his literary works as well as in his public dealings.

At one time, Yusuf Jamil sought books on and about Ghalib, which were not available anywhere in Karachi. But, he found them in the standard bookstall, run by Hameed Kashmiri. The bookstall, at that time, was famous in Karachi for its quality stock of literary works.

Lateef Kashmiri, a close friend and considered as an unofficial commentator on the life and works of Hameed Kashmiri, described the writer’s departure to Karachi as a form of rebellion to discover freedom from retrograde ideas. He sought a better place than Murree to pursue the kind of liberal ideas that kept haunting his imagination.

Journalist Shameem Shalvalvi said Hameed Kashmiri’s characters came out of his experience during the repressive Dogra rule in Kashmir. According to Dr Sabir Afaq, Hameed was a greater playwright than Agha Hashar, generally spoken of as the Shakespeare of Urdu dramas.

The host of the evening and secretary of Murree Literary Circle, Ahmad Zaman, described his last meeting with the playwright. — Jonaid Iqbal