Six months short of his 51st birthday, Ibn-i-Insha, the noted poet, eminent satirist, columnist and writer of travelogues of exceptional literary merit died of cancer in London on January 11, 1978. Cancer is considered to be a terminal disease, but his death was perhaps hastened by some unfortunate circumstances.
When his illness was discovered, the government of Pakistan posted him as a minister in Pakistan high commission in London with the idea that he could get better medical attention there. But after Bhutto's fall in 1977 Insha fell from the grace and his tenure in London was prematurely terminated.
It was a unbearable shock for him. This is the time he wrote the woeful ballad Jab Umr Kee Naqdi Khatam Hoe (when the cash of life span ended).
It is significant that he used the analogy of cash for his life span because both were draining out. In the poem he implores others to lend him only a few years.
He was ready to return the loan with interest. I have read this poem dozens of time, but its heartbreaking poignancy never fails to affect me.
Urdu has produced great humourists, both in prose and poetry. But none wrote with facility like Insha. In the grab of humour he highlighted numerous national problems and the ones faced by the person in the street. His writings of the 1960s and '70s were so universal that they apply equally to the problems being faced by us today.
In one piece, Insha depicted a poor man praying to God for food, clothing and shelter. A rich man admonishes him and tells him to ask for something else. The poor man asks the rich man what he prays for.
He answers that he prays for the grant of faith, integrity and honesty. The poor man remarks that he is right, 'I pray for those things I don't have and you for the things you don't have'. Only Insha could delineate such an acerbic situation.
As an officer of UNESCO, Insha had the opportunity to travel extensively. He produced four excellent travelogues Chalte Ho Tou Cheen Ko Chalae, Awara Gurd kee Diary, Ibne Batuta kay Taqub Main, Nagri Nagri Phera Musafir.
Of the countries he visited, he described their political setup, culture and other related information with characteristic humour.
We find him a traveller who is baffled by unfamiliar environment and an alien language, running from pillar to post in search of inexpensive hotels to save money.
Insha enjoyed reading humour and was a greater admirer of writers such as Rashid Ahmad Siddique and Chiragh Hasan Hasrat; in fact he considered Hasrat his mentor.
But despite his reverence for their writings, he devised his own mode of expression. His Urdu Ki Akhri Kitab was published in 1971 and Khumar-i-Gundum was published posthumously. He wrote standard Urdu which in its lucidity was representative of the Delhi School.
The move from the realm of Insha's prose into the domain of his poetry is a startling experience. The scene changes comprehensively as the writer full of wit and humour metamorphoses into one of sorrow and anguish.
The world of the poet Insha is a desolatory world which sometimes touches the precincts of self-pity. The gloom progressively increases with each successive volume of poetry.
There are some pieces in his first collection Chand Nagar which could fall in the category of love poetry, but they become rarer in the two collections, Is Basti Kay Ek Kochay Main (1976) and Dil-i-Wahshi (1985), which followed I can recall two of his pieces which came close to being cheerful.
One is 'Kal Chudhiyeen Kee Raat Thee' and the other 'Jale Tu Jalao Gori' sung melodiously by Nayyara Noor with mellifuous composition by Arshad Mahmood.
Insha's diction is distinctive. At the primary and secondary level of his schooling, he learnt Hindi. The influence of this language is clearly manifest in his poetry. Unlike most of Urdu poetry his verses contain minimal Persian or Arabic influence.
In his use of words and their constriction, he reminds one of Amir Khusro and Nazeer Akbar Abadi. In one of his poems, he compares himself with Nazeer.
He was greatly influenced by American fiction writer and poet Edger Allen Poe. He starts the preface of his first volume of poetry with a reference to Poe's poem 'El Dorado' which tells the story of a brave knight who undertakes the expedition of searching for the golden city of his dreams.
Despite an extensive search he is unable to find any such city on the face of the earth. When he is about to end his search he meets a wise old man, who advises him to try to find El Dorado in the valleys of Moon.
After narrating the story Insha adds, 'It is not known whether the knight succeeded in finding his magic city or not, but at least he found a reason to keep striving.' This was Insha's motto too — to keep striving for the achievement of difficult, even impossible goals.
The story also gave him his favourite symbol, the moon, which he used a metaphor in many poems for unceasing strife for achieving an illusive ideal.
Insha's real name was Sher Mohammad and that of his father was Munshi Khan. He experimented with three noms de plume. Firstly, it was Mayoos Sahrai then Qaiser and finally Ibn-i-Insha.
He himself explained the genesis of the last one, by recording that Insha is the derivative of Munshi, which was his father's name. This nom de plume became so famous that his real name was almost completely forgotten.
His personal life was highly organised. Unlike the proverbial Urdu poet, he neither drank nor smoked or even chewed beetle nuts. He was punctual and regular in his sleep routine. His dress was always clean.
He had immense capacity for endurance. Outwardly calm and composed, he bore pain and suffering with forbearance. During the last days his pain was excessive, yet he would try to appear normal, never sharing with anyone the intensity of his ailment, so much so that he wrote a column which bore the title Bemar Ka Hal Acha Hai.
Reading it gave no impression that the writer was in the terminal stage of his illness.
Insha's prose and poetry were the cornucopia which enriched Urdu literature with an opulence that few can match.
He laboured for the love of Urdu literature and did not ask for any reward. The tragedy is that he did not receive as much reward as his immense contribution deserved.
Only stubborn souls like his could blunder on painfully into the desert of mortification with such paltry return.
