An evening with Ahmad Faraz

Amarjit Chandan writes about a candid interview with the Urdu poet in London in
1985 for his book Humsukhan

WHEN I met Ahmad Faraz in a pub in Piccadilly London, we both talked about the news of the hanging of a 30-year-old South African poet Benjamin Moloisi.

Faraz begins with a quote from his poem: Qalam surkhroo hai/ ki jo mai ne likha/ vohi aaj main hoon/ vohi aaj tu hai (My pen is placated I am what I have written. I am still the same and you too haven't changed).

Does that mean a poet is answerable to himself primarily; society and ideology come later? Faraz has also written: Merey qalam ka safar raigaan na jayeyga (The journey of my pen shall not go in vain). He goes on in chaste Punjabi: "The journey which involves commitment and some noble cause is not in vain. You can't get the reward in your lifetime. In South Africa Benjamin has been hanged to death. They can’t stop people’s unrest with such atrocities. People’s journey never goes in vain. Tears shed in blood or in ink never go vain."

But commitment with what? With the political movement or with the Party or with the ideology?

Faraz, who was close to the PPP, says no man is isolated and no individual is important. His only strength lies in his thinking, which takes a concrete shape in the form of the movement. You are in it in the front line or in the back seat. You get the feel of a vast multitude. Otherwise no individual is great for me, however great he may be. A poet is not confined to his own experiences; he recreates others’ experiences as well.

But no politician is honest; they keep on changing their colours. They have to. That’s the name of the game. To this Faraz replies: In spite of his simplicity and sincerity a poet knows where political leaders deviate.

Is it necessity or sheer opportunism?

"In fact a poet is always the leader. He is with the vanguard leadership and with the rank and file as well. He plays two roles at the same time. When there is something wrong, he’s guided by his inner voice. So there is no need to feel disheartened. One can be silent to observe, to recoup. But personally I have no guts to lead the movement."

I did not know that Faraz did not write in his mother tongue Pushto and I didn’t want to put him in a spot so I asked him indirectly: "whose language is Urdu in Pakistan?" He doesn’'t like my ‘strange’ question but goes on: "Urhdu (he pronounces Urdu as Urhdu and the word likhari — writer — as Likharhi which sounds to me as Khilarhi — player) doesn’t belong to any specific region of Pakistan; it’s the language of some inhabitants of Karachi."

What follows is what I really want to know: "My father Agha Barq was a Farsi poet. His friends who visited our house, wrote in Urhdu and the girl I first met knew some romantic Urhdu couplets. I started writing couplets in Urhdu for her. I had to work in Karachi Radio where all the staff was from Lucknow and Delhi. I didn’t speak Urhdu well enough, but my written Urhdu wasn’t bad. It can’t work in Pushto. Now it is quite hard to go back."

Faraz defended the feudal poetic form ghazal thus: It is naive to think in terms of nazm or ghazal. A bread is a bread whether it is triangular or round-shaped. All the progressives have written ghazal. What’s the point in being against the form? The fault doesn’t lie with the form but with the poet. Then why Josh Malihabadi didn't write ghazal? "He was against it from a literary viewpoint", answers Faraz. "The ghazal is self-contradictory — the cliches are inherent in it e.g. saqi, qafas, bulbul. That way it is just a formula. Bad poetry is written both in the nazm and ghazal forms. Josh and Noon Meem Rashid were weak ghazalgos. The progressives gave a new life to ghazal. It had become stale. A genre loses its vitality, if it doesn’t get new blood. In ghazal you have to say everything in just two lines. It didn’t suit Josh. He keeps on filling words in his nazms without any imagination. The poem doesn’t rise vertically. Faiz and Rashid brought great themes in ghazal. It is not limited to itself the poet makes it so. A good ghazalgo writes good nazms. No epic poem surpasses this couplet by Ghalib: kahan tammanna ka doosra qadam. It was Ghalib who wrote: Safeena chaheeye iss bahr-e-bekran ke liyey/ Beqadrey zaraf nahin hai ye tungnayey ghazal. (A vessel is needed in this endless ocean, the unbounded ocean cannot be contained within the narrow bounds of the ghazal. Interesting that bahr is used for both ocean and metre) and Punjabi is not that developed yet to reject any poetic form. You write in all forms. One day a Mir will appear in Punjabi. (Majid Sadiqi’s Punjabi translation of Faraz is titled Partan — Layers).

Then we travel a long way to Southall in west London where he was staying with his brother. The house is deserted though whiskey and later food appears mysteriously.

Now Faraz is a bit high and stands up abruptly to bring a framed colour picture showing him shaking hand with Faiz and a femme fatale is standing by Faraz. The picture makes me sad. I have never seen Faiz so old as he appears in the photo. Faraz says that it is the last photo taken of Faiz. Then he goes into its minute details. He is eager to talk about the woman. To change the subject I ask him whether he has written any sensual poetry. He recites his couplet: vo ik rat guzar bhee chuki magar abb takk/visal-e-yar kee lazzat se toot-ta hai badan (That night passed long time back/But my body still aches with the relish of my lover). He declares that he believes in the intensity of life. "Poetry is like manhood. Never separate the ethics of poetry from the beauty of life."

Then he picked up the collected poems of Faiz and read his Punjabi poem aloud: ajj rat ikk rat dee rat jee ke/ asan jug hazaran jee kia e/ ajj rat amrit de jam vangu/ inhan hothan ne yar nu pea liaa e. (Living to the full just one night/I have lived a thousand years/I sipped the body of my lover with my lips/as if it was the goblet of nectar). He adds: you can’t find such sensuality in the whole of Urdu poetry. Faiz becomes his own mashook lover in his poetry: Subah hui to voh pehlu se utha akhir-e-shab/ vo jo ik umar se aya na gaya akhir-e-shab. (The dawn approached and the one who woke up lying next to me/ Had not arrived,nor left me for ages). I see some sense of estrangement and frustration in visal — meeting with the lover — in Faiz’s poetry. But it seems that Faraz doesn’t want to listen to me as he starts talking about the woman in the picture again. Now he tells me that she is a Sikh and is an airhostess. I interrupt: Faiz or Faraz? He tells me: "I won’t talk about myself."

Then Faiz or Jalib?

"Yes, on the one hand you talk to the people face to face. That way Daman and Jalib are very close. On the other hand is Faiz — subtle, soft with new Farsi-tinged imagery. He is a poets’ poet."

Most of Urdu progressive poetry seems to be written by the same poet. It's full of clich`E9d imagery — zulm, jaddojahad, dar-o-rasan, shaheed, khoon and zakham. Faiz and Sahir heavily influence Faraz himself. Without dropping names I raise the question of evolving new imagery and style. He likes the idea and fully agrees with it. But, he says, "there is one problem — we can’t frog-jump. We like to continue the tradition because our readership is still uneducated." Is it?

About the sound of language, he says: "Urhdu’s beauty lies in its elasticity inherited from Farsi and softness from Hindi. No word is soft or crude. It all depends on how it is used. A poet has got very few words in his stock. I was in prison for a while. After the release, I had search for words while talking to others. If you don’t converse, words tend to leave you. Words are like birds, who don’t like to perch on dry trees." He confides: you can’t write every day. You feel drained after writing a poem. Faiz used to translate Iqbal during his ‘dry period’ to "keep his weapons in shape". A ghazal can be written while sitting in a moving tonga, but a poem needs much more meditation!

Faraz has also written natia qalam. "If Faiz could write on a man like Suhravardy, why can’t I write on the Prophet?"

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