Granted that we are a strange people - neither well-steeped in classics nor in science and technology except for a few exceptions. The number of Ph. Ds --- mostly in humanities ---- who pass-out from our universities, is approximately 250 whereas in India it is ten times over i.e. 2,500. The number of poets is in legion and some of them are acknowledged to be good and important enough.
Nigar Sehbai was included among 'the good and important' group of our country's poets. Yet, his death was unnoticed. In Karachi, only one or two newspapers carried a two-three lines news. The readers may be wondering who was Nigar Sehbai, after all. May be this curiosity was the only well-intended point to be given due attention.
Born in early 30s, Nigar Sehbai's childhood days were spent in Madras and Aurangabad. Negar Sehbai lovingly remembered his Persian teacher, Prof. Ghulam Mohiuddin Asar, who later on migrated to Lahore and was a name in Lahore's literary circles. Prof. Asrar's daughter, Salma Baig is a well-known T.V. compere. It was Prof. Asar who spotted in Nigar Sehbai the promise that he had in him. It was Hameed Nagpuri and Manzoor Hussain Shaur who encouraged him to take up the call of the Muse seriously.
When his first collection of petry Man Gagar was launched in 1978, Aziz Hamid Madani had eulogized the Hindi Ras of Nigar's poetry quite generously. Aziz Hamid Madani was a man of few words. He seldom spoke and when he did he was taken very seriously. I also wrote a column in 1978 which could be taken as a complimentary piece of writings. Nigar Sehbai was heavily influenced by Wahdat-ul-Wujood. His discipleship of Saleem Ahmed who was in turn, a disciple of Zaheen Shah Taji, could be ascribed to this bent of mind. He believed that he was serving the cause of Islamic mysticism through his Hindi lyrics. He felt at home in Hindi and I remember that quite a substantial part of his Urdu poetry was translated in Hindi. Athar Nafees a contemporary Urdu poet of high standing was his close friend along with Shamim Ahmed, Jamal Panipuri and Saqi Farooqi.
I remember him as a poet who was wholly committed to the Muse. My goodness! his recital used to be so ecstatic that one was really thrilled to see a poet, so possessed as to give you the feeling of being just a flute giving vent top the inner feelings of a love-born. There is no doubt that he spurned any suggestion that his poetry was the extension of Bhagti poet. He often said what Rama and Krishna were the incarnations of Vishnu for Vishnuvites but the Prophet of Islam was, for him, the first principle of creation.
Nigar Sehbai's other collections of poetry were "Jeewan Darpan" and "Ant-Se Aagey". All of them in the best tradition of exquisite Hindi poetry. However, Nigar Sehbai lived in a social milien where cheap Hindi songs had all the reasons for their popularity while serious mystical Hindi Ras Urdu poetry has to suffer from a built-in resistance.
I believe that with the change of political atmosphere in the region, the permissiveness of linguistic usage is also affected. We saw a very unused empirical and mechanical English prose in the writings of Sir Charles Lyell. Charless Darwin, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud - and its impact on the language of English criticism and, to some extent, on poetry just because the 19th century had gone whole hog with the empirical and mechanistic language in compliance with the spirit of the age.
Nigar Sehbai believed in leaps of faith. He didn't believe in rationalization of God. He thought that individual responsibility to enter into a private, direct relationship with God was essential as all the collectivist aims, by removing individual responsibility, create a sense of existential dread which only the "leap of faith can cure".
Nigar Sehbai in articulating above feelings used to express Zaheen Shah Taji's views. Wahdat-ul-Wujood, a popular school of mysticism in Islam, has been held as an extension of Vedantic Greek thought.
Nigar Sehbai thought that our society was a totally fragmented one. The old society has almost vanished without giving birth to the new. The islands of the old society were resistant to change, even if it could be a useful one. The new content in old form was also experiencing the same resistance and the poets who have been experiencing this situation should not feel jilted. It was quite heartening that a book entitled "Nigar Sehbai" has come out as a posthumous tribute to Nigar Sehbai. Edited by Yousuf Tanveer, its appearance to Khwaja Razi Haider who has done well to bring Nigar Sehbai in the full focus.
The Academy of letters, Karachi, did well to remember Nigar Sehbai along with Nusrat Abro, a Sindhi writer of repute. This is only one way of paying homage to writers who have rendered valuable service to our literature.
Azhar Jawaid's good poetry
Azhar Jawaid's first collection of poetry "Gham-i-Ishq Gar Na Hota" has attracted the attention of poetry lovers. As someone who is writing poetry for over 40 years, he has carved out for himself a place for his craftsmanship as a Nazm poet. His ghazals are also quite a departure - content-wise - as they, too, express feelings which have been an anathema to traditional ghazal poets.
As editor of Takhleeq, a monthly journal which has been growing in stature with the passage of time unlike many Urdu journals which have had a different experience, his success lies in his being innovative. His journal has also served Punjabi language and literature and it is, perhaps, a rare journal to stick to its bilingualism.
The pattern of Azhar Jawaid's Nazms shows a predilection for dramatic effect. He excels in irony and is one of those people who don't believe in using ideology as a carnation flower, firmly tucked on the lapels of their coats. It is subsumed in the text, like a simmering feeling. The readers are aware that Azhar Jawaid has a world-view which cherishes equity. It is the humanistic values of fairplay and justice in a society which ensure its growth on right lines. We cannot have ideal human relations in a society where injustice prevails as a norm of life. Even feelings of love have the stamp of social strains and tensions. Azhar Jawaid's poems, Be-Sabati, Faisla, Tashkeek, Janam, Hijrat, Be-Chargi, Janam Ke Liye, Shehzadi Aur Ghulam, and Khud Farebi go a long way to prove this point. His feelings - pangs of separation - are self-evident.
Azhar Jawaid's poems have an undisputable architectural finesse in form as well as content. Frankly, I have always believed that Azhar Jawaid is a genuine poet of unconventional 'form'. The stereotype poetry is not his forte. And the preface he has written for his first collection proves that he is quite a poet - if being a bit allergic to the gimmicks his 'more worldly wise' peers usually employ to sound more serious and committed to the Muse than they are. Here we find Azhar Jawaid giving more importance to human relations he has cultivated over the years than pointing to his individual forte in poetry. He shies away from talking about his poetry. He would rather like to gloss over it.
The importance he has given to Salima Hashmi's title of the collection proves that he can easily sacrifice his poetry to Salima's art. Isn't it a proof of his self-resignation. Salima's title is very evocative indeed. But Azhar's poetry is no less.
I feel pleasure in recommending Azhar Jawaid's harvest of delectable poetry to the lovers of poetry.