The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous Read Online Free PDF Page A

made his mark with a couplet:
     
    Lab bund hain saaqi, meree aakhin ko pilaa
    Voh jaam jo minnatkash-e-sehba nahin hota
     
    My lips are sealed, saaqi let these eyes of mine take a sip
    Without drawing to ask for wine
     
    A few years later, when I returned from England and made my home in Lahore, Faiz and I resumed our acquaintance. Following the instructions of the Communist Party of India, Faiz had joined the British Army and wore an officer’s uniform. It was about this time that Alys, whose elder sister was married to Taseer, came to India to marry Harkirat Singh (later a general) to whom she was engaged while he was a cadet at Sandhurst. By then, however, Harkirat Singh had been married off to a Sikh girl. Alys was heartbroken. On the rebound, she married Faiz and bore him two daughters—Saleema and Muneeza.
    Faiz was no lady killer. He was of short stature, with a dark-brown complexion that looked as if he had been massaged with oil. He was a man of few words, soft-spoken and impassive. It was not his conversation but his poetry that made him the centre of attraction at every party. Besides his genius, he was remarkably free of any kind of prejudice, racial or religious, and many of his closest friends were Hindus and Sikhs. He was a humanist in the best sense of the word. There were many contradictions in his character. He was a communist but was more at ease amongst capitalists. He was a man who denied God yet was most God-fearing. In his writings, he championed the cause of the poor and the downtrodden; but his style of living was that of an aristocrat: his daily consumption of premium Scotch and imported cigarettes would have fed a worker’s family for a month. However, he readily deprived himself of these luxuries to live on rations of dry bread and water given to him when he was imprisoned owing to his involvement with the Communist Party in post-Partition Pakistan.
    The Partition of India left deep wounds in Faiz’s mind. Although he decided to stay on in the country where he was born, he refused to accept the division between the peoples: he was unhappy with the way Punjabi-dominated Pakistan treated its eastern wing, the way Bhutto manoeuvred to deprive Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of the prime ministership of the country and let loose General Tikka Khan army on hapless Bengalis. He remained to the end of his days Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi—he had as little patience with national divisions as he had for the racial or the religious.
    It was Faiz’s years in prison that brought out the best in him as a poet. Being in prison, he once said, was like falling in love again.
     
    Bujha jo rauzan-e-zindaan to dil yeh samjha hai
    Ke teri maang sitaron say bhar gayi hogi
    Chamak uthey hain silasil, to hum nay jaanan hai
    Kay a sahar terey rukh par bikhar gayi hogi
     
    When light in my prison window fades and comes the night
    I think of your dark tresses and stars twinkling in the parting
    When chains that bind me sparkle in the light
    I see your face light up with the light of the morning
     
    I have little doubt that Faiz had a premonition of his death. How else can anyone interpret the last poem that he wrote?
     
    Ajal key haath koi aa raha hai parwanah
    Na jaaney aaj ki fehrist mein raqam kya hai
     
    Death has some ordinance in its hand
    I know not whose names are on the list today
     
    Faiz’s village of nativity, Kala Qadir, where he intended to spend his last days, has renamed itself Faiz Nagar. Faiz could not have asked for a better imam zamin for his journey into the ultimate.

FIRAQ GORAKHPURI
(1896–1982)
    There is a gross misconception that Urdu is the language of Muslims. There were, and there are today, many good poets of Urdu who are Hindus. The greatest amongst them was Raghupati Sahay, better known as Firaq Gorakhpuri, a Kayastha from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh.
    Besides being a good poet, Firaq had a creditable academic record and had qualified for the civil services. But he resigned to join