Love & Revolution: Faiz Ahmad Faiz

                                                                                                                                                  Biography

Love and Revolution: Faiz Ahmad Faiz

Ali Madih Hashmi

और कुछ देर में जब फिर मिरे तन्हा दिल को

फ़िक्र आ लेगी कि तन्हाई का क्या चारा करे

दर्द आएगा दबे पाँव लिए सुर्ख़ चराग़

वो जो इक दर्द धड़कता है कहीं दिल से परे …

In a moment, when once again, my lonesome heart will be

burdened by the worry, ‘what should it do with its solitude?’

Pain will steal in on its toes, bearing inflamed lamps.

Pain which throbs somewhere beyond heart’s infinitude.

ये दाग़ दाग़ उजाला ये शब-गज़ीदा सहर

वो इंतिज़ार था जिस का ये वो सहर तो नहीं…

This spot-ridden light, this night-smitten dawn,

This is not the dawn, for which we waited long.

आ कि वाबस्ता हैं उस हुस्न की यादें तुझ से

जिस ने इस दिल को परी-ख़ाना बना रक्खा था

जिस की उल्फ़त में भुला रक्खी थी दुनिया हम ने

दहर को दहर का अफ़्साना बना रक्खा था …

Come, for tied with you are the memories of that beauty,

Which had turned this heart into a house of fairy.

In whose love I had forgotten the real world,

And believed this world a tale imaginary.

(English translation is mine)

Who can resist the lure of such pure poetry? It grips your heart, it reverberates ceaselessly in your mind and it makes life meaningful, serene and beautiful. Were it not for the poetry of Faiz, Ghalib, Kaifi Azami, Mahadevi Verma, Jayashankar Prasad, Harivanshrai Bachhan and many others, a corner of my heart would have lain barren and I would never have experienced this facet of my sentience.

Faiz is a poet I adore. The word ‘awe’ has lost its meaning in the language of youth today, when it’s used to describe all and sundry. But if I permit myself to say I am in awe of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, I have the truest meaning of the word in mind. Nothing surpasses an awesome experience. Faiz’s poetry affords my mind such heights of thitherto uncharted realms of pleasure.

A friend, who loves poetry and books and whom I must have pestered much with effusive praise of Faiz, presented me this book. I couldn’t thank him enough. I have read, re-read and then read again and again, Faiz’s complete collection of poetry in Devanagari, Sare Suckhan Hamare. This and Deewan-e-Ghalib occupy the most accessible nook in my bookrack that languishes at an arm’s length-distance from my reading-chair. I dip into these books every now and then. Their protean meanings and ever-shining beauty never fail to amaze me. I had an idea of Faiz’s left-leaning ideology and his revolutionary bent of mind from his poetry. But I did not know in details, his life story and circumstances that moulded him. Ali Madeeh Hashmi is Faiz’s grandson. He had access not only to published works of and on Faiz, but also innumerable unpublished correspondence and miscellanea that were in the possession of Faiz’s relatives and friends. More importantly he had an unlimited access to those persons, who had known Faiz in his lifetime. Thus, he embellishes his story with oral accounts of such people.

Hashmi has meticulously chronicled Faiz’s story from his birth to death. He writes clearly and concisely about the circumstances, political and social, that Faiz lived in. He writes about Faiz’s poetry as and when these emerged. It’s a coherent account written in an easy prose. He is often repetitive and this irks the reader. But a more glaring lacuna in the book I find is this. He has failed to capture the melancholia, the otherworldliness, the deep sorrows that must have gripped Faiz and that, I imagine, must have gone into creation of such moving imagery of human condition, in one of the greatest such endeavours of human mind. Hashmi’s language does not match the sublime beauty of Faiz’s works. He fails to tell us about the turmoil, the vicissitudes afflicting the poet’s mind, that sculpted such ineffably poignant and delicate poems, each an indelible etching on Universes’ gossamer fabric.

I, nevertheless, enjoyed reading Faiz’s life story and pulled out my copy of Sare Sukhan Hamare many times to immerse once again in the ocean of rapture, as and when a reference to a particular poem occurred in the book.

Book is a must-read for Faiz fans.