Shades of Grey

wasif-e-saani ke naam...

Shauq her rung raqeeb-e-sar-o-saamaN nikla
Qais tasveer ke purday meiN bhi uryaaN nikla

... explains your inanity...;)

I will never let my children learn their Faiz from Mr Z Rana.

# 31

``child`` ?

ana....... awwwww daddy is upset.... but then daddy should be careful.... or is it mommy ?

wasif,

what the heck? did i not apologize? if you are going to continue to be rude, then i really have nothing more to say to you. and yes, for the last time, i have read hassan kooza gar, ALL of its sections. why don`t you enlighten me, child, as to what it is about? on second thought, please do not bother replying to me anymore. thank you.

# 28

ana... again I ask you; in the english that you have learnt in your life, ``little`` means ``short`` ??? And ``major`` means ``long`` ??

so you have read hassan kooza gar and heard it recited also ? wow ! and you are aware of what it is ? pray enlighten me.... what is it ?

#29

as for you Khamkhwa, the less said the better .... except of course, that your name is quite an end to itself when it comes to literature.

...anyone who thinks iqbal is a better poet than ghalib, meer, aatish, momin, hasrat, jigar, faiz and daagh...is talking kaka...and that`s my ``humble`` opinion...

wasif:

with pleasure :)

He has produced numerous little beautiful poems here and there but not one major poem. Let alone Iqbal, not even something like Rashed`s ``Hassan Kooza Gar``.

now perhaps i misinterpreted in applying ``length`` to the word ``major`` but i have heard comments made about ``length`` of poems before, which is what this remark reminded me of. i apologize if you felt slighted to where you felt you had to be rude.

and wasif i have read hassan kooza gar, as well as heard it recited. i am aware of what it is. but thanks for reminding me. it has been years since i read it afterall. :)

goodbye.

# 20 ana

``i`m not entirely certain that the greatness of a poet should be measured by the length of poems that he writes. nor do i think it is entirely fair to judge faiz by noon meem rashed. both were very different poets. rashed, if i remember correctly, was more of a naturalist, and much of his poetry was in that vein.``

ana, please pinpoint where i said the length of a poem is the index to a poet`s greatness. In the english that you have learnt in your life, are the words ``major`` and ``long`` synonymous ? You do seem to be obsessed by the ``length`` of things.... first you try to imply as if i used that word....then you say ``hassan kooza gar is a beautiful lengthy poem`` . Whats with the ``length`` of things ana ???? And btw, Hassan Kooza Gar is four poems, not one.

Also, you are evidently ignorant of the fact that Rashed was a literally critic of great merit. What he wrote about Faiz was a part of a detailed essay on Faiz.

and Mr Ras.... # 23....

please dont be daft.

``Faiz Sahib was the finest Urdu poet that the language has produced since Ghalib.`` I am surprised that anyone who can say that, in disregard of Iqbal, doesnt think that Jalib was greater than them all.

Zrana #25 and mohamedamjad #24:

…at the mast there is a ‘link’ for news and donations and after the first quake related bulletin by chowk staff on 10/08 there are about 16 articles of which about 10 are not directly quake related…(see exhibit A)

the quake is a tragedy of immense proportions and nobody is denying that…and to the extent possible kind folks are donating, volunteering and helping the victims from everywhere …but life does not end there…

imho so far chowk has embarked on a balanced walk


Exhibit A:

The ground beneath Pakistan`s feet - Nadeem Paracha 10/16/2005
Nobody`s World - Mehwesh Rehman 10/16/2005
Can Condi take on Hillary? - Mohammad Gill 10/16/2005
Shades of Grey - Z Rana 10/14/2005
Notes from Latin America - Rezwan Bajwa 10/14/2005
No Burial for Balakot - Pervez Hoodbhoy 10/13/2005
Preparing for Aftershocks to the Pakistan Earthquake - Tauheed Ahmed 10/13/2005
Samosey mein aloo: why not Laloo? - Farzana Versey 10/12/2005
NWFP Demonstrators Fury against No Response from Army - Omar Khan 10/12/2005
Amway. Conway? - Sunil K Poolani 10/12/2005
Poor People are Dogs or Even Worse! - Mubashir Butt 10/11/2005
A Certain Age - Revathy Gopal 10/11/2005
The State of the World and other ruminations - Tupac Amaru 10/10/2005
High talk in Bangkok - Nazar Khan 10/10/2005
Earthquake Relief Efforts - Bina Shah 10/10/2005
Earthquake in Pakistan - ijaz gul 10/10/2005
Deadly Earthquake - Chowk Staff 10/08/2005

Re: # 24

Dear Amjad Sahab,

I appreciate your anguish and dismay as we all share the same feelings with you. In my defense I have this to say, I submitted this article well before the tragedy happened; it just happened to be posted now at this unopportune moment. I had no control over the timing. Since then as you can see I have refrained from lengthy discussions and interactions despite personal attacks, as I also feel that this is not the time for these things.

As far as helping the victims is concerned it is a very personal matter, but rest assured every friend of ours (including Ali Hashmi, with whom I interact on our discussion board on a regular basis) is doing their best to support the vicitms. As doctors we feel more obligated to do that. I am going to let Ali respond to this as well.

People who have any sympathy with poor, hapless Pakistanis would be well-advised to refrain from creating or perpetuating polemics at this delicate hour in Pakistan. Aap Faiz saheb par zulm baad meiN kar laiN. But at this time concentrate on helping the poorest of the poor on the face of earth. My friend`s little nephews were extricated from Muzaffar Abad`s rubble after four days. Their bones are crushed, the marrow peeping out in frozen driblets. I know a family who have lost eight members and I DO NOT want to read ``How did a kid growing up in Sialkot and memorizing Quran eventually became a socialist?`` I wanted to tackle this question but it seems moronic to discuss such senseless questions. Tell me how many cases of antibiotics, needles, pain killers have you sent to Abbottabad. Do you have spare shoes, socks, mufflers, winter jackets, sweaters, blankets, or sleepingbags that are stockpiled in your comfy basement that you can mail to PIA in New York. Let us determine our priorities first, doctor saheb!

I am no master of Urdu BUT TO ME ....

Faiz Sahib was the finest Urdu poet that the language has produced since Ghalib.

And on top of his mastery as a writer, he was a humanitarian and a sympathetic

documenter of injustice around the world. His being a Socialist takes a back seat

to his other qualities. It was not the most important facet of his life to his admirers.


RE: #18 Faiz did not write too much ``B Grade`` poetry. But sometimes I think

that he was trying to add too much class to the artistic lives of a third rate people!




Ras


PS: Khalid Hasan Sahib, if you read this please try to add your views here. Many have

appreciated your wrtings on Manto on Chowk. Faiz would be a nice topic for you too.

it`s comforting to know that Faiz would hold similar views as many of us do about today`s Pakistan - a failed state in the hands of facists!

but that doesn`t mean one cannot laugh at hearing the facist Musharaf quote Faiz in his speeches :D

I wrote this after reading Zulfi`s article and he asked my permission to post it on his website www.zrana.com. I thought I would share it with chowk members.

Dear Zulfi; I read with interest your article “Shades of Grey”.

Let me clarify a few things and raise a few pertinent issues: What is this `movement` that you refer to that was ``initiated in 1936 along the lines of the Russian Socialist movement”?
I am aware of no such `movement`. Nana, like others of the time, was affected by the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. He became a member of the progressive/marxist/socialist current of that time (which included people like Hassan Zaheer, Sibte Hasan, Mian Iftikhar-ud-Din, the founder of Progressive Publications limited and publisher of ``Pakistan Times``, ``Imroze``, ``Lail-O-Nehar``, Mazhar Ali Khan and his wife Tahira, the parents of the well known student leader and activist Tariq Ali etc).

``...innermost coterie if you will. Their very identity and sustenance depends on being associated with Faiz and his movement.``

I must take strong exception to this statement since you are presumably including me and my family in this `coterie`. Those who know me well also know that not only did my relationship to Nana never help me in any way that I can remember, as I have pointed out in the article, it was a millstone around my family’s neck precisely because Nana, through his poetry and his work insisted on taking the side of the poor, the dispossessed, and the powerless. If he had compromised with the powers that be, perhaps we, too, would have been rewarded with land, estates, titles etc. Obviously this would have been at the cost of his almost universal adoration among ordinary people in Pakistan, India and the world over (some of which has been extended to us, his immediate family).

Regarding your questions, they seem too elementary for someone of your intellect.

``Firstly, how did a kid growing up in Sialkot and memorizing the Quran eventually become a socialist?``

If you are looking for an evolution of his political thought, you will have to read one of his numerous autobiographies. My opinion is that he could see, as can anyone who wants to, that organized religion, as practiced in Pakistan and everywhere has always been a tool in the hand of rulers to suppress, exploit and subjugate the common man while conveniently offering them their reward in a mythical afterworld. The *idea* of socialism though offers social justice, democracy, freedom of opportunity, respect for human rights, women`s rights etc. This, by the way, is also what advocates of religion (any religion) say they want, except: 1.They only want it for believers and the rest can (literally) go to hell and 2. Their actions betray their true beliefs (see above)

``Secondly, why did a man who rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel under the British Raj chose to be at odds with his own government.``

This is an even easier one. He joined the British Army in 1941-42 when the Indian Communists/Socialists changed their tactics from opposing the second World War as a war between two imperialist powers (Germany and Britain) to supporting the Allied effort after the USSR was attacked by Germany in 1941. Despite what we know about the excesses of the Stalin government in the USSR, a discussion of which is far beyond the scope of this post, it was, at that time, the only government in the world which claimed to stand for the rights of workers, peasants and common people.

Why did he choose to be at odds with the Pakistan government?

Because it was (and remains) a government of unelected bureacrats and senior Army officers representing the large land lords of the Punjab, totally unrepresentative of the people of Pakistan and indifferent to their suffering. He, and others, had initially opposed the partition of India along communal lines (as did Mr. Jinnah) and subsequently expressed his sadness in ``Yeh daagh daagh ujaala, yeh shab gazeeda sahar/Woh intezaar tha jis kaa, yeh woh sahar toe nahin``

``Thirdly, how could a person accept Lenin Award defying the national spirit of the time...?”

Surely you are joking when you talk about ``national spirit``? His actions were quite consistent with his beliefs that all workers in the world were a common fraternity and the idea of `national spirit`, like the idea of the nation-state itself was a tool in the hands of rulers to pit workers of one country against another, something that continues to this day.

The last 40 years have proven that he was quite correct in not allying himself with the rulers of Pakistan. Since that time, nothing has been resolved in Pakistan. We are again under military rule. Unemployment, education, civil rights, law and order; the same problems we faced in 1947 are nowhere near resolution and seem to be steadily getting worse. Let me also point out the `national spirit` of the majority of our medical college group members (including myself) who have voted with their feet and given a resounding `thumbs down` to Pakistan by abandoning it for greener pastures in the West.

``innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire between the powers to be and the socialist movement.`` This is incorrect. My family and I are proud to be the inheritors of his legacy. He was a conscious proponent of workers` rights, democracy, students` rights etc and we have tried to carry on his work. Our family has been somewhat co-opted into the mainstream since then, as tends to happen to all radical groupings. However ,my mother is a vocal proponent of women`s rights, especially young girls in rural Pakistan and has lectured extensively, travelled all over the world, made documentaries, raised funds and done all kinds of work for them. My brother is now following in her footsteps. He jokes that he has to do his `fluff` work on Geo, PTV etc to pay for his `serious` work. My khala and her husband have been active members of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan for years and have worked with Amnesty International, Oxfam etc etc. I assure you that none of us is sorry for our beliefs or our actions in service of those beliefs. Those beliefs are shared by millions in Pakistan and all over the world.

On a personal note, I did not write the article to elicit sympathy even though a couple of other people commented that it seemed a touch `whiny`. In my defense, all of the things I have written about and expounded on above, I understood late. At 12 or 13 years of age, all I wanted was to `fit in` (like a typical teenager). I hated that my grandfather was politically notorious and that we all were in the limelight because of him. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I realize that I should have been proud of what he stood for as I am now.

There are, I`m sure, many people who agree with your sentiment that he was ``somebody who wrote mighty good poetry - nothing more nothing less``. There are others who would disagree. Its like saying Einstein was a physicist, nothing more, nothing less or that Mr.Jinnah was a politician, nothing more, nothing less. I`m glad you like his poetry, but, as with all of us, our work is a reflection of who we are which in turn is a result of what we do. Nana was a great poet because he chose to write about the struggles of common people, he worked among them as a trade union activist, he edited a newspaper that gave voice to the concerns of common people and he chose not to become the official scribe of the rulers of the day.

A wise man once said ``We are not what we think, we are not what we feel, we are not what we say; we are what we do``. All of us might give that a thought as we wax eloquent about the problems facing the `Muslim Ummah` or the trials of common people in Pakistan while we live our comfortable, upper middle class lives in America.

if indeed in a nutshell, focusing on faiz`s poetry and forgetting everything else was the purpose of this article, unfortunately that isn`t quite evident here because the last thing that was really focused on was his poetry. faiz being a poet that one enjoys reading once in a while, etcetera etcetera etcetera isn`t really focusing on his poetry.

if indeed one wanted to focus entirely on his poetry, the thing to have done would have been to go into it more than just what appears to be surface. in my humble opinion, i believe that one cannot just focus on poetry and forget everything else, but then again i happen to come from the line of thinking that literature (fiction, poetry) cannot be separated from social issues. i love faiz`s romantic or perhaps i should say ``love`` poetry as well, but i also happen to believe that what is referred to as his ``political`` poetry is love poetry as well.

this article seems to be more of a response to ali hashmi`s article but once that is mentioned, there`s really no further elaboration on it other than what the writer says at the end. and what the writer seems to be saying is that faiz did seem to have it better than most persecuted poets. and his response to ali is that his family could not have been ``innocent bystanders``. what does that mean? and what does that have to do with focusing more on faiz`s poetry? this sounds more like a justification for the ``dehria`` label, and the writer`s own ``inadvertent`` indictment of hashmi.

if the writer truly wanted to focus primarily on faiz`s poetry and nothing else, then an attempted apologia or explanation for his behavior towards his grandson could have been left out. as it is, the focus is missing from this article.

- - -
i`m not entirely certain that the greatness of a poet should be measured by the length of poems that he writes. nor do i think it is entirely fair to judge faiz by noon meem rashed. both were very different poets. rashed, if i remember correctly, was more of a naturalist, and much of his poetry was in that vein. ``hassan koozagar`` is a beautiful lengthy poem, as are other poems that rashed has written.

greatness is ascribed by others. did faiz aim to write ``great`` poetry? perhaps he could have done much better had he not been lazy, but as i look at what is still just part of the body of his work, i really don`t think he has fared too badly. :)

and since wasif has mentioned heart-attack, agar ijaazat ho tau:

dard itna tha ke uss raat dil-e-vehshi ne
har rag-e-jaan se ulajhna chaha,
har bun-e-moo se tapakna chaha
aur kahiN door kahiN teray seh`n-e-chaman maiN goya
patta patta meray afsurdah lahoo maiN dhul kar
husn-e-mehtab se aazurdah nazar aanay laga;
meray veerana-e-tan maiN goya
saaray dukkhtay huay reshoN ki tanabaiN khul kar
silsila war pata denay lageeN
rukhsat-e-qafila-e-shauq ki tayyari ka;
aur jab yaad ki bujhti hui sham`oN maiN nazar aaya kahiN
ek pal, aakhri lamha teri dildaari ka,
dard itna tha ke uss se bhi guzarna chaha
hum ne chaha bhi, magar dil na Thehrna chaha

--faiz

Re: # 14

Hp bhayyaa.....
Thanks for the extra info. You seem far more knowledgeable about this whole conspiracy theory. So I will just shut up for now.