ࡱ> RTQM "bjbj== "JWWlzzzz '$ 5 Fxzz A;~|z\zz,0'z{ { zhttp://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/jul2002-weekly/nos-14-07-2002/lit.htm death anniversary The man from the mainstream By Dr Afzal Mirza Why was Qateel Shifai successful both as a person and a poet? Here is the answer Qateel Shifai was known for his exuberance but during the last year of his life he was bogged down by paralysis that not only restricted his movement but also affected his speech. A few days before his death, I happened to call him for the last time. It seemed as if he was making an effort to put his words right while talking to me but his mind appeared to be working all right. He did not take me for Dr Ayub Mirza -- usually he would -- because he was sharply aware of the fact that Ayub Mirza no longer lived. "I am feeling better," he told me, "but the doctors say that it will take me a long time to return to normalcy." INCLUDEPICTURE "http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/jul2002-weekly/nos-14-07-2002/images/lit1a1.jpg" \* MERGEFORMATINET It was extremely depressing for me to find someone known for his jollity and wit in a state of such depression and melancholy. A meeting or a conversation with him once used to be a pleasant experience because he possessed a huge stock of jokes and anecdotes about his friends from films and literati. I remember having first met him in 1960 in Abbottabad. Back then Bazm-e-Ilm-o-Fun, of which I was the secretary, had organised an All Pakistan mushaira in which we wanted him to participate. But he conditioned his participation with that of Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi. Those were the days of Ayub Khan's martial law and Qasmi as well as other leftists were in the government's bad books. So, inviting any of them obviously meant trouble. We, therefore, told Qateel about the problems involved in inviting Qasmi and he immediately dropped the condition but insisted that we also invited Bismil Sabri, a woman poet from Sahiwal who wrote under his tutelage and had a lovely voice. Qateel was treated in Abbottabad as people's own man because he belonged to Haripur which is only an hour's drive from Abbottabad. Qateel was, then, in his early 40s. Though his hairline was receding, his stocky built and fair Hazara complexion with light brown eyes made him look younger than his actual years. He stayed in Abbottabad for a couple of days and treated local writers with his exquisite poetry and witty remarks and jokes. All his life, Qateel never forgot his native Haripur town where he was born as Aurangzeb Khan. He had a good voice and therefore used to sing poems while he was in school. Then he started writing poetry and showed it to a poet called Shifai who was basically a physician in the ancient tradition. As a symbol of the respect young Aurangzeb had for his mentor, he adopted the pseudonym Qateel Shifai in his poetry. Haripur had a conducive environment for imbuing a young man with an aesthetic sensibility. The town and its environs were endowed with natural beauty, with crystal clear water springs, green orchards and pine-covered mountains spread all over the place. The traces of the effect the area had on Qateel can be easily found in his early poetry. Some early personal shocks forced him to abandon his studies after he passed his matriculation exam. Thereafter he shifted to Rawalpindi and did odd jobs including working as a booking clerk with a transport company. Zamir Jafri once told me that he was flabbergasted to see Qateel -- who only a night ago had been able to steal the limelight at a mushaira with his poetry -- selling bus tickets the following day. But soon he was in great demand in mushairas. He used to recite his poetry in a lovely rhythm (tarannum). But more than the quality of his voice, it was the musicality of his poetry that first got the attention of movie-makers. He had his first break in Teri Yaad, first Pakistani film made after the partition. But do film songs have any literary value? Many a critic holds they don't. Poet Jan Nisar Akhtar -- father of Indian film song writer Javed Akhtar -- has discussed the issue in a foreword he wrote for Sahir Ludhianvi's collection of film songs, Gata Jai Banjara. Akhtar thinks there is a delicate relationship between poetry and music. One who knows nothing of the rhythm, cannot write correct poetry. That is why, he says, in olden days most of the poets used to recite their poetry according to a set tune, called tarannum. Though film songs cannot be considered to be at par with serious poetry, they still deserve to be accorded their due status in literature, writes Jan Nisar Akhtar. Major Ishaq in his preface to Faiz Ahmad Faiz's Zindan Nama has also hinted at the relationship between poetry and music. "He (Faiz) would start humming and we would know that he is about to come up with some verses," Ishaq writes. It is this sense of a relationship between poetry and music that distinguishes the songs written by Qateel and Sahir from the other run of the mill film stuff. For decades, Qateel's songs reigned supreme in the film world. All major music directors wanted him to write songs for them. But he was not the kind of song writer who would sacrifice literary standards in order to write in accordance with a set tune. He never forgot that he was a poet first and a song writer later. That is why he was able to continue being regarded as a mainstream man of letters, instead of a mere film versifier. This also may have to do something with the fact that apart from writing for films, he produced 15 volumes of non-film poetry. Another fact that went into establishing his literary credentials was the editorship of a prestigious literary magazine Adab-e-Latif that he held for a couple of years. May be because of the abject poverty he had to undergo during the early years of his life, Qateel became allied with the Progressive Writers' Movement and remained attached to it till the end. But despite his attachment with the movement, he was able to get along well with people who belonged to other schools of thought. When Writers' Guild, a brainchild of people like Qudratullah Shahab and Jamiluddin Aali, was formed he managed to secure the post of its secretary general. He continue working in that position for seven years, that is, till the end of Ayub Khan's government. The guild crumbled as soon as it was shorn of official support but Qateel managed to come out of the whole affair unscathed, attending mushairas and writing songs for the movies as frequently as ever. He was equally popular both in India and Pakistan. Similarly, when expatriate Pakistanis started conducting literary activities in their host countries, he became an automatic choice for them as a participant. He travelled to the Middle East, Europe and America to participate in mushairas and other literary functions. Lately, however, his demand as a song writer had started to wane, especially after the introduction of pop music in the local film scene. But he continued participating in mushairas because his was the name, along with that of Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi and Ahmad Faraz, that ensured the success of a mushaira, whether held in Pakistan or somewhere else in the world. During the last few years of his life he developed a mild Alzheimer's dementia. His hands also started trembling continuously. But this did not stop him from participating in literary activities in and outside the country. Commenting on Qateel's poetry, Firaq Gorakhpuri once described him as a "successful poet". I tend to agree with Firaq. Qateel was a successful poet because he wrote uncomplicated poetry in a simple syntax which would stick to one's memory for its sheer musicality. He was successful because he managed to make a comfortable living out of his poetry and made a name which is known wherever Urdu or Hindi is spoken. 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