February
09, 2007
Mujtaba Hussain - A Purveyor of
Happiness
With the award of a Padma Shri
by the Government of India on the last Republic
Day (January 26), the merit of Mujtaba Hussain as
an eminent Urdu writer is now officially recognized.
But, among literary circles of South Asia he has
long been accepted as one of the twin towers of
Urdu humor -the other being Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi
of Pakistan.
Quarter of a century back, the editor of an Islamabad
daily mentioned to me his name as a scintillating
new star who was carving a niche for himself in
the Urdu literary firmament. I managed to get some
of his columns and was much impressed by his subtlety
of intellect, his uncanny sense of humor, and his
feelings over the indifference to Urdu in the very
area that had set up the first University in the
world where Urdu was the medium of instructions
and the official language.
His write-up “An Encounter with the Queen
of Termites” portrays his feelings in this
regard. The Queen informed him that she was most
comfortable in the Urdu section of the library;
for, she could devour, without the fear of any disturbance,
the books there that had been regarded as masterpieces
of literature in the heydays of the language. No
one came now to borrow them, nor did any functionary
bother to even dust them.
This piece was so effective that the eminent Pakistani
artist, Zia Mohiuddin, elected to read, in his distinctive
style, portions from it in one of this TV shows.
Although the subject touched by Mujtaba was quite
sensitive and moving, Mujtaba’s genius turned
that too into a piece of humor.
Another moving piece, also written in a humorous
vein, that I read subsequently was “Charminar
After 400 Years” ( Charminar is a monument
built over 400 years back by the ruler of the day,
Qutub Shah who is better known now as the pioneer
of romantic poetry in Urdu).
Mujtaba’s column portrays the gradual eclipse
of a culture known for its tolerance, courtesy and
consideration for others, in the competitive and
self-serving environ of today.
In early 2000, I met Mujtaba during his brief visit
to Southern California. He struck me as a personification
of humility He gave me copies of some of his books.
I went through them within days and hungered for
his other publications. Fortunately, Mr. Hasan Chishti,
another well-known Urdu poet, writer and a social
figure of Hyderabad who is settled in Chicago, brought
out in two volumes an anthology of Mujtaba’s
selected writings. This provided me with a treasure
trove of Mujtaba’s writings.
The very first column in the first volume on “The
Railway Minister As A Train Passenger” made
me burst out into laughter several times. And, I
found it an effective antidote for a blue mood.
Mr. Chishti has since then published two more volumes
of Mujtaba’s writings, one carrying a selection
of his columns and the other his accounts of the
interesting aspects of life in the foreign countries
he visited. This is indeed a great favor by Mr.
Chishti to the lovers of Urdu literature living
in North America.
During my short visit to Hyderabad in January, 06,
Mr. Mujtaba found time to visit me and presented
his new book “Aap Ki Ta’reef”.
It carries 55 profiles crafted by him of prominent
Urdu poets and writers that he had the advantage
of meeting. And these are in addition to the 41
sketches included in Hasan Chishti’s compilation
(Vol II). Half of these sketches were written on
the demise of the subjects and the others are about
the living literary figures. Even the pieces written
in memory of the dead, do not read like the traditional
obituaries. He has maintained a delicate balance
between informing and entertaining the reader, while
offering tributes to the qualities of head and heart
of his subject.
Mujtaba could achieve this remarkable feat, for
he is essentially a purveyor of happiness.
His profiles remind one of an observation of Mark
Twain: “There has never been an uninteresting
life. Such a thing is impossibility. Inside of the
dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, a tragedy”.
Mujtaba’s incisive insight picks it up, his
racy pen draws the sketch and his impish brush gives
it colorful touches. He has drawn more than one
hundred profiles and has thus presented to Urdu
literature a valuable treasure of material on present
day Urdu literati. His service in this respect is
no less valuable than that of Muhammad Husain Azad
through his “Aab-e-Hayat”. It goes to
the credit of Mujtaba that he has taken no liberty
with facts in order to add color to his narratives.
While going through the sketches drawn by him, a
reader keeps drawing in his own mind a sketch of
Mujtaba too, as he is the major participant in each
encounter. To help the reader further, he has produced
a piece by way of his own obituary.
Titled “Apni Yad Mein” (In My Own Memory)
it is indeed a masterly composition but it appears
as the last item in the second volume of Chishti’s
complications, perhaps because it is an obituary
written by the author of himself. It shows how the
author views himself as an uninvolved spectator.
He highlights his follies instead of sweeping them
under the carpet but he makes these palatable to
his readers as much as to himself by sprinkling
on them his scintillating humor.
At one place he blurts out that he rarely pursued
his own dreams. He followed instead the paths laid
down for him by his friends and relations. Luckily,
“they did not plan to turn him into a pickpocket”.
No doubt, Mujtaba has lived a fuller life, a thoroughly
enjoyable and fruitful life, a life brimming with
laughter and joy among friends and family members.
Being a purveyor of happiness, he could not have
done otherwise.
He hailed from a family of high-achievers and remained
loyal to the tradition. His eldest brother, Mahboob
Husain Jigar was the co-founder of daily Siyasat
half a century back and it is still published from
Hyderabad. His other elder brother, Ibrahim Jalees,
produced while still in mid-twenties the classic
satire on Indian cultural scene of mid-1940s. It
is titled “Chalees Crore Bhikari” Within
a few years of his move to Pakistan, he became the
leading satirist of that country and rose to be
the editor of three Urdu dailies one after the other.
He was the editor of daily Masawat, Karachi, when
it was closed down in mid-1977 by the military government.
Jalees succumbed to the shock and died of a heart
attack.
As a modest, self-effacing person, Mujtaba kept
working harder than his contemporaries but with
little expectation of material rewards. Yet, he
has been given some ten awards by literary socities
at home and abroad. The Padma Shri just conferred
on him crowns such recognitions. There is no gain
without pain and what he has gained now is the reward
of a lifetime of unrelenting effort to serve happiness
to hundreds of thousands of his readers in Urdu,
Hindi and several regional languages. He has to
his credit twenty published works. Some scholars
have selected his writings for their PhD. dissertations.
One hopes the Indian authorities will consider him
for a higher award in the coming years.
(arifhussaini@hotmail.com)
