June 27, 2008

Mujtaba Hussain: A Purveyor of Happiness
By Syed Arif Hussaini

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 over 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 conferred on him on the last Republic Day of India 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.
(Mr. Mujtaba Husain is scheduled to be in the US in July-August this year and address several literary gatherings)
 (arifhussaini@hotmail.com, 714-921-9634)