Munir Niazi:
The Magician of Words
By Dr Afzal Mirza
Maryland, US
It
was early 1970s and daily Azaad which started publication
at the time of general elections had not closed
down yet. I had started a series of articles on
my Yugoslavian experience in its Sunday Magazine.
I was sitting with Israr Zaidi who was in-charge
of the magazine and taking tea when Munir Niazi
barged in. He was then writing a daily column in
the same paper. He had read my last article in which
I had given a translation of a poem by Croatian
poet Arsen Dedic entitled My Brother. Munir said,
“Afzal Mirza, I have read the translation
of the Croatian poem and I can’t get it out
of my mind. It haunts me all the time.”
At that time I didn’t know that Munir had
served in the Navy and had a strange fascination
for the sea that still haunted him. The ambience
of the poem was a small seaside town of Croatia.
Most of the young men of that area lived with dreams
of sailing to distant lands and in this poem a young
man had written a letter to his brother who had
left the town in pursuit of his dreams but had never
returned.. The verses of the poem were:
My Brother
In summer evenings
The group of friends still meets
In front of café
With wine, cards and guitar
And they talk of so many things to kill boredom
But it always ends on you
My Brother
Much has happened since that day when without a
word you left the house and the port
Some people suspect that you were a poet
But everyone agrees that you were not in your own
hands.
I have inherited some of your things
Your cap, two old suits and books
That I keep against wishes
I don’t know much but it appears to me from
all this
That from life you wanted something more, something
better.
Who knows where you are on which of the seas
Who knows where you are on which of the continents
Whether alone or you have friends as we have
In whose company you drink and cry as I know you.
There is the news that you are alive
There is the news that you are dead
Your last letter reached us long ago.
In the house I’m keeping mum
In front of father I can’t say it
Because he won’t be able to stand it as you
know
In summer evenings the group of friends still meets
in front of café
With guitar, cards and wine
And the time is boring and empty
But every one says it is good, it is fine.
(Translated from Croatian by Afzal Mirza)
Munir Niazi told me that this poem reminds him of
his poem ‘An Old Practice’ that goes
like this:
Whosoever leaves the house
Says
“Don’t forget me
I’ll come back some day
Carrying with me thousands of gifts
I’ll tell you about different people’
But the eyes get weary
And he doesn’t come back
There is a crowd of people
And he is alone
So he disappears among them
When I read these two poems in synergy I found a
similarity of thought as if it was the continuity
of the same dream process. The man sets out to fulfill
his dream of traveling to distant places in search
of a better life and never comes back. Although
all poets are dreamers but there are some rare ones
whose poetry has transcendental appeal. The whole
poetic experience of Munir is derived from his journey
into a dream world of a vast magnitude in which
one comes across dense green forests, haunted empty
havelis and deserted temples, distant islands and
blue seas.
Munir was born in Khanpur (District Hoshiarpur)
in 1928. The area is known for its mango groves,
green pastures and temperate weather. He was a teenager
and at an impressionable period of his life he had
to leave his hometown due to partition of the sub-continent.
It was a traumatic experience for him as he and
his family had to wade through rivers of blood to
reach Sahiwal. That he was a genuine poet is clear
from the fact that he started writing poetry at
a very young age. Munir’s earlier poetry,
like the writings of all the writers of that period,
is characterized by the nostalgia for the places
they left behind. Munir missed the picturesque beauty
of his home town all along.
Luckily a number of good writers had converged on
Sahiwal after partition. Among them were Majid Amjad,
Hamid Akhtar, Israr Zaidi, Jafar Sheerazi and Mustafa
Zaidi who served as deputy commissioner of Sahiwal
for some time. No sooner did they settle down they
started their literary activity. Soon these writers
realized that if they wanted to achieve something
they would have to move to some big town with lot
of literary activity and Lahore was not very far
from there. Hamid Akhtar was the first to shift
to Lahore as he was a devoted communist activist
who had been assigned duty in Lahore by Syed Sajjad
Zaheer the general secretary of the party. Another
left-leaning writer Israr Zaidi followed suit and
next came Munir who joined a Lahore College for
his graduate studies which he couldn’t complete.
One of the most outstanding poets of his time Majid
Amjad, however, remained in Sahiwal till the end.
.
In many ways Munir had derived inspiration from
Majid Amjad. Majid Amjad did not align himself with
any particular school of thought, especially the
progressive writers’ movement; so did Munir.
Majid Amjad wrote of the rural landscape and Munir’s
earlier poetry was full of that imagery. Finally,
Majid Amjad was a nazm poet and wrote few ghazals.
Munir entered the realm of literature as a nazm
poet and to begin with wrote mainly nazms and very
few ghazals.
Munir moved to Lahore in the early 1950s. He was
a handsome person and cut the figure of a happy-go-lucky
young man. That was the reason why he was not taken
seriously during that initial period. Most of his
contemporaries wrote ghazals in the traditional
style and were enjoying their quick popularity Those
were the days when Manto was alive and many young
writers, including Munir, were trying to emulate
his behavior in literary circles.
Munir had a hard time in settling down in Lahore.
Earlier, he had started a magazine named Saat Rang
from Sahiwal which was a commercial failure and
his father was not prepared to waste more money
on his son’s ”frivolous” ambitions.
It was at that time that I first met him.
It so happened that the younger brother of one of
my college fellows in the Government College Lahore
got into his head the idea to become a poet .From
his exercises in the art of poetry writing, one
could easily guess that he had no chances of fulfilling
his desire. But one day he told me that a young
and upcoming poet was shifting to their house. He
also showed me a poem that had been corrected by
that poet. He happened to be Munir Niazi. Now I
don’t remember how long Munir lived in their
house but I remember that I met him a few times
in his room upstairs where every thing was in disarray.
The Munir of those days was a jovial fellow and
more communicative. From his looks and style of
talking one could conclude that he could bag a role
in the movies if he so tried.
Munir worked very hard and succeeded in developing
his own style and diction. His poems and even ghazals
started gaining popularity. To make both ends meet,
he wrote columns for papers like Zamindar. He didn’t
become an actor but he entered the film industry
as a song writer and excelled in it. His famous
ghazal Us bewafa ka sheher hae aur ham haein dosto
became a rage in the sub-continent. His friend Riaz
Shahid used his poetry for his movies that eased
his financial position to some extent. But being
a non-conformist he couldn’t live a comfortable
life like Qateel Shifai or others writing for movies.
Munir never subscribed to any political ideology
but he did have his own views on political matters.
During Ayub Khan’s time when other writers
were enjoying free trips within the country and
abroad through the Pakistan Writers Guild, Munir
dissociated himself from the Guild with his famous
remarks, “Mujhe aise lagta hae jaise mein
zalimon ke sheher se bahir nikal aya hun.”
(I feel as if I have come out of the city of cruel
people). From time to time in his verses he would
comment on the political conditions of the country.
. He wrote:
Munir is mulk par shayed koi saya hae ya kiya
hae
Keh harkat tez tar hae aur safar aahista aahista
Again on the execution of Z.A.Bhutto in one of his
poems he wrote, ”They kill their best man
and then weep for him.”
He became more and more introvert but throughout
his life he never spared those whom he disliked
and could be blunt to any extent. Although in discussions
he did not give the impression of being a very well
read person but actually most of the time he gave
expression to his thoughts in his poetry. I believe
that a great poet is one whose verses are remembered
by the people by heart and are quoted profusely
in everyday life. His short poems and one-liners
have become household quotes. I think Munir Niazi
passed this test. With his death we have lost an
accomplished poet who could create magic with his
words.
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