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review Cyberspell Zia
Mohyeddin column
review It is deplorable that most
of our senior writers, turning into dismissive critics with advancing age,
now Rawalpindi-Islamabad was once known as shehr-e-afsana in the 1970s and '80s. Only a small number of poets could make their presence felt in the midst of enthusiastic short story writers like Rashid Amjad, Maushayad, Ahmad Dawood, Ahmad Javed, Mirza Hamed Beg, Ejaz Rahi, Mazharul Islam and Yousuf Chaudry -- and of course away from this there lives that quiet brilliant soul, Khalida Hussain. In every literary gathering or function, the short story was exclusively the centre of heated, sometimes hostile discussions and exchanges. But, with each passing year, the situation gradually tilted in favour of poetry. Now, the proportion of short story writers to poets has been reversed. New magazines of substance are also being edited by the poets. And most of them are unconventional, modern nazm poets. It wouldn't be illogical to term the twin city as shehr-e-nazm now. Two volumes from Pindi-based poets which have been recently published are 'Mitti ka mazmoon' by Farukhyar and 'Katha neelay pani ki' by Arshad Meraj. Farukhyar, who is a
seasoned campaigner, has been mild and unhurried about this, his first, book.
He refrained from pursuing the manipulative sharpness of those who believe in
gaining immediate applause. The book is exclusively reserved for poems. He hasn't included any introductory preface or flaps displaying his confidence in himself, or even his shyness. The title, 'Mitti ka mazmoon', conveys impressively deep meanings. It opens with the poem 'Mujhay bolnay do', in which the poet finds himself encircled by a gang of oppressors. They might even be his loved ones -- the poem doesn't commit itself either way. It's somewhat an abstract poem, not in terms of words but in its construction; this abstraction runs through the poem as an undercurrent. The gaps in Farukhyar's poems are not too big to be filled, are part of the style of his poetry. Like his contemporaries, Farukhyar's dominant theme is the unending fruitless search for meanings of existence. He talks of extinction (fana), identity crisis, the coarse hardships in earning bread, and the failure of basic passions like love to console and compensate him. This sense of helplessness runs throughout his beautiful mild-toned poetry. His expression is metaphorical, occasionally abstract. At times he breaks this shell but avoids being un-poetically loud. If we attempt to draw a picture of his poems in terms of unity of thought and recurrence of ideas, it becomes difficult to identify single strokes in them. His tone, mild, deep and charged with emotions, reminds the reader, in a few poems and lines, of Majid Amjad. He also incorporates words of English in his poems, for which Urdu substitutes, which are perhaps better suited, cannot be unknown to him. These words, standing aloof from the rhythmic flow of his poetry, induce in the reader a lapse of concentration and dilute the aesthetic effect. Such experimentation also hints at the poet's quest to hit an individualistic identity. His main strength is his lyricism. It is not a standard device of his poetry, but whenever he has taken to it, he has made exceptionally spell-binding poetry. It is perhaps here that one can find the pivot of his creative talent. Philosophical clarity and vision merged with his artistic command make the book an important collection of modern poetry. This book gives him a seat among the important Urdu poets of our time. Arshad Meraj is a relatively new entrant, making his presence felt in the from of his first collection of poems, 'Katha neelay pani ke' -- a readable, involving book. Remarks by Afteed Iqbal Shamim, a celebrated poet, help the reader to understand the creative aspects of Meraj's poetry. Afteed Iqbal Shamim calls one poem in the book a deviation from the norms of our static poetic scenario, while in another poem he discovers an element of khud kalami (talking to himself). He appreciates the poet's skill to cover a vast terrain with appreciable economy of words, while in another poem he identifies lyricism in his poetry. Arshad Meraj is essentially a poet of resistance. He is filled with dejection and anger. He keeps a purpose in front of him while creating a poem. The problem with all such creative pursuits inspired and guided by a pre-determined conclusion, is that they so frequently fall short of literary standards. But Arshad has been tactful enough to stay clear of this damaging possibility. He remains aesthetically and linguistically poetic to the core. But it cannot go unnoticed that his themes are repeated a bit more frequently than required. Another noticeable element is that he seems to plan the construction of his poems. An element of planning is always present while one is brining out a poem from a huge lump of words and thoughts, but if it is artfully concealed, which is perhaps a more gutsy practice, it can be a greater strength. Arshad mostly succeeds in camouflaging the intent of his poems, but sometimes this element of deliberation comes to the surface. He also incorporates words from English, Punjabi and Hindi, which adds to the value of his poetry and also enriches Urdu as a language, but in places hurts the natural flow of the poems. The person emerging from the book is tender hearted and is painfully conscious of the sociopolitical chaos surrounding him. He doesn't let the exteriorised content override and dominate his subjective feelings. Actually, his poetry displays a beautiful assimilation of the two. His diction, vocabulary, manner of presentation, all confirm him as a poet deserving our appreciation. This promising poet belongs to the constellation of our emerging poets exclusively devoted to writing poetry.
Urdu has become a moribund
language at many frontiers. Most of our thinkers have no clue about the The problem is that Urdu cannot be used in the address bars in its present script but only in Roman script. While our software developers who work with codification of Urdu for computer processing are still trying to develop a universal standard for Urdu letters and diacritical marks, an entire generation is busy romanizing Urdu ad hoc in chat rooms and emails. The users of Urdu have developed their own ways of coping with the lacks created by our policymakers. The young generation has developed its own shortened versions of aslam o ulaikum in SMS messages and now type an abbreviated 'AoA' on the mobile keypad. In this popular sphere, Urdu is developing and responding healthily to the influence of globalisation. The area in which Urdu is in serious need of sustenance is the response of the official and formal sector to the global changes. The informal sector of Urdu users is creative enough to ensure its own survival. Another area where Urdu is evolving too fast for the nastaliq types is the world of advertising. The 'thund program' of Sprite, the romanized promises of 'moj and masti' on many potato-chip products, the promises of maza and slogans of 'jago aur jagao' by Nestle, should have already told the guardians of our cognitive and linguistic purity that the rules of the game have changed for ever. With this perspective, Rahat Kazmi's diagnosis hits the proverbial bull's already cliche-ridden eye. This started a debate in the national press and Intizar Hussain and Khalid Ahmed joined the fray. All of these analysts discussed the situation with their own conclusions already determined. Khalid Ahmed was against the influence of official ideology and declared Urdu to be part of the national discourse in one breath in his response to Intizar Hussain. Both of these terms, 'discourse' and 'ideology' belong to two different sets of political vocabulary. Foucault had intended the word 'discourse' to be an opponent of the word 'ideology' because 'ideology' as a term assumes some areas of human life to be independent of ideological influence and therefore 'true'. The word 'discourse' was deployed because there was no ideology-free knowledge and then everything was just discourse. In other words, our analysts need to do their homework before they start deploying analytical tools. Khalid Ahmed is against the market-driven state and considers the market to be a non-creative influence on the language. Marquez, and his brand of magical realism, is then supposed to be a creative evolution of language and literature. All this is also already passe. Magical realism was also part of the market-driven business of international publishing houses. The problem of Urdu literature may be that it does not produce anything marketable internationally. Most of our litterateurs are concerned with identity politics of the Punjabi-versus-Mohajir kind. How is this globally relevant? Nobody knows. The language of chat rooms and SMS and the column in the Urdu Sunday magazine of Jang newspaper titled 'Net-beetiyaan', is more relevant to the existing times. Both the identitarian novelists like Intizar Hussain and the soft-leftist analysis of Khalid Ahmed need to upgrade their analytical tools. The times have already changed. Even the madrassahs will have mandatory computer literacy soon. It will be a pleasant surprise if mullahs-in-training start enjoying chatting with students in American universities. They will get to know the objects of their teachers' hatred more intimately and will perhaps not want to wage jihad against their chat buddies. It is all quite possible, since many mullahs are already enjoying the pleasures of television, Toyota Corollas and mobile phones. The world is increasingly becoming a one-way street. There is no cure for the internet and the seduction of consumerist ecstasy in sight. Identity will become another marketable commodity. Urdu will evolve through thumbs-on mobile buttons and fingers on ecstatic keyboards. We will see the evolution of Urdu literature when our novelists start writing about the cyber love-affairs and break-ups of purdah-clad girls and depict all this agony in virtual dialogues in SMS-style Urdu. Art should imitate reality.
Moeen Akhtar may have his detractors -- God knows he has millions of admirers -- but there is hardly any one who does not find him to be unique. The existence of comedy like his is evidence of the huge chasm that exists between the types known as 'Urdu medium' and 'English medium'. In his act, class chafes against class, hypocrisy against sincerity, jingoism against enlightened modernism. The primary fact about Moeen Akhtar is that he is extremely funny. It is easy to pass over the skill with which he impresses his viewers, the magical timing, born of years of practice that triggers off the sudden, startled shriek of laughter. When, for example, he tells the story of an ancestor who died while feeding his pigeons, our first reaction is laughter, but when we go on to consider how macabre the scene was we wince, but before we have time to adopt a high moral tone about his irreverence towards his elders, he jolts us with another hilarious observation and we are convulsed with laughter once again. Moeen Akhtar's reflexes and the effortless speed and timing with which he changes expressions and tones of voice are among the wonders of his craft. He goes from deadpan aggression to snide insinuation in less than five seconds. The wonder is that each phase is distinct in itself and leads logically to the next. His true metier is to portray dotty, quirky eccentrics, outcasts, men blinkered, soaked in their prejudices and mockingly assertive, men far removed from the rational approaches to life. To such characters he brings an inward glow. He appears to be at ease residing in their souls, but given an opportunity he will step into the inner core of extroverts with equal glee. When he chooses to play a character (a pan-chewing old-timer, a down and out free-loader), he goes to fantastic lengths to avoid the obvious. He has a penetrating instinct for picking the essence of the character through the rhythm of his speech. In his enactment you would find a remarkable economy of gestures. I caught a glimpse of him recently, playing a ga ga retired politician. He rambled on offering one non-sequitor after another. His restless, twitching fingers clutched a little box that continued a stock of gilorees (betel leaves shaped into tiny triangles). During his long-winded, delightfully senseless discourse, he would pick up a fresh giloree and put it into his reddened mouth as if to emphasise an inanity. This was the only gesture he allowed himself. I first met him in 1971 when he came in for an audition at the Karachi television studios: a dapper 20 year old, slim of waist, wearing flared trousers and a floral silk shirt with a large rounded collar, looking every inch like a beatnik. He was introduced to me as a 'new talent' who was making a mark as a stand-up comic in the variety shows that were held quiet frequently in those days. His material was a rehash of the stock-in-trade jokes based on the parsimoniousness of the Pathans and the Memons. He spoke his Urdu with clarity, but not without a trace of a Gujerati accent. His repertoire may have been a trifle hackneyed, but he brimmed with confidence and his energy was infectious. What struck me as uncommon was that during his spiel his eyes remained bemused as though they were observing the observers. Such controlled detachment was rare in one so young. He did not leave after the audition but waited, looking appealingly at me. "Good," I said, "but not good enough." (This is something I said to him more than once in the following few weeks). "What did I do wrong?" He asked with dumbfounded innocence, his eyes, now looking sad. I mentioned that he needed fresh material, but more than that he needed to cut out his wordy prefaces. He had picked up the habit of the established comedians who interrupted their stories by unnecessary introductory remarks like "Ladies and Gentlemen, please observe how the angry Sindhi trader reacted..." or "And now please see how the Punjab fruit seller, who becomes very upset makes his retort..." He must have thought seriously about what I said because the next time he came to see me with what he called a 'new bouquet,' he had cut out out some of his prefaces. He had an uncanny ear for the tricks of gesture, accent and inflexion. His impersonations of the high-powered television producers were achingly funny. Even today, I cannot think of Zaman Ali Khan without recalling Moeen Akhtar's rendering of their voices. His impersonations usurped the original. I left the country in the mid-seventies. In the decade that followed, Moeen Akhtar rose to great heights. He became not only the most popular show-biz personality in Pakistan; he was also sought after by top-notch Indian movie stars to emcee the stage events in which they deigned to appear. His popularity knew no bounds. I heard of his triumphs on the grapevine, not entirely without a sense of unease. No one in the subcontinent achieves such heights of popularity unless he allows himself a degree of tastelessness. In the early '80s, I had a chance to see him on tape. He was hosting a mega event. I was more than pleased to see that his manner had matured; it had acquired an austerity. He approached his comedy now not with bluff but with stealth. It gave me a great pleasure to think that I might have been partially instrumental in promoting this exceedingly gifted individual. But before I begin to gloat, let me say that I make no claim about grooming Moeen Akhtar's talent. All I did, apart from saying 'not good enough', was to impress upon him that it was a must for a sensitive performer to resist the temptation of winning greater popularity by resorting to tastelessness. He may not have heeded my advice, but it is to his enormous credit that he honed and developed his gifts unaided by anyone. There was no school or academy where he could learn how to give firmness to his voice. He did it on his own. His voice had become resonant and his speech had become so cultivated that he could speak with the delicate Ameenabad accent as succinctly as with a harsh Karkhandari accent of Delhi. It would be wrong to assess Moeen Akhtar as a comedian. He is, instinctively, and temperamentally, an actor and that is how we must look at his art. I say this without hesitation because although he shrugs his various persona -- as others shrug their shoulders -- he is forever on the look-out for new characters that he can bring to life. (to be continued)
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stick even more
intransigently to their unshakeable standards. If you talk of good upcoming
magazines, they start praising half a century old ones as the best. To them,
no brilliance is left in new poetry, fiction or criticism. Everything is gone
with the wind and the new generation has nothing to do with serious literary
pursuits. Their stiffness would prefer collapse to doffing their hats to new
excellence. This attitude is so usual with them that, in consequence, they
are losing their standing -- if not relevance. There is a point in recalling
the good old days, for the sake of nostalgia or even comparison -- but times
change and one has to keep in step with the changing trends, be they fading
or emerging.
nature and scale of the changes that have already taken place and are
probably going to overwhelm Urdu as a language. Yes, Urdu literature is alive
and one can see creative expression evolving. Many metaphors in Bano Qudsia's
novel 'Raja Gidh' are new expressions: for example, 'nai kar jesi larki' is a
new expression, reflecting the change in the lifestyle of Urdu speakers. But
there is another frontier on which Urdu is not going to win the war unless
our policymakers comprehend this scenario. This frontier is information
technology and the world wide web. Unless we can use Urdu alphabets in the
address bar (the place where we type www.jang.com.pk) of Internet Explorer
and can enter Urdu text in mirc chatrooms and msn messenger's chat window, we
do not stand a chance. Our Intizar Hussains et al are already one or two
career generations behind this phenomenon. Many of our policymakers and
senior bureaucrats, those whose opinions matter because of their seniority,
still find the mobile phone menu language overwhelming.