By Abrar Ahmad

The Sunday News April 06, 2008

In his recent collection, Ghulam Hussain Sajid's intrinsic climate finds a perfectly harmonised expression in his mother tongue Punjabi.

Saraswati Tun Ravi Tayeen
Ghulam Hussain Sajid
Pages: 140
Price: 120 Rs
Publisher: Sanjh Publications Temple
Road, Lahore, 2007

It happens, not so infrequently, that an author fails to properly recognise his prime strength and keeps dabbling with a genre that is not best suited to his creative temperament. We may find a good number of such examples; Shohrat Bokhari, the celebrated author, being one of them. Bokhari devoted his entire life to ghazal -- and excelled in it to a certain extent -- but could not attain perfection that fell to the lot of contemporaries like Munir Niazi and Nasir Kazmi.

During the closing years of his life and career, he penned down his autobiography 'Khoay Huoun Ki Justajoo' and was immediately raised to the status of a master prose writer. Many of us remember him more for this work than anything else.

Select writers have the good fortune of excelling in whatever they do. Mohammad Hasan Askari was a short-story writer and a reasonably successful one before he recognised the grand critic within him and devoted his entire life to this field. He is one of the greatest critics of Urdu literature.

Ghulam Hussain Sajid, a prominent ghazal poet of 1970s, falls in the same category. He was a member of cohort of brilliant poets like Sarwat Hussain, Afzaal Ahmad Syed, Jamal Ehsani, Mohammad Izhar ul Haq, Mohammad Khalid and Khalid Iqbal Yasser who collectively attempted to strike a note which could define their departure from the pre-existing poetic paradigm.

Sajid has five collections of Urdu poetry of a respectable standard to his credit. He mastered the art of constructing a perfect line (misrah) and enriched his ghazal with his unique themes.

In spite of his enviable command on the genre , one could not find that loveable, soft and smiling light which is shed when a truly subjective affinity illuminates a creative piece. He did succeed with style in achieving a note of his own -- owing to his tenacious adherence to Asatiri or mythological element. His works display a sort of intense indulgence but a keen reader can not help noticing a hint of mechanised deliberation. He planned books and created them. He once observed: "I think in terms of books, not ghazals." Consequently, he planned and kept producing one book after the other on a pre-decided topic or theme.

Sajid has been exceptionally prolific. Ordinarily, speed in creative writing is associated with some extraordinary inspiration which often results in a feverishly-charged expression and may not capture the readers' imagination. But this was not true of him.

In order to correctly evaluate Ghulam Hussain Sajid, one has to distance himself to have a proper look at his works; still one notices the strange absence of the man himself. It is, in fact, an ingenious pursuit which demands a different parameter to judge it and in spite of these observations does hold a valuable status in contemporary Urdu poetry.

This exceptionally talented poet is unidentifiably different and captivating when he creates in Punjabi -- his mother tongue. He has an almost equal number of Punjabi titles, though having a considerably slim volume. 'Saraswati Tun Ravi Tayeen' is the most recent of his collection of Punjabi poems. Sajid writes in the preface : "I fail to unfold the mystery of my own Punjabi poetry... A series of knots get tied within me. With each poem a knot is undone and I keep writing till I am totally relieved."

Despite this observation that he makes, one is still not sure if he realises that Punjabi poetry is his true forte. It appears that Punjabi poetry forces him to sit down and write. He gets carried away and fails to resist here. Sympathy of this kind, founded on clear self-knowledge, is so necessary and yet so rare. It is precisely this creative helplessness which leads to the creation of phenomenal and penetrating artworks. Reading his collection proves beyond doubt that Sajid's intrinsic climate finds a perfectly harmonised expression in his mother tongue -- a language which he inherited and learnt never to forget. He has an astonishing reservoir of Punjabi words and has a complete understanding of the tradition behind.

The first radical change one notices is his dissociation from ghazal, a direct descendant of Persian poetry, and taking to the form of nazm. The interest of nazm lies in the variety of moods, its transition from lofty to homely and the majority of his nazms follow the pattern. He has devised an ample symbolic structure which imparts a sort of individuality at once isolated and in continuity with the traditional themes. He seems immediately sensitive to the genius of the sufi poets while confronting his own times in a true artistic manner.

His nazms are burning, harmonious and swift-moving. He equates and identifies himself with the aroma of his ancestral soil, to which he belongs, but has been exiled and staggers in modern urbanised settings. He mourns for rivers getting dried up, eliminating the once throbbing civilizations that existed on their banks. This is all reduced to memories. His own reality is getting extinct in oblivion and through his nazms he attempts to recreate and relive the past.

His diction is a balanced blend of the ancient and the modern. We can identify a modern man with all shades of feelings. At the same time there is a wave of 'malamat' (self pity) running throughout his offerings.

In the introductory note, he writes that he is in fact an Urdu poet while is forced into labour when he creates in Punjabi. It is easy to conclude that the reverse of this claim is true and his salvation rests in more energetic and committed efforts in Punjabi. In order to concur with the opinion that his Punjabi poetry surpasses his Urdu verses, one may have to make a comparative study of his work in both the languages.