By Khalid Hasan
Faiz Ahmed Faiz never reacted to criticism, no matter how intemperate or unfair it was. He would always let go. When I once asked him why he was invariably referred to as “the famous communist poet and intellectual, winner of the Lenin Peace Prize and Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case convict, Faiz Ahmed Faiz” by a particular newspaper, he replied, “Bhai un ka karobar bhi tau chalna chahhye.”
I heard him speak a harsh word about someone only once. When he was told that Jamil-uz-Zaman, once a journalist and later a senior information ministry official, had died, he said, “Bhai bara paji aadmi tha,.” That was all he said, no more, no less and not again. The word “paji” is so harmless that it hardly even qualifies as an epithet of abuse.
The writer Ashfaq Ahmed once called Faiz a “malamti soofi” and so he was.
Those who hated Faiz for ideological or political reasons were always saying and even printing nasty things about him. No one can cite a single word that Faiz ever uttered in his defense or against his detractors. To borrow a phrase from Bhagavad Gita, he was like ‘the lotus in the lake’ that floats in the water and yet is never wet. It takes a truly great and detached man to have the ripeness, wisdom, forbearance and understanding of the essential nature of things, not to answer abuse with abuse. Of all the people I know, there is not one who would not go ballistic if someone made a slighting remark about him. Faiz remained calm and he kept smiling: ‘Jo aaye aaye ke hum dil kushada rakhtay hain.’
Which is what makes Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi’s 32-page article on Faiz in a newly-fangled Urdu quarterly from Lahore deplorable. The gentleman who calls himself editor of the journal, like Qasmi, comes from the wilds of the Sargodha-Khaushab salient and has been churning out Sikh (and sick) jokes by way of a column for several years. Be that as it may, the jokes were good enough to earn him the admiration of the former Squire of Raiwind who sent him as ambassador to a Scandinavian country. It is another matter that His Excellency, like his mentor, was to be found more in Lahore than in his accredited capital, leading to speculation that he was actually ambassador of the Scandinavian country to Pakistan.
What is Qasmi’s case against Faiz? First that he and Faiz remained essentially apart because they belonged to different classes, Faiz being the privileged one. Two, that he was unable to join Faiz on the social plane because he did not drink. Both grounds are as frivolous as they are baseless. Faiz belonged to the privileged class much less than Qasmi did who has always been proud of having been born a Pirzada. There were scores of people who were close to Faiz and with whom he spent time or who were to be found around him in evenings though they had never so much as touched what Zafar Iqbal Mirza (‘Zim’) calls “snake juice”. Ibne Insha, for instance, was a teetotaller and yet he was close to Faiz who asked him in London in 1976 to write the foreword to his next collection.
Qasmi’s diatribe against Faiz springs from an acute sense of jealousy that, it is now evident, he has felt all along. He cannot reconcile himself to the fact that while the whole world loved Faiz, he, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, can claim no such following. Faiz was not only popular, he was loved. And he is loved fifteen years after his death. Even today, when people refer to Faiz, they invariably call him Faiz Sahib. Nobody has told them to speak of him with such respect and affection, nor have they been paid to do so. It is just the way Faiz was. That was how he affected people. Everyone who met him, even once, felt that he had found intimacy. Faiz in an unexplainable way reached out to people and touched them. It was just his presence, the way he sat there, the way he looked at you, the way he said a few words in between things. He had a strange mesmeric quality despite the fact that he was a shy and reserved person. Even if one spent long hours with him, it was the silences more than the conversation that one remembered. Those silences were “unmarred by the intrusion of speech”, to borrow a phrase from Ghalib.
What bothers Qasmi more than anything is drinking. Most people in the world do not drink. In Pakistan not even 1/100th of one per cent of the population drinks. If you don’t drink that is your choice and it must be respected. But if you drink, that too is your choice. Alright, you will burn in hell for that, if those who derive the greatest pleasure in life by sitting in judgment on others are to be believed. But drinking or not drinking is inconsequential and cannot be used as bases for delivering judgments. So Ahmed Nadim Qasmi does not drink. That is fine by us and it was fine by Faiz because such things never mattered to him. Qasmi’s obsession with drinking - he makes over a dozen references to it - is morbid. Is it that he has not been able to forgive himself for not having tasted the cup that cheers? If so, he still has time to make up for past abstinence.
If one did not know Faiz and one’s sole means of doing so was Qasmi’s article, one would conclude that if Faiz had one interest in life, it was drinking. This is both ridiculous and pathetic. Old ‘Lala’ Muhammad Afzal, when asked when being interviewed for a job if he was a drunkard (some Qasmi-like tale had obviously reached Gen. Haq Nawaz of the Agricultural Development Corporation), replied calmly, “Not drunkard sir, a drinking man.” That was what Faiz was. Whatever he did in life, he did with much charm and grace. He was civil, respectful of others and sensitive to their needs. He listened more than he talked. He had no ego because he was secure in himself. He never once said that he was a great poet. He didn’t have to. He was and the entire world acknowledged it. And what is more, he held his drink well. He was always in control.
Let me suggest a simple test to Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi and those who are casting aspersions on Faiz. Let five people be stopped in the street of every city in Pakistan and most in Northern India and asked to recite one couplet by Faiz and one by Qasmi. Those able to recite one by Qasmi, it would be possible to count on the fingers of one hand. Faiz, unlike Qasmi, was a people’s poet and that is how he was seen and that’s how he is remembered. Qasmi is ponderous and boring, having spent his entire life trying to decide what he really wants to be: poet, short story writer or columnist. He has managed to become all three in a forgettable way.
Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi started as an inspector in the Punjab irrigation department. Perhaps he should have stayed there.