Poetry in his blood and revolution a passion with him, the legendary poet that Ahmed Faraz had turned into in the prime of his youth, will be long and widely mourned by a cross section of the lovers of Urdu poetry, not only in this country but elsewhere in the world too.
Born in a village near Kohat on January 14, 1931, Ahmed Faraz was the son of a traditional poet Agha Syed Muhammad Shah Barq Kohati, who was considered to be one of the leading poets of the country. Drawing inspiration from philosopher Dr Muhammad Iqbal and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the revolutionary Ahmed Faraz, who is no more amongst us, had come to be recognised amongst the best poets of the current times.
Simplicity of style alone won him a position head and shoulders above his contemporaries. Born into a Pashto-speaking family, he studied Persian and Urdu at the Peshawar University, where he was pre-destined to teach these subjects too. As an earlier report had it, he had died on 17 July, 2008 of kidney failure during treatment at a Chicago hospital.
But as confirmed by his physician, Tahir Rohail, he breathed his last not in far away America, but back home at Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad on August 25, 2008. A born poet as he was, his brother, Syed Masood Kausar, in an interview recalled, when their father, a teacher, once bought clothes for him on Eid, Faraz did not like them but expressed his feelings in verses.
Layen hain sab ke liye kapre sale se
Layen hain mere liye kambal jail se
(He brought clothes for everybody from the sale... For me he brought a blanket from jail)
This was the first ever couplet he wrote, that no one then suspected was the muse waiting to blossom forth in the teenaged prodigy, as he grew into a revolutionary critic of his times. Faraz also recalled that he was told by his parents once to learn mathematics from a female class fellow during the summer vacation. "I was weak in mathematics and geography.
I still don't remember maps and roads," he said, so instead of learning mathematics he indulged bait-bazi with her. But he always lost, even though he memorised hundreds of couplets to outdo her. When he started making his own couplets she couldn't beat him anymore.
While he was at college, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Ali Sardar Jafri were recognised as the best progressive poets. Small wonder, they cast a deep impression on his young mind, making them his role model. Faraz started his career initially as a script writer with Radio Pakistan Peshawar, followed by a stint as Urdu teacher at the University. Later, 1976 saw him as the founding Director General of Pakistan Academy of Letters, of which he later became the Chairman.
However, outspoken as Faraz was about politics, he opted to go into self-exile during the Zia Years, following arrest for reciting certain poems at a Mushaira against the General's rule. Thereafter, he spent three years in Britain, Canada and Europe.
Back home, he was initially appointed Chairman of the Academy of Letters and later served as Chairperson of National Book Foundation for several years. Inspired as he was by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Pakistan People's Party. He was awarded the Hilal-e-Imtiaz in 2004, in recognition of his literary achievements.
However, he returned it in 2006, following disenchantment with he said it then, his conscience would not forgive him if he remained a silent spectator of the sad happenings around him, and that the least he could do was to make the dictatorship know where it stood in the eyes of the concerned citizens whose fundamental rights had been usurped.
Following in the footprints of his mentor, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, he wrote some of his best poetry during the years of his exile. Outstanding amongst his poems of resistance remains "Mahasara". Similarly, highest among his ghazals ranks the most sung "Ranjish Hi Sahi". As for the 13 books he authored perhaps the most prominent remains "Shehr-e-Sukhn Aarasta Hay", which was his latest. All in all, Ahmed Faraz will be seen to have left a treasure of knowledge, idealism and love for freedom.