Web Desk

ISLAMABAD: When Pakistanis remember Syed Abid Ali Abid on Tuesday&#39;s 55th anniversary of his death, they recall a figure who rejected the idea that literature exists to comfort. Abid spent decades arguing that verse without social purpose, no matter how melodious, abandons poetry&#39;s true work. &quot;Chand sitaron se kya puchhun kab din mere phirte hain,&quot; he wrote in one of his most quoted couplets (commonly translated as &quot;Why should I ask the moon and stars when my fortunes will turn?&quot;)&nbsp;That question captures Abid&#39;s refusal to accept passive resignation, whether in life or in literature. Born Sept. 17, 1906, in Dera Ismail Khan, Abid died in Lahore on Jan. 20, 1971, aged 64. Multiple platforms, single message Abid&#39;s career spanned education, broadcasting and film. After completing a master&#39;s degree in Persian, he led Dyal Singh College in Lahore as principal, working to strengthen Urdu scholarship there. Radio Pakistan Lahore recruited him in the late 1940s as one of its first drama and feature writers. He spent the following decade creating content for the station during Pakistan&#39;s formative years. Pakistani cinema also drew on his skills. &quot;Heer Ranjha,&quot; the first Punjabi talking film, used both his narrative structure and dialogue. Across these platforms, Abid pushed the same argument: creative work must engage the world it emerges from. Criticism as cultural project His books in Urdu and Persian laid out systematic approaches to evaluating literature. &quot;Usool-e-Intiqad-e-Adabiyat&quot; (Principles of Literary Criticism) and &quot;Asloob&quot; (Style) established frameworks connecting artistic choices to larger cultural questions. &quot;Al-Bayan&quot; and &quot;Al-Badi&quot; went deeper into technical analysis. In &quot;Al-Badi,&quot; Abid examined how poets use alliteration and parallelism to create effects, the same tools he employed writing his own verse. His book &quot;Sheir-e-Iqbal&quot; analyzed Muhammad Iqbal&#39;s poetry. Throughout these works, Abid returned to a core conviction: writing that aims only at beauty while ignoring social and cultural responsibilities falls short. Writing what he preached Abid published three poetry collections: &quot;Main Kabhi Ghazal Na Kehta&quot; (I Would Never Have Written a Ghazal), &quot;Shama&quot; and &quot;Yad-e-Baiza.&quot; His dual role as critic and poet created an unusual dynamic: he set the standards, then had to meet them publicly. This put his own verse under scrutiny using the very analytical tools he&#39;d developed for judging others. Abid&#39;s fluency in Urdu and Persian wasn&#39;t just artistic enrichment. It gave him practical advantages: he could draw on twice the literary history, deploy images that worked across linguistic traditions, and reach audiences in multiple languages. His study of English literature added a third reference point. The poetry collections show this range in action. Individual poems layer references that readers familiar with Persian classical verse would recognize alongside structures more common in Urdu ghazals. Examining hardship and hope Several verses probe suffering&#39;s nature. One asks: &quot;Ye kya tilism hai duniya pe bar guzri hai Wo zindagi jo sar-e-rahguzar guzri hai&quot; &quot;What magic is this that weighs upon the world?&nbsp; The life that was spent wandering upon the paths.&quot; Another looks at how commitment can sour: &quot;Unhin ko arz-e-wafa ka tha ishtiyaq bahut&nbsp; Unhin ko arz-e-wafa na-gawar guzri hai&quot; Rendered as: &quot;Those who once had a great longing for the plea of faithfulness; it is they who found the plea of faithfulness most unpleasant.&quot; But his work doesn&#39;t stop at lamentation. Morning light appears as transformation&#39;s possibility: &quot;Aai sahar qarib to maine parhi ghazal&nbsp; Jalne lage sitaron ke bujhte hue kanval&quot; Commonly interpreted as: &quot;As the dawn drew near, I recited a ghazal; the fading lotus-stars began to glow again.&quot; He also wrote: &quot;Aam ho faiz-e-baharan to maza aa jae,&quot; translated as &quot;If the bounty of spring were common, how pleasant it would be.&quot; A contradiction worth noting Abid&#39;s most famous couplet rejects asking celestial bodies for guidance about fortune. Yet his poetry repeatedly returns to moon and star imagery: chand and sitara appear throughout his verse. This creates an interesting tension: the poet who warns against looking to the heavens for answers keeps looking there himself for metaphors. The imagery serves his purposes even as his message questions its authority. Similarly, Abid advocated strongly for realism in poetry as defense against cultural stagnation. Yet his own verse incorporates mystical elements and spiritual imagery &mdash; not strictly realistic approaches. These contradictions don&#39;t necessarily weaken his work. They may instead show a writer grappling honestly with competing impulses: the pull toward transcendent imagery versus the commitment to grounded social engagement. Lasting questions Pakistani scholars continue engaging with Abid&#39;s central challenge: whether literature can maintain artistic integrity while serving social purposes, or whether these goals inevitably conflict. His career suggests he saw no contradiction. The same person who dissected poetic technique in &quot;Al-Badi&quot; deployed those techniques in his own compositions. The principal who built Urdu programs at Dyal Singh College also wrote dialogue for Pakistan&#39;s first Punjabi talkie. Tuesday&#39;s commemorations mark not just a death but an ongoing argument about what writers owe their readers, their culture and themselves.

Culture

When Pakistanis remember Syed Abid Ali Abid on Tuesday's 55th anniversary of his death, they recall a figure who rejected the idea that literature exists to comfort.

Pakistan honors scholar who insisted poetry must challenge, not just console

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan marks a significant literary milestone on Friday with the 19th death anniversary of poets Munir Niazi and the 31st of Parveen Shakir. Though separated by generation and gender, these two poets fundamentally reshaped Pakistani literature, each giving voice to experiences that defined the nation&#39;s soul. Munir Niazi: Poetry of displacement and longing Born in Hoshiarpur, Eastern Punjab, in 1923, Munir Niazi&#39;s journey reflected that of millions who crossed borders during partition. This upheaval became the invisible thread running through his entire body of work, creating a sense of being perpetually late, perpetually elsewhere, perpetually longing for what was lost. What set Niazi apart was his rare mastery of both Urdu and Punjabi poetry, bringing philosophical depth to both traditions. While many poets specialized in one language, Niazi moved fluidly between them, proving that profound existential questions transcended linguistic boundaries. His collections &quot;Taiz Hawa Aur Tanha Phool&quot; and &quot;Jungle Mein Dhanak&quot; in Urdu, and &quot;Safar Di Raat&quot; in Punjabi, established a new aesthetic where ordinary moments concealed deeper metaphysical truths. Consider his most celebrated couplet: &quot;Duniya jise kehte hain jaadu kaa khilona hai Mil jaaye to mitti hai, kho jaaye to sona hai&quot; (What we call the world is a magic toy If you get it, it&#39;s just dirt; if you lose it, it&#39;s gold) This verse captures the cruel irony at the heart of human desire: that we only truly value what we&#39;ve lost. For a nation built on partition&#39;s losses, this resonated deeply. Niazi articulated what an entire generation felt but couldn&#39;t express: that displacement had taught them the difference between possession and longing. His autobiographical masterpiece &quot;Hamesha Der Kar Deta Hoon Main&quot; (I Am Always Too Late) became even more culturally significant: &quot;Hamesha der kar deta hun main Zaroori baat kehni ho, koi vaada nibhaana ho&quot; (I am always too late When I have to say something important, or keep a promise) This poem articulated a distinctly Pakistani middle-class experience: the paralysis between intention and action, the weight of words left unspoken in a culture governed by honor and restraint. Niazi transformed personal regret into collective confession, giving millions permission to acknowledge their own procrastination, their own failures to speak when it mattered most. Beyond pure literature, Niazi composed memorable film songs for Radio Pakistan, bringing his existential sensibility to mass audiences. The government honored him with the Pride of Performance in 1992 and Sitara-e-Imtiaz in 1998. He passed away on December 26, 2006, in Lahore. Parveen Shakir: The female voice If Niazi gave Pakistan the poetry of displacement, Parveen Shakir, born in Karachi in 1952, gave it the poetry of female assertion. Her revolutionary act was deceptively simple: she consistently used the female first-person pronoun in romantic poetry. In the male-dominated tradition of Urdu ghazal, this grammatical shift represented a seismic cultural change. Her debut collection &quot;Khushbu&quot; (1976) brought immediate recognition, but it was the depth of her social critique that secured her lasting legacy. Shakir embedded feminist consciousness within traditional forms, making her work both accessible and subversive. Her most famous couplet demonstrates this perfectly: &quot;Woh tou khushbu hai, hawaon main bikhar jaye ga Masla phool ka hai, phool kidhar jaye ga?&quot; (He is just a fragrance, he will scatter in the winds The problem lies with the flower; where will the flower go?) On the surface, this addresses male infidelity: the man as fleeting fragrance, free to dissipate, while the woman bears the social consequences. But the metaphor cuts deeper, interrogating why reputation is gendered, why the visible must answer for what the invisible escapes. This is social commentary disguised as a romantic lament. Shakir constantly challenged prescribed roles. In her poem &quot;Obstinate,&quot; she wrote: &quot;Main kyun usko phone karun! Us ke bhi to ilm mein hoga Kal shab mausam ki pehli baarish thi!&quot; (Why should I be the first to phone him! He also knows, surely, That last night came the first rain of the monsoon!) The first rain is traditionally a romantic, sensual moment in South Asian poetry. By refusing to wait passively, Shakir claimed equal agency in desire, a radical act in society. Her later collections, &quot;Sad-barg,&quot; &quot;Khud-Kalami,&quot; and &quot;Inkaar,&quot; grew even bolder. She maintained this literary output while serving in the Pakistan Administrative Service from 1982, embodying the professional woman her poetry championed. She received the Pride of Performance before her death in a traffic accident on December 26, 1994, aged just 42. The Islamabad road where she died now bears her name. A shared legacy That both poets share a death anniversary seems fitting. Together, they represent complementary dimensions of Pakistani identity: Niazi articulating the trauma of displacement and the philosophy of loss, Shakir asserting women&#39;s right to speak, desire, and occupy public space. They proved that Pakistani poetry could honor classical forms while speaking contemporary truths. Their verses continue to define what it means to write honestly in Pakistan, to carry history&#39;s weight while insisting on personal voice, to use inherited traditions while bending them toward new realities. In their different ways, both permitted Pakistan to feel what it had been feeling all along.

Entertainment

Though separated by generation and gender, these two poets fundamentally reshaped Pakistani literature, each giving voice to experiences that defined the nation's soul.

Articles tagged with "Urdu poetry"

Pakistan honors scholar who insisted poetry must challenge, not just console

Munir Niazi and Parveen Shakir: The poets who transformed Pakistan’s poetry