After Faiz amongst our new generation of poets, Amjad Islam Amjad was one of the best poets with few others who truly counted with the people, was the most loved and sought-after poet, both by the connoisseurs as well as by the common people alike.
As an intellectual of very wide sympathies and with a socialist-realist bent, he had gained great popularity, and in his ‘Mushairas’, his turn was keenly awaited who appeared last of all and recited his lines. Invariably, he drew a thumping applause from his listeners and stole the limelight of the show.
Beginning his career as an educationist, he taught Urdu in Lahore’s distinguished educational institutions to graduate and postgraduate students and thereafter worked as a Director in Pakistan Television Centre Lahore from 1975-1979. In 1997, he was appointed as the Director General of the Urdu Science Board. In his later postings, he served as the Project Director of the Children Library Complex.
He was essentially a romantic poet of very high order, and most of his poems reveal his heart-broken feelings for his lover. I became enamoured of him as a poet of great worth when I heard him in a ‘Mushaira’ in which he recited his famous poem written in blank verse but with a fascinating internal rhythm, “tumhain mujh se mohabbat hai” (You’re in love with me).
In this poem his theme was that love is not a silent and subjective emotion, and unless love displays its strength and exuberance in a very practical way, and shows its pulsating urge for the loved one, it remains short of being a genuine emotion. Its actual physical manifestation by letting the loved one know its potentially overweening force, is extremely essential. True love, according to the poet, is deeper than the deepest sea, and more stable than the mountains, and hence it should firmly re-affirm itself again and again. Thus the poet’s incisive understanding of true love’s craving is a perennial psychological reality which only a poet of the genius of Amjad Islam Amjad could understand and display.
Instead of citing many other of his poems, I have cited only this poem at length to only show Amjad’s unique understanding of human nature, which is the hallmark of all the rest of his poetry. This he achieved through the careful use of similes, metaphors and symbols and became one of the representative voices of his age. One of his admirers remarked that “he is a poet whose lines tug at the hearts of those who have either fallen in or out of love. Few modern-day poets have captured the feelings of lovelorn souls the way Amjad Islam Amjad has.” His work is brilliant and towers well above his fellow poets.
Amjad Islam Amjad Amjad was not only a poet of higher sensitivities, but was also a prodigious writer of columns, translations, criticism and essays. But his most distinguished talent appeared as an outstanding playwright for Pakistan TV. His TV dramas of the 70’s and 80’s won him international recognition. His most famous dramas were Waris, Dehleez, Samandar, Raat, Waqt and Apnay Loag which were televised by PTV and which won acclaim from all Urdu-speaking people around the world. He wrote his first drama, Pehla Khel, in 1973. His famous play Waris became a catchword and kept the TV viewers spellbound for a long time. Due to Amjad’s incisive knowledge of feudal life of his country he introduced their dogfights, and their mutual clashes peppered with exceptional dialogue peculiar to that culture, which made Waris the greatest-ever TV production from Pakistan.
Amjad won the love and admiration of his friends and admirers for his exquisite and refreshing views about people, customs, language and culture whenever he appeared in talk shows on TV. He had traveled extensively in most countries of the world and had good knowledge of their people and culture. Sometimes in a year, he visited many countries where he was invited to attend ‘Mushairas’, which journeys he undertook with great relish, and s became a popular poet in the outside world.
Amjad wrote more than 20 books and his well-known poetry compilations include Barzakh, Saathwan Dar, Zara Phir Se Kehna, Khizaan Ka Aakhri Din, Itne Khwab Kahan Rakhunga, Mohabbat Aisa Dariya Hai, to name a few. He was also awarded the Sitara-e-Imtiaz (1998) and Pride of Performance (1987) by the government of Pakistan for his multiple contributions in the field of Arts of his country. He kept attending various literary festivals and mushairas till his final days
He was heard and respected for the clarity of his views which were often broadcast from the TV. In one of his TV interviews he held that Urdu as a spoken language will prosper in the world in future and also anticipated that it might become a very popular language in the world. In his view, even at present it was among the top three spoken languages after Chinese and English. Spanish came at Number Four. He was happy with the strides Urdu was making in this global expansion but ruefully held that its script is in danger of being forgotten altogether. Due to the expansion of electronic media and electronic equipment, the people who resort to SMS, smartphones, and the Internet, most people chat with each other using the Roman script instead of the Persian script. Amjad has quoted the famous Urdu fiction writer Ismat Chughtai complaining that her own daughters could not read her books due to their unfamiliarity with the Persian script.
Thus according to Amjad, de to our detachment from Urdu book literature and our losing sight of its traditional script, Urdu literacy will suffer and the langage will lose its appeal. The new generation in Pakistan and India mostly write Urdu in Roman or Latin script which is linguistically a bad trend. The popularity of spoken Urdu at present supersedes all other languages of the Subcontinent but it suffers in its printed literacy. In his interview he observed that the proliferation of TV channels has brought the standard of screenplays down, and he was not comfortable with what was happening. He maintained that in Pakistan, poetry is of good quality because Urdu is the country’s national language. Urdu also has economic utility in Pakistan. Amjad bemoaned the fact that after the division of the Subcontinent, Indian national policy included replacement of Urdu words with Hindi, which will hit Urdu badly.
Amjad wrote more than 20 books and his well-known poetry compilations include Barzakh, Saathwan Dar, Zara Phir Se Kehna, Khizaan Ka Aakhri Din, Itne Khwab Kahan Rakhunga, Mohabbat Aisa Dariya Hai, to name a few. He was also awarded the Sitara-e-Imtiaz (1998) and Pride of Performance (1987) by the government of Pakistan for his multiple contributions in the field of Arts of his country. He kept attending various literary festivals and mushairas till his final days.
