Urdu Literature: More than Humour Shafiq-ur-Rehman Most of the humorous content in modern Urdu literature has been produced by the men in khaki. Apparently it is more of a coincidence than anything else because the general and oft-repeated explanation — they write humour to counter-balance the dry ruggedness of their military existence — doesn’t sell. It just doesn’t. Life in the armed forces is, indeed, dry and rugged to the extreme, but that is true only of the lower cadre, but, then, no hawaldar has ever produced anything humorous. As for the officers, anyone with any degree of exposure to their lifestyle knows for sure that there is hardly anything dry or rugged about it. It not only has all the comforts and colours of life, but, as a retired general recently put it in public, there is always “a chance to rule over the country” as well. If nothing else, the “chance” alone is good enough to keep the spirit of life going. Regardless of the reason behind it, the fact remains that people like Zameer Jaffery, Colonel Khan, Ashfaq Hussain and many others have been household names, and the readers of Urdu literature have certainly enjoyed the offerings. The trend-setter among them all was Shafiqur Rahman who started off with romantic short stories in the early 1940s; his first collection, Kirnain, hitting the shelves in 1942. Over the next five years till 1947, he produced six more — Shagufay, Lahrain, Madd-o-Jazr, Parwaz, Himaqatain and Pachtawey. The last three took some time coming after this initial burst of energy — Mazeed Himaqatain in 1954, Dajla in 1980, and Dareechay in 1989. For most part, Shafiqur Rahman’s short stories bring to life an era when even such an intense emotion as love could have innocent connotations. There is no element of shock therapy in his stories, just the life with all its serenity. Perhaps this is one reason why some people tend to accord a less intellectual value to the content of his work, which, of course, is a folly. It is not as if he shied away from taking up the hard realities of life. It was his craft that gave a touch of brightness to even the darker shades of life. Sarhey Chey, Yunhi, Club, Makaan Ki Talash Mein, Cha’ay, Takya Kalam and so many more of his stories deal with the various idiosyncrasies in all of us. Even though he was a qualified doctor by profession, he dealt with such issues with a sparkling pen in his hand rather than picking up the scalpel and come up with a surgically bitter treatment, like Sa’adat Hasan Manto did. Neeli Jheel, arguably, is the best example in this regard which brings out the philosopher in Shafiqur Rahman. He used a family setting around some lake as an idiom for the lakes of self-deception that we unconsciously create in our lives. It is about the human tendency to find grass always greener on the other side, and the debilitating lure of the unknown that keeps us moving without allowing us to see things in their proper perspective. The philosopher Shafiqur Rahman can also be seen in full glow in Dhund where he uses the characters of “Doctor”, “Engineer”, “Philosopher” and “Mashkook” to bring out the many irritating realities of everyday life and stresses the need to have a realistic approach to things around us. For someone who produced as many as 11 titles in all, comprising close to a hundred narratives of a diverse variety, it is only natural that the quality of some of his work is inconsistent with the overall standard of his output. It is not as capricious as, say, Manto, but it is inconsistent for sure. Take, for instance, Mazeed Himaqatain, which literally would have been just that, “More Follies”, had it not been for Barsaati, which has all the characteristics of Shafiqur Rahman stamped on it, and Dou Nazmain which is hilarious in its approach and has a bit of Maupassant about it in the sense that the reader is not quite ready for the sudden conclusion when it comes. Barsaati, by the way, also marks the arrival on the scene of the globe-trotting historian of sorts that is but one shade of Shafiqur Rahman’s well-groomed personality. The shade resurfaced some sixteen years later, and with heavy and mature overtones, in Neel, Danube and Dajla. It is a pity that the attention of the critics and some of the readers has generally remained focussed on Shafiqur Rahman’s light-hearted prose that has been dubbed as “humorous”, which has underplayed the significance of his amazing understanding of human psychology. Ironically, it is like his own craft working against him, for, regardless of his varied subjects, the core of his prose remains light and romantic which creates the illusion as if nothing significant is being said at all, when the fact is diametrically opposite to the illusion. Be they his stock characters — Razia, Hukoomat Aapa, Rufi or Maqsood — or the transient ones — Burton, Mansoor, Mohan, Shorty, Moody, Lanky and many more — they all are real-life, and there is much in each of them to open a little window in the minds of the readers. It is so because their creator makes them discuss all sides of any argument, be they about politics, history, society or, indeed, religion. For the modern reader, it would be appropriate to start off with Dajla, which contains four rather long short-stories, because almost everything else produced by him in his early years has been so blatantly plagiarised — situations, dialogues and, to some extent, storylines — by theatre, stand-in comedians, joke books and the present-day television sitcoms that those picking up Shafiqur Rahman for the first time today might find the original a bit commonplace. This blatant plagiarism, come to think of it, is an irony of fate, for Shafiqur Rahman himself faced similar accusations from his opponents who tried to locate western influences in his work. They failed because his stories are well and truly entrenched in subcontinental settings, and the accusations died their own death. This month six years ago, like the accusations, Shafiqur Rahman also died. He was 80 and, as such, no one called it an untimely death; “untimely” being an attribute left exclusively to describe the passing away of a young, or at least a relatively young, individual. Those bitten by the Shafiqur Rahman bug and smitten by the charm of his pen would, however, argue that he was the kind of person whose death remains “untimely” even if it comes at 180. He was the kind of writer with whom and with whose characters we tend to build para-social relationships. We laugh and cry with them. We feel high and low with them. And, indeed, a part of our soul dies with them. Such is the power of Shafiqur Rahman’s moonlit prose. (DC).
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 07:44:11 +0000
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