ISLAMABAD: Renowned Urdu poet Ahmed Faraz died of kidney failure in Islamabad last night. He was 67. Faraz was brought back to Islamabad from Chicago 10 days ago after the treatment there failed to improve his condition.
Also suffering from liver failure, Faraz had been in coma for a week and breathed his last at 10.30 in Al-Shifa Hospital in Pakistan’s capital.
As the news of his death spread, hundreds of his fans started converging on his bungalo.
Faraz’s funeral will be held today at Satellite Line graveyard in Islamabad.
A champion of Indo-Pak friendship, Faraz studied at Islamia College in Peshawar and then went to Germany to pursue higher studies. Faraz, who is considered one of the greatest poets of the Sub-continent after Faiz Ahmed Faiz, wrote a number of anthologies and was equally popular among literary circles in India and Pakistan.
The subjects he mainly discussed in his poetry were romance, happiness and nature. He was a progressive litterateur who never failed to feel the pain of the common man.
Faraz was sent behind bars in 1977 for blasting excesses during Zia-ul-Haq’s military rule.
He has left behind wife Rehana Gul, a bureaucrat, and a son who is a colonel. His earlier marriage with a German woman had failed. He was the president of Pakistan National Council of Art.
One of his couplets that every poetry-lover repeats is:
Kya ke har ek se bayaan dil ki haalaten karni; Faraz tujh ko na aayeen mohabbaten karni.
