Kaleem Ajiz, who has earned many laurels and won some of the most prestigious awards, including one of India’s highest civilian awards, the Padmashree, kept the audience spellbound with his pathbreaking and refreshing poetry.
Now in his 90s, Ajiz showed absolutely no signs of his age. He was in full flow and rendered his poems in a very traditional (and yet also distinct) way. At every couplet, the audience went into a crescendo of wah-wahs and incessant clappings.
“Ajiz is beyond compare,” said Wajahat Farooqui, the force behind the organization of the event in Jubail. “His poetry reflects the pathos of the Muslim community in the Indian Subcontinent. It is an honor for us in Jubail to welcome him and to hear him is a treat.”
Farooqui led the Urdu lovers in giving him a standing ovation. Aligarh Muslim University Old Boys Association led by Nafis Tarin organized the event.
Ajiz has become a legend with one particular couplet, which is on the lips of every Urdu lover, and if often quoted on Urdu television channels. That couplet, “Daaman pe koyee cheent na khanjar pe koyee daagh; Tum qatl karo ho ke karamat karo ho,” written years ago, was prominently displayed in the background.
“You will not believe how happy I was when I heard that couplet of Ajiz during a popular TV serial on a Pakistani channel,” said Indian executive Hashim Abidi who traveled all the way from Dammam to listen to his favorite poet. “It is an amazing couplet and the use of ‘karo ho’ in every couplet is highly original and intensely appealing,” he said.
“He is a master of his craft and tonight he was spellbinding,” said Abidi’s colleague Syed Mohammed Asad.
Farooqui said to understand the political undertones in Ajiz’s poetry one has to delve into his past.
“He saw his close relatives being murdered in the run-up to Partition in 1947. And we see and feel that angst in his poetry,” he said as he recalled another famous couplet about the horror of those darks days in the late 1940s: “Yeh pukar saare chaman mein thi, woh sehar hui woh sehar hui; Mere aashiyaan se dhuwan utha, to mujhe bhi iski khabar hui.”
Among the other poets who entertained the Jubail audience were Yusuf Azmi, Ana Dehlavi, Typical Jagtiyali, Shaukat Jamal, Saeed Muntazir, Farhat Parveen, Sohail Saqib, Iqbal Qamar, Farha Jafri, Irfan Abid Alvi, Umar Burnawi, Zafar Hashmi and Abrar Mujeeb. The evening was admirably anchored by Nayeem Javid.
Jagtiyali was a massive hit with his “Wah wah re ... Mai reh gaya naam ka shaitaan re.”
The audience crooned with him, appreciating his biting satire. He remained unfazed by some of the catcalls from among the audience and in the end was mobbed by the Jubail Urdu aficionados. Yusuf Azmi touched the Indian community’s raw nerve with his couplets on the demolition by Hindu zealots of the historic Babri Mosque. In Ana Dehlavi’s case, her voice seemed more attractive than her couplets.
Earlier, prominent Indian community member Meraj Ansari introduced the poets in an interesting way.
Anis Bakhsh proposed a vote of thanks. And as the audience were leaving the hall, they were repeating one of the finest couplets of the evening by Ajiz: “Hum sun ke tadapte bhi hain aata hai maza bhi; Tum acche nahi ho magar accha hai ke tum ho.”
