He doesn’t look like the quintessential fire-breathing rebel that one would expect from some of his well-known couplets. For example:

Tu wahin haar gaya tha mere buzdil dushman

Mujh se tanha ke muqaabil tera lashkar niklaa

Ahmed Faraz is, however, extraordinarily mild-mannered, thoroughly modest and dreamily romantic. There are no airs about him despite the fact that he is the best of living Urdu poets. His metaphors evoke delicate images whether read in the dust of a village in Uttar Pradesh or in the posh surroundings of Karachi’s Defense Society. No wonder he is the toast of all “ghazal” singers in the subcontinent. These lines have been immortalized by Munni Begum in her soulful voice:

Phir koyi haath hai dil par jaise

Phir tera ahd-e-wafa yaad aaya

Jis tarah dhund main liptay huay phool

Ek ek naqsh tera yaad aaya

Aisee majboori kay aalam main koyee

Yaad bhi aaya to kya yaad aaya

Yaad aaya tha bichhadna tera

Phir nahin yaad ke kya yaad aaya

Yeh muhabbat bhi hai kya rog Faraz

Jis ko bhule woh sada yaad aaya

Faraz has given some highly original couplets to Urdu poetry — original in thought content and rich in diction. It was he who formulated the “you-too-Brutus” concept for the first time in a couplet:

Main margaya wahin ke saf-e-doston se jab

Khanjar badast tu bhi ravaan tha meri taraf

He has enriched Urdu poetry with some of his unique lines. Critics believe his poem “Salamti Council” — Security Council — should be counted among the best in any language and not merely in Urdu alone.

Phir chaley hain mere zakhmon ka madawa karne

Mere ghamkhwar usi fitna gar-e-dahr ke paas

Jis ki dehleez pe tapki hain lahoo ki boonden

Faraz was in Jeddah recently at the invitation of the Pakistan Social and Cultural Organization (PASCO) headed by Sher Bahadur Khan. It was indeed a rare pleasure to listen to him as he reminisced, recalling events which shaped his personality and sharpened his poetry.

“I was in Class 9 when I wrote my first couplet. Ramzan Eid was around the corner and my father had brought new clothes for all of us. My elder brother, Mehmood, who was in first year then, got an elegant suit while I got a ‘kashmira.’ In those days, the ‘kashmira’ was not a very sophisticated article of clothing of attire. I was extremely unhappy and these lines were the result:

Jab ke sab ke waaste laaye hain kapde sale se

Laaye hain mere liye qaidi ka kambal jail se

Loosely translated it means, “everybody got elegant clothes and I got a prisoner’s garment!”

However, it was a year later before Faraz received his first real inspiration to write poetry. “I was in Class 10 and there was a cousin of mine who was also in Class 10. Our parents thought we should prepare our exams together. She was very good in Urdu poetry and was able to quote hundreds of couplets off-hand. One day she asked if it was OK with me if we played ‘bait baazi.’ I was nonplussed and wondered what kind of game it was. She then explained to me the finer details of this literary game; I agreed to give it a try and lost miserably because I knew no couplets... She beat me hollow.

“This continued for a while until I decided to learn as many couplets as I could. Even then I lost. Finally, I realized that there was no way to win against her unless I started composing couplets on the spur of the moment. They were not great literary gems but they had meter and they rhymed. My cousin thought that the couplets were from recognized poets and accepted them.”

After a pause, Faraz lit a cigarette and switched into rewind mode again. “The real turning point though came in the early 1950s. We were at Edwards College, Peshawar and we had an invitation from a college in Gujarat. They were organizing a ‘mushaira.’ Our principal was an Englishman named Dr. Nobel. I used the little English I knew then to convince him to send us to the poetry contest. The principal agreed but wondered who the other poet from our school would be. There had to be a team of two so I composed a few lines for a friend of mine and asked him to go and tell the principal that he wanted to be on the team. The principal agreed and the two of us were off to Gujarat. Many budding poets there had come from Lahore. My poem on Kashmir was a big hit.”

Could he recall that poem?

“I just remember this line:

Takhreeb-e-gulistan hoti hai taamir-e-gulistan se pehle.

“My ghazal was also very well-received and we won the first prize. Our principal was very happy and there were huge celebrations.”

So when did he take up Urdu poetry as a full-time vocation? “Urdu poets had a very bad image then. They were synonymous with pan-chewing, sloppily dressed slobs living in a world of their own. It was at this time that we saw a new image of poets projected by the immaculately dressed Ali Sardar Jafri, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi. Unconsciously, I was drawn to being a poet.”

Faraz feels that Urdu literature parallels what is happening in English and French literature. “The problem is that our work is not being translated into other languages so the world knows nothing about what is happening in Urdu. I don’t think Faiz (Ahmed Faiz) was any less than Octavio Paz. If Paz can get a Nobel (Prize for Literature) so should Faiz. There has to be a concerted effort in this direction. There is a dire need for what I call cultural landscaping. People have stopped reading, which is sad. What is even worse is that comparative studies have become a thing of the past. We need to keep abreast of what is happening in other languages.”

Since Faraz is near the top of Urdu literature, it was natural to ask him for his opinion about Urdu poetry in both India and Pakistan. “There is some excellent poetry being written in Pakistan. India has not produced the kind of poets that Pakistan has during the last couple of decades. Forget about Mirza Ghalib. He was not truly from Hindustan. His ancestors came from Central Asia. Leave him aside for the time being. Take (Sir Muhammad) Iqbal — he came from Pakistan; Faiz — he came from Pakistan; (Noon Meem) Rashed — also from Pakistan; and Nadeem (Ahmed Qasmi, the only stalwart of both prose and poetry) — he was again from Pakistan. India has not produced any mainstream poets of the caliber of those I have just mentioned. Yes, the Indians are doing an excellent job in ‘tehqeeq’ (research) and in this they are way ahead of their Pakistani counterparts.”

No article on Faraz can be complete without his classic ghazal, “Ranjish hi sahi...” whose freshness has neither dimmed nor faded with the passage of time. It was composed almost three and a half decades ago. Gustave Flaubert, it is said, became fed up with his masterpiece “Madame Bovary” because it overshadowed his other works. We wondered if Faraz was jealous of his gem. “No way because the best is yet to come.” Mukarrar!