Aakhri Paher
Ki Dastak
Akhri Paher ki Dastak
-Reflections
Akhri
paher ki Dastak-I know how personal this book is to my father who has never
ever, as far as I can trust the portals of my memory, expressed his feelings
overtly before us. He has been a man of few words when it came to familial or
social interactions .Words had to be prized out of him but when he did speak,
we listened. We had no choice. I didn’t want to have a choice. His
words always left their mark on my mind.
I have
fond memories of my childhood when he would make me recite Jaadu tha sapna tha
kyatha ..maine tujh mein kya dekha tha.At the time when children my age were
into Brother Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes,I
was reciting Iqbal and Nasir Kazmi.Not that he deliberately kept us away from
the fashionable language learning devices but there was a kind of an aloofness
, a beneyazi, that made him say words that were there in his mind. I mirrored
them. I think I have inherited this aloofness from him.
I never
learnt Urdu in school because I studied in public schools that did not have
Urdu as a subject.Whatever little Urdu I know is because of him.Payam-e-taleem
and khilona were our childhood companions besides Archie comics and Readers’Digest.
When I was in Kindergarten I was an
audience to his play Mitti ka Bulawa which was dramatized at Kennedy Hall,
Aligarh .For months I had been witness to innumerable dramatis personae
visiting our place,trying out sound effects, dialogue delivery and I saw how
passionately my father would give shape and expressions to his words. I can
give the effect of horses galloping by strumming my fingers on the walnut
engraved table in our living room.He showed me how to do it.
We had a
large number of visitors at our place and the sound of teaspoons and aroma of
green label tea is still fresh in my mind.When he was with people, he was very
vocal.However it was his quietude and passivity that I saw at home with him sitting on his takht , writing or reading. He never used a writing
table. Another inheritance from him..I always study with my books scattered
about me either on the carpet or on my bed.
I had
questions I never asked,perhaps I never will.His silence spoke volumes.I don’t
need answers. I need his presence which is far more enriching than all the
treasures one finds in an encyclopedia
or a thesaurus.He rarely expressed excitement or regret over issues that were
quick to excite or disappoint us.Restraint. This is what I learnt from him.
When I
read two of his dramas-Mujhe Ghar yaad aata haiand Mitti ka Bulawa , I knew he missed certain people and things
in life. When this realization dawned on me I looked at him as a son of my
grandparents, as a brother to his siblings and a friend to innumerable people
who were closed to him. I think we all pass through this stage of
realization.To a child, a father is just a father. He can’t
be anyone other than this.It's much later in life that one sees other facets of
a person’s identity.
Yesterday,Rekhta
launched his first ever compilation of ghazals-Aakhri Paher ki Dastak. This
title was disturbing . Perhaps mirroring his trait of hiding emotions, I did
the same. I did not question him.For the last six months he has been struggling
with Cancer. I have been with him through all the sessions of chemotherapy, his
treatment, innumerable visits to the hospitals and a thousand pricks of needles in his veins.
But never once did I see him flinch or express his anguish to anyone. For that
matter no one at home did .We are made of sterner stuff I guess! Lying on the
hospital bed,with the drips ,monitors and machines he would tell me tales of
his childhood, his student days and his friends whom he missed. It was as if
his life was reflected in tiny broken pieces of glass and
I desperately tried to collect those pieces and fix them up like a jigsaw
puzzle,wiping the dust of bygone days that had blurred some of the images and
what emerged was the picture of a man who was my hero, my idol and a meaning
for life.I would walk with him in the corridors of the hospital and I found
myself holding on to his hands as a toddler when he guided my very first steps.
Such were his words to me.I learnt from every step, at every step.
His
ghazals speak of darkness and shadows, colours fading into dusk, heavy eyelids
and sorrows but never ever of detachment .He is very much a part of the
emotional landscape that he paints through his words.He is very much an
insider, a part of the painting, a subject that thinks and feels but does not
revel in nostalgia. Nostalgia is often arrogant and melodramatic bordering on
abstractions.His nostalgia is concrete and tangible. He sees through stones. I
saw the tenderness of the stone.
Sooraj dheere dheere pighla
Phir taaron mein dhalne laga
Mere andar ka sannata
Jag ke aankhein malne laga
Neele surkh safed sunehre
Ek ek karke doob gaye
Samton
ki har pagdandi pe
Kaala
rang pighalne laga..
These
lines remind me of Vincent Van Gogh’s
painting Starry Night . He was one artist who expressed his emotions through
the harsh ,well defined strokes of his brush. Shamim Hanfi paints his words in
deep dark colours. One needs to swim into the depths to understand his
thoughts.
I am
really thankful to Mr. Sanjiv Saraf , Zamarrud
Mughal and the entire Rekhta team
who made it possible for us to see Shamim Hanfi as poet. The critical intellect
of a great writer of critique has always been there before us. His creativity
comes alive through this publication. Thank you very much. Akhri Paher ki
Dastak is a new beginning.
-Ghazal
9thJune,
2015
