Launching collected works of Prof Ghulam Mohammad Qasir

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

With well-combed hair and vigilant eyes, the director-general of Iranian consulate in Peshawar, Aqai Syed Mohammad Zakiri, stood at the rostrum in Imam Khomeini Hall and in his chaste Persian, delivered in lovable Tehran accent, praised the contribution to Urdu poetry of what he called in his typically soft Iranian dialect as “Aqai Ghulom Mohammad-i-Qosir”. Khana-i-Farhang-i-Iran in coordination with the literary organisation Takhleeq International organised the formal launching ceremony of the collected works of late Professor Ghulam Mohammad Qasir published recently under the obvious title of Kuliyat-i-Qasir: Ik shair abhi tak rehta hai. The book contained all his three collections of poetry: Tasalsul, Athwan asmaan bhi neela hai and Darya-i-Ghumaan. Zakiri graced the occasion with his presence as special guest. During his speech, the audience badly missed Mohammad Ghayyur, who often used to act as on the spot translator but due to being indisposed could not make it to the function.

Giving his impressions about the function, chief guest, Dr Riaz Majeed, said that compiling the works of any writer was an uphill task as he personally realised while collecting the works of three or four friendly writers after their death. He said it was the duty of men of letters to compile Qasir’s works but the poet’s sons, Emad Qasir and Adnan Qasir as also their circle of friends, had done a commendable job by making the publication of Kuliyat a reality. With Kuliyat-i-Qasir available in libraries and on bookstores, future scholars from various universities would find it easy to do any kind of research about the poet on M Phil or Ph D level. Having been a teacher at Government College, Faisalabad all through his life, Riaz Majeed’s technique of speech was very close to the art of delivering a classroom lecture and travelling from known to the unknown. From Qasir’s diction, he proceeded on to the images that his poetry generally evoked.

Sohail Ahmad of Peshawar University’s Institute of Literature and Linguistics (the name it got after the joining together of Urdu and Persian departments) read out a paper titled “Government College ke notice board se Kuliyat-i-Qasir tak”. In this paper, he reminisced about the days when Qasir taught Urdu at Peshawar’s Government College while Sohail was a student there with curious eyes that sought sensation on the notice board. He recalled the day when the board carried an announcement about the publication of a collection of Qasir’s poetry. Sohail said that all of Qasir’s students with literary tastes were greatly excited at the announcement. Then came the time when for his M Phil thesis, Sohail had to write a research paper on the life and art of Qasir.

Most recent was the achievement of getting Kuliyat-i-Qasir published. Sohail narrated how the publication was unnecessarily delayed by a common friend Haider Javed Syed who frequently violated or backed out of his commitments.

Nasir Ali Syed read out an impressionistic paper, which was a mix of criticism and satire blended into a philosophic piece of prose that tended to serve the purpose as far as the function was concerned. Whether or not it enlightened the audience in any manner about the poetry of Qasir in particular, the paper written in a long-winded and suggestive manner was a laboured exercise in ambiguity and obscurity that left the uninitiated listener high, dry and cold.

Zaigham Hassan described how Qasir had been the founder-member of Takhleeq International. Having been a student of Qasir’s at Superior Science College, he was all praise for his teacher of Urdu. Quoting profusely from Qasir’s poetic pieces that he especially wrote for radio or television’s “Mehfil-i-Musalima” sessions, he mostly dwelled at Qasir’s love and respect for the martyrs of Karbala and the related subjects.

Equally enthusiastic was another of Qasir’s old students, Pirzada, who ran the Ghulam Mohammad Qasir Academy in his village Nautari Toori near Mardan.

With a loud Pushto accent, he narrated how people in his village cherished the sweet memories of Qasir that he left during his stay in Mardan. During his emotional speech, some of the female guests at times stopped Pirzada to correct his expressions in Urdu.

As the coincidence would have it, just days before the book-launching, Lahore Centre of Pakistan Television showed a discussion on Kuliyat-i-Qasir by guest speakers such as Khurshid Rizvi, Shahzad Ahmad, Manzar Naqvi and host Aizaz Ahmad Azar. Naqvi recalled how he used to share Qasir’s company and listened to his ideas about telepathy and parapsychology. Khurshid Rizvi spoke highly about the art and techniques of Qasir’s poetry. Shahzad Ahmad himself had not been an extraordinarily towering presence in modern Urdu poetry and much of his creative pieces are oddly tragic-comic mix but all the same while assessing Qasir’s work, he pretended to be some sort of a TS Eliot and brushed aside Qasir as someone that still needed a placement among his contemporaries. In order to do a balancing act, producer Iftikhar Majaz should have taken Rizvi’s counter-defence unedited.

Injustice to Qasir was not restricted to PTV’s literary show. It seemed to have spilled over to Imam Khomeini Hall. Senior men such as Nazeer Tabassum, Sajjad Babar and Majeedullah Khalil who were in a better position to attempt an assessment of Qasir as a creative artist happened to be present in the hall but the organisers ignored them all and instead showed on faulty multimedia inaudible condolence messages of Ahmad Faraz and Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi or famous recordings of Qasir himself but the images were annoyingly hazy and jerky.

As if this was not enough, the organisers allowed a freelance woman journalist to record the impressions of selected persons inside the hall and in the middle of the function.

The result was that some people could not listen properly either to the main speakers or to those giving impressions on the camera. This interruption continued up to some 15 to 20 minutes. The result was that with mixed feelings of confusion and insult, some people quietly slipped out of the hall.

People also noted that Qasir’s brother-in-law Khawar Ahmad and father-in-law Saeed Ahmad Akhtar were conspicuous by their absence.