IT has become almost a cliché to say that at Paris’s famous roadside cafes, you can leisurely and delightfully see the life go by. They are not only known for their culinary attractions but also serve as meeting places and conversation centres. Many renowned writers used to frequent them.

In Pakistan, we do have roadside cafes and some of them are known for their sugary doodh patti chai (or strong tea made in milk). But they are more suited for long-haul drivers and the intellectuals, especially in Karachi, have to be content with some semi-decent tea shops or restaurants.

In Pakistan, Lahore is not only known for its litterateur, publishing houses and grand bookshops but some of Lahore’s cafes and coffee houses too are, or at least were, famous for being a rendezvous of intellectuals. Lahore’s famous Pak Tea House was the favourite haunt of the writers, poets, journalists and literati. The city still has that tradition and during my visit last year I was pleasantly surprised to see a small room exclusively reserved for literary conversations at The Readings, a trendy bookshop in Lahore’s Gulberg area.

But Karachi, too, did not lag behind in this domain, at least until a few decades ago. The 1950s and 1960s, and to some extent the early 1970s, too, were the days when many cafes were writers’ favourite hang-outs. Libraries were visited by a large number of people, booklovers frequented popular bookshops (that are no more), literary symposia and gatherings were as common as fashion shows are these days. Those who have seen that golden era of Karachi’s literary life, become quite sentimental when they talk about it. Prof Sahar Ansari, a veteran who has been an eyewitness to Karachi’s literary scene for some 60 years and has seen Karachi becoming a mega polis from a small city through decades, sometimes quite beautifully narrates the colours, sights and sounds of the old Karachi and its literary aura. Now he has drawn in words a vivid picture of the era in his intro to the book ‘Saleem Ahmed: mushahide, mutale aur tassuraat ki roushni mein’.

Written by Khwaja Razi Hyder and published by Aiwan-i-Muhaddis Surti, Karachi, the book tries to capture the life and times of Saleem Ahmed (1927-1983), the renowned critic, poet, dramatist, broadcaster and columnist. In his intro, while recalling Mr Ahmed and the literary gatherings of the city, Mr Ansari has recounted the literary atmosphere of Karachi during those days.

He says: “During the latter half of the 20th century, Karachi was breathing in quite a different atmosphere. Some of its beauties and those gatherings now look like a dream or a fantasy.” But those beauties were as real as the brutalities the city is experiencing today. In this account, Mr Ansari has recounted the big names of Karachi’s literary and artistic life but has left it half way, making one craving for more. But then he tells how Khwaja Razi Hyder, the writer of the book, was groomed, narrating a bit of his ancestral history, and then again recalls those days, with a slight tinge of sadness.

A veteran journalist, critic, research scholar and translator, Khwaja Razi Hyder had been associated with Quaid-i-Azam Academy and has penned many books. He is a poet, too, and, more importantly, he has been very close to Mr Ahmed. One feels that Mr Hyder is indeed one of those persons who are quite capable of writing his biography, both by the virtue of his research and creativity and by the fact that he had been very close to Mr Ahmed for quite long and knew him quite well. In fact Mr Hyder takes pride in the fact that Mr Ahmed was among those bigwigs who had been instrumental in his intellectual and literary grooming.

But strictly speaking, the book is not a biography of Mr Ahmed, because it does not narrate his life and achievements in chronological sequence. Neither does Mr Hyder claim so, but as the title suggests, he rather tries to understand Mr Ahmed’s personality, creativity and intellectuality. Though he has very modestly declared in the preface that it would take an analysis at a larger scale than the present one to fully understand Mr Ahmed’s creativity and personality, he has highlighted some aspects of Mr Ahmed’s mental journey quite masterfully. He is very right when he says that despite Mr Ahmed’s stature and his impact on his contemporary literary scene not a single worthwhile book has been penned. Perhaps this was the driving force behind this book.

The book successfully captures Mr Ahmed in his intimate moments and along with it the reader can see the delectable glimpses of Karachi’s literary scene as it was in the 1950s and 1960s. With Mr Ahmed we meet on the pages of the book some grand names of Urdu literature that adorned those gatherings. We see that Mr Ahmed had created such a clout among the writers, poets and intellectuals of Karachi that during the last few years of his life his house had become a rendezvous for them. It was almost ritualistic for many writers such as Mr Hyder himself to pay a visit to Mr Ahmed, almost every day. And when you have such traditions of entertaining friends and foes alike at your place on a daily basis, who needs roadside French cafes?

We find that in addition to being a poet and an intellectual, how Mr Ahmed behaved as a human being. We see that how courteous, well-mannered and cultured Mr Ahmed was and how he cared even for his literary rivals as Mr Hyder presents an eyewitness account to some of the literary skirmishes and we see that Mr Ahmed went to one of his literary rivals and apologised for an early incident that might have piqued them.

Some say that stirring heated debates on literary issues and kicking up new controversies was Mr Ahmed’s hobby. Some believe that courting the attention was all that Mr Ahmed aimed for by making an issue out of nothing. They say he intentionally chose shocking titles for his critical essays and columns so as to attract the attention of the readers (for instance, the title of one of his articles goes as: ‘Sir Syed, rail gaari aur coca-cola’; another one discussing Imtiaz Ali Taj’s play ‘Anarkali’ has the title ‘Shahzada Saleem, Waheed Murad aur Anarkali’) . But this book repels that impression and reader sees a Saleem Ahmed that is a thinker, a philosopher who has ideological commitments and all he wants is to see his ideals succeed.

The book also lends credulity to the notion that back in good old days, Karachi rivalled Lahore in literary domain. But Mr Hyder’s melancholic tone when he describes present day Karachi literary scene is quite saddening. He says: “I have to say, with a heavy heart, that today literary scene presents a deserted look and all we have is a howling wilderness around us”.

Saleem Ahmed died in Karachi on Sept 1, 1983.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com