Prof Dr Farman Fatehpuri passed away here on Saturday and was buried on Sunday. He was one of the most celebrated critics, linguists, lexicographers and researchers of our times. But above all, he was a person who epitomised certain social, academic and literary values.

Born in a village near Fatehpur Hasva, UP, British India, on Jan 26, 1926, into a middle-class family of small landowners, Farman Sahib rose to the eminence that many in his hometown could only dream of. The village boy who was named Syed Dildar Ali, orphaned at the age of seven, once fell so ill that he almost died of an undiagnosed disease and was, on another occasion, almost swept away with the gushing waters of torrential rains, was to adopt the penname of Farman Fatehpuri to write, compile and edit over 60 books. He was to become the head of Urdu department at the University of Karachi, the chief editor and president of Urdu Dictionary Board (UDB), member of public service commission, to travel to many countries and was to earn many other honours his humble beginning hardly offered any clue to.

To make both ends meet, Farman Sahib had to join a school as teacher immediately after passing his matriculation in 1946. Inspired by Maulana Hasrat Mohani’s anti-British ideas and being a zealous supporter of the Muslim League, Farman Sahib migrated to Pakistan in 1950 in the wake of communal tension in his hometown. For him, life was not a bed of roses in the nascent country either. First, he had to be content with a lower-cadre clerical job at the Civil Aviation and then another clerical job at the audit department of the office of the Accountant General of Pakistan. But with a degree from Agra University, and a command of Urdu, Persian, Arabic, English and Hindi, he was keen to resume his teaching career. In 1955, he as teacher joined Karachi’s Kotwal Building School, known for its quality education and learned faculty. With a penchant for literature and a critical mind, Farman Sahib was not the kind of souls that sit idle and wait for things to happen to them. He had much earlier started writing critical essays that appeared in prestigious literary journals of the day. In fact, he had been composing poetry since school days and contributing to some well-known newspapers and journals even in the 1940s.

Making ends meet was quite a task and with the proverbial candle that he had to burn, Farman Sahib did part-time jobs and compiled students’ guides for Urdu Bazar publishers just to earn a few hundred rupees. Once he confided with this writer that in the 1950s and early 1960s, many guides for the students of some subjects as diverse as economics and mathematics were penned by one S. D. Ali. And it was none other than Syed Dildar Ali, who by that time had established himself as a critic and researcher with the penname of Farman Fatehpuri and was assisting Allama Niaz Fatehpuri in bringing out his celebrated literary magazine ‘Nigar’, a magazine which Farman Sahib began editing after the death of Niaz Fatehpuri in 1966. Its latest issue has appeared a couple of weeks ago.

During teaching at the school and studying for his Bachelor of Teaching and LLB degrees, Farman Sahib had become a well-known figure in the literary circles even before he earned his MA. When in 1958 he did his master’s in Urdu from University of Karachi and secured the highest marks, Prof Dr Abul Lais Siddiqui, the then head of the department, offered him a temporary teaching post. The rest is history. But it is easier said than done because the hard part did not end when he was hired by the university as he began working on his dissertation that earned him a doctoral degree in 1964. Farman Sahib’s life, full of struggle and a bee-like commitment to work, reminds one of what George Bernard Shaw has said about doing what you must: “just do what must be done. This may not be happiness but it is greatness.” Though it is greatness in itself, it brings other kind of greatness, too. The one that Farman Fatehpuri achieved, and, when greatness comes, can happiness be far behind? With the same practice of doing what just needs to be done, Farman Sahib achieved another milestone in his long career as an academic: he earned a DLitt in 1974, not to mention many more research-oriented books and research papers.

For him, life was a constant endeavour. Even when he had reached the pinnacle of his career, he did not change his ritualistic hard work practices: rising before dawn, having a stroll, reading newspapers, doing some academic work, going to the varsity (UDB office in the later days), attending literary gatherings, editing ‘Nigar’, guiding research scholars and students and, most importantly, reading and writing quite late into the night.

This writer has had the honour of working with Farman sahib for over four years at UDB as chief editor. At that time, Farman Sahib had become the president of UDB. By then, 18 volumes of Urdu’s most comprehensive, 22-volume dictionary had appeared. Having edited and published 10 of those volumes as chief editor between 1985 and 1995, Farman Sahib was very passionate and keen about completing the project. It was during that period that I closely watched this great man and came to know that Farman Sahib strictly believed in some values: moral, literary and academic. Always punctual and regular, he was always there when I needed some help. He was indeed one of the most well-versed persons in the country in the matters of lexicography and I, being much junior in every respect, was naturally a bit nervous in the beginning. But Farman Sahib was very kind, always polite and pointing occasional errors that occurred in dictionary’s manuscript only half-jokingly.

We had a meeting every day at 10 in the morning over a cup of tea. That was an opportunity not only to discuss the affairs of the board and the problems of lexicography and our dictionary but also to learn a lot. The person named Farman Fatehpuri was an institution unto himself. He was a wordsmith. He loved words, whether they were from Arabic, Persian or Prakrit. We would discuss their shades of meanings, pronunciation and usage. Often he would recite a few verses in Sanskrit and translate them for me. When amused over incorrect pronunciations entered in the dictionary erroneously, he mimicked the dialectic pronunciations and accents of Urdu’s regional varieties and shared his insight. Whenever a typographical error or editing lapse rendered a couplet (cited in the text of dictionary as example of the usage) out of meter, he would smilingly push the manuscript towards me and ask to read it aloud. I would read and he would say “Does it sound OK”? It meant something was wrong. If I corrected the error, he loved it and his encouraging words pepped me up. If I couldn’t, he was amused and would let me know a trick of the trade or two.

Farman Fatehpuri was the product of an era that took pride in nurturing values, product of a society for which literature was not a way of life, it was life. Those days are gone and when persons like Farman Sahib leave, with them dies a portion of those traditions and values.Farman Sahib’s funeral was held on Aug 4, 2013, and he was buried in Karachi University graveyard.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com