Uljhey Suljhey Anwar (BIOGRAPHY)

By Imrana Maqsood

Pakistan Publishing

House, Karachi

ISBN: 978-96941907601224pp.

RITER Anwar Maqsood, like all creative individuals of high merit, is an enigmatic character. It is never easy to understand writers’ personality traits — what ticks them off, what makes them feel overjoyed or, for that matter, how their creative energies work, etc. Only if you get to live a considerable period of your life with them — as a friend, fan, or partner — can you claim to know them better than those who have admired their work from a distance.

Imrana Maqsood’s book Uljhey Suljhey Anwar defies categorisation. It is about her husband, but not entirely. It is about herself, but not entirely. And it contains some of Anwar’s works that ought to have been published, but not entirely.

First things first, though. Initially the title of the book was different. It was Anwar who suggested to his wife to take a phrase from one of Mir Taqi Mir’s verses and use it as the title of the book: Laag gar dil ko nahin, lutf nahin jeeney ka/ Uljhey suljhey kisi kakul ke giriftar raho [If the heart is not attached to someone, there’s no joy in living/ Entangled or free, keep falling for the beloved’s strand of hair].

The woman beside Anwar Maqsood provides a glimpse into his life

The two lines, in a manner of speaking, give away a bit of how the popular writer (who specialises in satire) sees life. He is a free spirit and yet not detached from Pakistani society. This is why whatever he chooses to write about is related to the people, the environs, and the norms that are an inalienable part of our society. This is where Imrana, the author of the book and his wife, comes in. She knows that her husband is a writer, a painter, a connoisseur of music, and a playwright. He has larger issues to mull over and to express his opinion on. It is difficult for him to concentrate on household chores (not that he shies away from them). So she steps forward and — as by her own admission at the launch of the book at their residence — negates her personality to enable the family to stand on its feet.

Imrana’s book, therefore, is not Anwar’s biography. It is an account — beginning with a brief introduction to her pre-marriage life in India — of certain aspects of their lives together, especially the periods when they struggled to put a roof over their heads. 

Today, the Maqsoods come across as a well-heeled family. The perception may be real. But it was not always like that, as the author tells her readers. She mentions, without a modicum of hesitancy and with a fair degree of pride, the first time Anwar got a salary of five thousand rupees as a columnist for the Urdu daily Hurriyat. As a reader you know that this is coming right from the heart. They’ve seen some tough times, and they are not living in the past, but moving ahead, exuding a positive energy that rubs off on those who know them.

Another subject Imrana focuses on is the way the family managed to get a house. It is a moving story, occasionally disturbing, of the difficulties the family went through while setting up their house in an area which, when they were setting it up, didn’t have many houses around it. They had to deal with insects and reptiles moving in and out of the shrubberies in the locality. That being said, one feels that the book doesn’t give a complete picture of the person to whom it’s dedicated. This is understandable. They have a big family and there must be innumerable tales to tell, making it difficult to pick and choose, chop and change.

However, it was wise of the author to include, in the second half of the book, those writings of Anwar that have either been performed as TV or theatre pieces, or have been read by Anwar himself at cultural events. Some of them are works of art; for instance, his piece on his sister, the late Fatima Surayya Bajia, which he read at a condolence conference organised in her honour, relates the family’s strong bond with great affection.

The feat for which Anwar might be remembered for a long time, though, is his extraordinary tribute to the greats of Urdu poetry in the form of fictitious letters and interviews. They include interviews of, and letters from, the likes of Mirza Ghalib, Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Zauq and Jaun Elia. But it is evident that the kind of importance that he attaches to Mir is on a different plane. He holds the poet in the highest esteem and therefore his tribute to him is effusive and gushes with praise. He profusely quotes Mir’s couplets and verses, and of course, he doesn’t do that without peppering them with his trademark humour. Yet, at the heart of it all is his profound admiration for the poets. To quote a couplet by Mir included therein, which can also be applied to Anwar: Suntey ho tuk suno ke phir mujh baad/ Na suno ge ye naala-o-faryaad [Listen to me, because after me/You won’t hear this lament anymore].

The reviewer is a member of staff.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, February 5th, 2017