I watched a film many years ago of whose title, story, cast and director I can recall nothing. I only remember one peripheral character — an old Hispanic man somewhere in the southern United States, who would get drunk in the evening, hit the road in his small, rickety truck, and shout, curse and set billboards on fire. When asked by someone, the old man’s son explains that it is his father’s rage pent-up over the years against the wealth of the few, against racism, consumerism and advertising. Saqi Farooqi was that old man of Urdu literature, who wished to set on fire every billboard erected on the cultural and literary landscape.

This has been a difficult few weeks. As if the passing away of Munnu Bhai in Lahore and the mysterious death of Professor Zafar Arif in Karachi were not enough, the world of letters received another blow when news arrived from London that Saqi had left us. It was also a personal loss since I enjoyed a close relationship with him. Between 1995 and 2010, not only did we meet very often, but also for long hours. Besides enriching me with his thoughts and verse, he introduced me to such amazing poets and writers as Obaid Siddiqui, Arshad Latif and Jeteendra Billoo, who became lifelong friends. We are all in this mourning together and cherish those summer weekends and winter evenings with Saqi which will never happen again. No one could be as frank and sacrilegious without using a swear word as he was. Scholar and critic Salman Asif, another friend of Saqi’s, put it aptly: “Saqi was incorrigibly irreverent and valued nothing more than candid impudence.”

Saqi was 81 and had been ill for some time. However, he was among those poets who cannot be replaced because of that certain uniqueness in their work which charts new territories in the realm of literature. He may not have been considered in the same league as Noon Meem Rashid, Majeed Amjad and Faiz Ahmed Faiz by those who define our literary canon, but no discussion on modern Urdu verse can be possible without appreciating and critiquing Saqi’s work. Some practitioners of our poetry borrow

new forms from other cultures and insist on claiming a modern sensibility simply on the basis of these acquired forms — it is an occasion if you find a new theme in their work — but Saqi was genuinely more modern in his approach than any of his contemporaries by way of his themes, not simply forms. In fact, the ghazal — which happens to be one of the most traditional forms — was used by Saqi with great facility for introducing modernist and contemporary trends.

The word ‘saqi’ literally means the bearer of a flagon. Saqi served his readers with a very different wine. His verse challenged conventions, patterns of expression and poetic treatment. His idiom, vocabulary, selection of subjects and composition of lines in a nazm was both fresh and aggressive. So was his prose. In his critical essays and reflections on people, he brazenly attacked some other writers and critics. In his collection of essays, Hidayat Nama-i-Shaer, and his autobiography, Paap Beeti, he ruthlessly deconstructed literary ideas that he thought were both banal and passé, and took extra pleasure in demolishing writers who subscribed to these ideas. Once I objected to Saqi’s scathing narration on the poet, author and critic Wazir Agha in Hidayat Nama-i-Shaer. He replied, “It is better I say it all about Agha when he is alive.”

Saqi leaves many collections behind, including some volumes which are a combination of selected and new poems. These include Raadaar, Zinda Pani Sacha, Haji Bhai Paniwala Aur Doosri Nazmein Aur Ghazlein, Surkh Gulab Aur Badr-i-Munir and Saqi Farooqi Ki Ghazlein. He also composed a few poems in English. But some of the most fascinating poems which, in my view, have left indelible strokes on the canvas of Urdu poetry include ‘Mastana Hijra’, ‘Makra’, ‘Haji Bhai Paniwala’ and ‘Khaali Boray Mein Zakhmi Billa’. In terms of style, Saqi neither had precursors nor successors.

The writer is a poet and essayist based in Islamabad

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, January 28th, 2018