Though today we may find many of Majnoon Gorakhpuri's short stories way too imaginative and out of touch with reality, at one time his short stories were so popular and were so striking that one of them may well have caused the death of a young man.

It was in 1926, quite early in his literary career, when Majnoon wrote a tragic love story titled 'Saman posh'. In fact it was the third short story of his career. A young man from Bareli named Shafqat, a graduate from Aligarh University, adored that story and often read it. He would say that the story would one day take his life. And once when he was reading it, Shafqat had a heart attack. Niaz Fatehpuri, editor of 'Nigar', the magazine that carried the short story, published his obituary. When Majnoon's first collection of short stories 'Saman posh' was published in 1934, it included the short story and Majnoon, quoting the sad incident in his preface, wished that the news was a lie. But he received a letter from Bareli informing him in somewhat uncharitable terms that the news was in fact true and he could visit the grave of the young man which was near the railway station. Majnoon later did pay a visit to the graveyard but did not have the heart to go near the grave and wrote a piece, bewailing the tragic death of the young man.

We today may attribute this incident to the young man's heightened emotionality or his weak heart, but in the first quarter of the 20th century the literary atmosphere was such that most of the writers of the sub-continent were mesmerised by Romanticism and the incident, sorrowful as it was, brought much publicity to Majnoon. Pioneered in Urdu perhaps by Sajjad Hyder Yildirim, this literary trend was a sort of reaction against Sir Syed's and Hali's rationality, seriousness and unadorned style.

Laying too much emphasis on a literature that ought to be meaningful and useful for society resulted in a spurt of Romanticism that was a sort of a revolt in its nature. Urdu literature of Romanticism was submerged in imaginative thoughts and ornamental language. Iqbal's iconoclasm, Tagore's philosophical thoughts and Ab-ul-Kalam Azad's originality were the elements that stoked Romanticism. Later, Hijab Imtiaz Ali, Sajjad Ansari, Mehdi Ifadi and many others showed an inclination towards this trend and contributed to the literature of Romanticism that kept on flourishing until the social realism of the Progressive Writers' Movement rocked the literary world of Urdu to its foundations.

Majnoon Gorakhpuri lived in the age which valued aesthetic expressionism and imaginative literature. He too came under the influence of Romanticism and, inspired by Niaz Fatehpuri, wrote short stories that sung of pessimism and celebrated pain and misery. His characters, wrote Dr Mohammad Hasan, were idealistic dreamy souls that were misfits in a world of materialism, dreaming of dreams that ended in nothing but pain and suffering. But Majnoon Sahib was a voracious reader and had read extensively. This ultimately changed the course of his thoughts and his Romanticism gave way to a more balanced approach towards literature that essentially saw it as a reflection on life. Then emerged a new Majnoon — the critic — that had a dual personality. His critical works show two aspects of his personality. One emerges in his book 'Tanqeedi hashiye' and the other in his book 'Adab aur zindagi'. At times it seems, according to Dr Mohammad Hasan, that two different persons have written these two books; in one speaks the soul of a Romantic short story writer giving expression to his inner dissatisfaction and the other depicts a mind that does not separate literature from life.

Majnoon Sahib soon became a literary hero of the new generation back then and many short story writers who later turned progressive took inspiration from him. Notable among them are Ismat Chughtai and Saadat Hasan Manto. Ismat Chughtai once publicly acknowledged that before her literary career began she practised short story writing by emulating Majnoon's style, writing short stories and destroying them as they were replicas of Majnoon's short stories.

Majnoon Gorakhpuri's real name was Ahmed Siddiq. He was born on May 10, 1904, in Gorakhpur. His father, Moulvi Mohammad Farooq Divana, was a professor at Aligarh University and wrote a humour column titled 'Tajahul-e-aamiyana' in 'Hamdard', a newspaper published by Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauher. Majnoon showed his literary bent of mind at a very early age and began composing poetry at the age of 15. In the 1920s, he turned to short story writing. In 1929, he launched, with Niaz Fatehpuri, 'Jinn', a magazine on occultism and spiritualism, but had to abandon it and floated his own publishing house 'Aiwan-e-ishaat' in 1930. The following year he launched a literary journal 'Aiwan'. A little later he began writing criticism, establishing himself as a redoubtable critic.

Having done MA English from Agra University and MA Urdu from Calcutta University, Majnoon began teaching and remained associated with different colleges and universities throughout his life including Aligarh Muslim University, Gorakhpur University and Karachi University. He wrote over 25 books, 10 of which are collections of short stories. His other books are on history of aesthetics, philosophy and criticism.

Majnoon Gorakhpuri died on June 4, 1988, in Karachi, and with him came to an end an era.

— drraufparekh@yahoo.com