I am in Lahore when Professor Yousuf Hassan is being laid to rest in Rawalpindi. I cannot make it to his funeral, but the news brings such anxiety and a deep sense of loss that I find it difficult to keep myself confined to the room. Braving the dull, depressing heat of a typical summer evening in this city, I scale the highs and lows of The Mall, Cooper Road, Davis Road, Shimla Pahari, busy streets, bustling bazaars, quieter bylanes and crooked pavements.

I think about the likes of Bari Alig, Safdar Mir, Eric Cyprian and Zaheer Kashmiri, who were once the soul of Lahore. I think about Ustad Daman and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ahmed Bashir and Nasreen Anjum Bhatti, whose footprints can still be found on the streets I roam about. I also go back to the memories of similar people in Karachi, the city where I was born and raised. I remember Sibte Hasan, Zamir Niazi, Begum Hamza Wahid, Wahid Bashir, M.R. Hassan, Tufail Abbas, Hasan Abidi, Professor Zafar Arif and poet Khalid Alig. Professor Hassan was born about 15-20 years after the ones I mention here, but he had the same ideological moorings and shared the same human values. I think about these dwindling generations of women and men who demonstrated an impeccable personal integrity and an untiring commitment to ordinary people.

Professor Hassan traded in books and ideas. He wrote poetry of a definite quality and prose which informed and provoked. He belonged to Jhelum, where he did his initial schooling, and graduated from Punjab University. He spent most of his life in Rawalpindi, teaching and mentoring students in literature, philosophy, politics and sociology. He was a serious scholar who remained unapologetic in his subscription to socialism until the last day. He could speak for hours unending on the pitfalls of capitalism, the impact of colonialism, machinations of imperialism and the distorted face of neo-imperialism. He had authoritative knowledge of classical Marxist texts, Eurocommunists, liberation theologists and neo-Marxists. But he was equally attuned with local culture and Eastern civilisations. Lately, he had joined the Awami Workers Party and participated in their political campaigns, besides providing them with his ideological guidance and support.

My first memory of Hassan goes back to a mention by my father when I was in college. My father told me that he had received a long letter sent by a friend in Rawalpindi. “Yousuf Hassan has done a brilliant critique of my essay on Paul Sweezy’s work,” I recall my father saying. Then I started following Hassan’s verse that appeared regularly in Urdu literary journals. It was in Islamabad, some 17 years ago, that I first met him at poet Iftikhar Arif’s office. Later, I sat through many of his speeches made at seminars, conferences, meetings and book launches in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Those of us who would challenge the orthodoxy in his Marxist approach were equally welcome in his company. He was clear-headed in his argumentation and possessed that rare skill of successfully introducing Marxist philosophy and critical ideas to new and old alike. Who is left in Rawalpindi now who can elaborate and expound on the works of Bill Warren and Gyorgy Lukacs with such ease and such passion?

At the same time, who else is there who can speak in the same breath on Warren’s work and then switch to appreciating the cadences in Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s style of poetry and criticising the confusions in his thematic content? There are only a few left anywhere in Pakistan who can be this large in both their comprehension of varied ideas and articulation of scattered thoughts. Also, there are few left whose resolve to change this world remains undeterred and who would rage for the creation of a classless society even from their deathbed.

Hassan believed in keeping his literature and politics together. But his art is saved because whatever subject he chose to write about, his treatment was purely poetic. His creative output has a certain melancholy that mixes with human love and a desire to see a different world for his own self and for others.

The writer is a poet and essayist based in Islamabad

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 1st, 2018