The first issue of Shabkhoon, dated June 1966, was launched in April. My mother’s moral and financial support had been crucial in the year-long planning for the launch of this independent, highbrow literary journal.

One of the main objectives of this journal was to bombard the literary establishment with “new writing, unconventional writing, new literary theory and aggressive reviews, especially of the senior writers.” The journal shook Urdu writers out of their comfortable complacency and created a bit of a literary storm.

What I remember most from those days are the phrases taraqqi pasand, taraqqi pasandi and tehreek bandied around in the drawing room. The drawing room of the Thornhill Road bungalow was a hive of activity; vociferous discussions emanated from there. In the evening, writers of all stripes would drop in. They arrived on bicycles, scooters, rickshaws and on foot; the drawing room would fill up with cigarette smoke. The rattle of teacups added a beat to the voices.

I had begun to recognise the important names and their accents. When the sofas in the drawing room weren’t enough to accommodate everyone, the turquoise-blue Mirzapuri carpet on the floor, that stretched from wall to wall, was equally comfortable for visitors to sit on.

Ashtrays strewn around overflowed with cigarette butts. I gathered a slew of new words; among them were jadeediyat, rujhaan, parchah, shumaarah and farma — hardly the kind of words one would expect a child to know. But I was most intrigued by taraqqi pasand, and what, or who, these ‘progress-loving’ people were.

A figure that showed up often was this gentleman with a somewhat untidy salt-and-pepper beard. He was always dressed in a kurta and shalwar that bore ink stains. He was, I learned, Salimullah Naiyer sahib, a reputed calligrapher with a deep interest in literature. He had a loud voice and picked his nose often. He smoked birris and smelled of them. I found him a bit scary. He was a person crucial to the discussions in the drawing room. Indeed, he participated in his booming voice.

A gentleman known as Hamid Bahkavi had a prominent nose with an equally prominent mole. He usually had a valise tucked under his arm from which he pulled out papers to share with the group. Bahkava must have been the name of the town to which he belonged. In Urdu, ‘bahkava’ means deception or delusion, therefore bahkavi was an awkward moniker to have.

My father persuaded him to change his name to Hamid Husain Hamid. Hamid sahib was a poet (unfortunately, he died young) and a solid collaborator in Shabkhoon’s planning.

An unforgettable visitor was a dignified gentleman with a deep, gravelly voice, who always announced his presence from the veranda by calling out my father’s name forcefully: “Faruqi sahib!” He stretched the vowels to make it sound: “Faaruuqii saahiib.” My father promptly went out to receive him.

I learned that he was Janaab Aijaz Husain (1899-1975), former chair of the Department of Urdu at the University of Allahabad. Aijaz sahib wore wide-bottomed pyjamas and elegant sherwanis. He was, I found out much later, a taraqqi pasand. He was the author of several well-known books, among them Mukhtasar Taareekh-i-Urdu Adab [A Short History of Urdu Literature, 1940], Adab Aur Adeeb [Literature and Writers, 1960] and Meri Duniya [My World, 1965].

In the 1960s, the University of Allahabad’s newly established Urdu department was a hub of literary stalwarts. Much later, in the course of my research, I learned that Aijaz sahib played an important role in guiding the fledgling department. Eminent Marxist-Progressive critic Saiyyid Ehtesham Husain (1912-1972) was a leading light at the time. Then there were Saiyyid Masihuzzaman and Aquil Rizvi.

Aijaz sahib agreed to give his name as the editor of Shabkhoon. Jafar Raza, also a lecturer at the Urdu department, was the deputy editor and my mother, Jamila Farooqi (d. 2007), was the publisher and manager.

Shabkhoon was launched at a garden party on April 19, 1966. The event is described in the journal itself as follows: “A firefly (jugnu) appeared in the dark night. Shabkhoon emerged on the public platform … There was a glittering gathering of literati drawn from a variety of languages — Hindi, English, Bangla, Urdu, Farsi, Arabic and French — on the verdant lawns of Guzdar’s restaurant to welcome the journal. To have a gathering of more than 300 intellectuals welcoming a journal wasn’t easy.

“Allahabad University’s vice-chancellor, Mr Ratan Kumar Nehru, presided. Eminent poet Firaq Gorakhpuri gave a welcome speech. Professor Ehtesham Husain introduced the chief guest. Mrs Nehru presented the first copy to the editor, Professor Aijaz Husain. Deputy editor Dr Jafar Raza conducted the programme. Jamila Farooqi gave a vote of thanks.”

My personal memory of the event is mostly about eating ice cream, wearing a party frock and flitting from table to table. I wish I could remember more. Reading the report about this event now (2021), in the opening pages of the second issue of Shabkhoon, makes me teary-eyed. It brings home the aspirations of my parents, so young and fired with energy, at the launch of their dream.

My father is not mentioned anywhere in this one-page report. But to me, it is obvious that he wrote it. Nearly every word is soaked with the joyous emotion of having accomplished this challenging task. Leafing through the first 20-odd issues of Shabkhoon as I write, I can demystify many incomplete fragments from my own memory but, more importantly, I can understand the struggles and triumphs of my parents working as a team, steering the journal onward.

The first issue carried leading articles by Saiyyid Ehtesham Husain and Saiyyid Masihuzzaman, ghazals by Firaq Gorakhpuri, fiction by Upendranath Ashk, a horror story (bhayaanak afsaana) and much more.

The horror story’s author was Sheherzade, one of the pen names my father had adopted for adding a variety of contributions to Shabkhoon’s contents. The bhayaanak afsanaa went on to become a regular feature for many issues. I am now able to connect the volumes of horror stories that lined my father’s bookshelves with his choice of bhayaanak afsanaa.

The journal had space for translations from Indian and foreign languages. There was effort to bring in aspects of art through essays on music and painting. But Ehtesham sahib’s article, ‘Naee Teeshay, Naye Kohkan’ [New Axes, New Mountain Cutters] in the first volume was appropriate in highlighting that the journal would be presenting both new perspectives and new writers.

All the notable writers mentioned above were associated with the Progressive Writers’ Movement. But the ideology behind the Progressive Movement in Urdu literature — an important force for 25 years (1936-60) — had lost much of its lustre from roughly 1955 onwards. Many new writers preferred to be acknowledged as independent from ideology in their pursuit of literature.

There was a gradual drifting away from Progressivism. A trend (rujhaan) towards individual experience as a guiding force in writing, the forging of a more personal or direct relationship with the reader, and creating complexity through symbolism were some of the defining features.

Yet, as we can see from the initial years of Shabkhoon, the change was not happening overnight. Also, Faruqi wasn’t exactly anti-progressive in these early years. He was against the colonialist legacy in Urdu literature, which, he felt, the Progressives had absorbed.

The columnist is associate professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 20th, 2022