Anwar Barelvi - The Warmth I Miss

The Warmth I Miss…

It was a warm afternoon of perhaps April back in 2001 when I first met with Anwar Barelvi in his one-room quarter in Poly-technical colony, Hyderabad. I along with my friend Waqar Ahmed (Waqar- who would become the dearest student of Anwar Sahab in next 11 years) were going to have our first interaction with Anwar Barelvi – A famous poet, sound critic, influencing philosopher and a thorough gentleman .

Both young and ambitious students in our early 20’s; we were fond of literature specially poetry and loved to recite anything and everything that came across. We had heard about Anwar Sahab being a comic poet and someone who had amazing grip over ‘Ilm-e-Arooz’ (A scientific knowledge of balancing the couplet) with earned respect almost in all literary societies that we knew at that time.

Truth be told, our prime interest was to show him our pieces of poetry to seek guidance.  We did show him the pieces of our creativity and he encouraged us to practice on the certain lines that he suggested. Continuing the practice for a few months, I found it difficult to manage and kept myself restricted for not writing poetry rather enjoying what was already written while Waqar kept the practice and continued to seek guidance from Anwar Sahab and started appearing in poetic gatherings. We had both the perception and experience that most of the people who could help and guide- particularly in poetry- were arrogant and haughty (With no due respect), however some of them were so gentle and I found Anwar Barelvi on top of the list for being courteous and accommodating.

Anwar Sahab offered us tea and asked me to make it for all three of us, he guided me to his small open kitchen with a few jars and a gas stove. I had to look for cups and tea bags and powdered milk in the small messy ad-hoc kitchen while he was guiding me from his room to locate these. Anyways, while we were having tea, Anwar Sahab took a pack of biscuit from his bag and we had a few.  The tea time actually became a party when iced by his poetry that he shared with us both comic and serious and we enjoyed it thoroughly. The small room with a smaller bed and a few suitcases that was perhaps the quietest place an hour back was echoing with our laughter.

The journey continued for years to come, while after completing my Masters in Electronics, I had moved to Karachi in late 2004 pursuing my career but never missed a chance to see Anwar Sahab whenever I was in Hyderabad and found him, Waqar during this time developed strong association with Anwar Sahab and convinced him to publish his poetry that we thought was absolutely amazing, luckily he agreed and the book was published with the title ‘Kun’ suggested by Waqar and adopted by Anwar Sahab.

Something that I personally liked about Anwar Sahab a lot was his thoughts on social issues and the way he depicted them in his poetry. Nobody could have the courage to write comic poetry targeting man made set of rituals called religion in such a way that could not only appeal comics aesthetically but also give a strong punch of criticism at the same time; his poetry was always a food for thought.

To preserve his work, I came up with a thought to record a series of video interviews with Anwar Sahab including his poetic sessions and life experiences and develop a set of question areas as well. Waqar and I discussed the idea with Anwar Sahab and planned to execute it. After making necessary arrangements for the series of interviews, we invited him and embarked. It took us several months to record, fine tune and edit the videos and thankfully it went successful. We now have a decent sized video library that we would be sharing in different public domains time to time.

Anwar Sahab’s deteriorating health condition and age factor was not allowing him to be as active as he wanted to be, still he always acknowledged and took time to spend with us at Qabil Ajmeri Library and at Waqar’s place. In last few months specially, he had started handing over his new and unpublished poetry to Waqar and often made a statement that he might not remain with us for long now.

On morning of Dec 19, 2012 I received a text from Waqar that read that Anwar Sahab had passed away. It was one of the saddest mornings and I was feeling a personal loss and was recalling the moments I had spent with him. A great man had passed away quietly. I was told that, though Waqar was sent text messages and was called by many people (Including poets) to inform him of Anwar Sahab’s demise, he was amazed rather disappointed to see that there were only 16 people present at his funeral prayer with no “so called” prominent literary figures of Hyderabad. My dilemma on the other hand and an interesting twist i.e. I was unconsciously waiting for a ticker on all TV channels or may be breaking news or perhaps a small package on his life and work for the next two days but did not come across any news.  Obviously, these were my false assumptions because this news would not have generated any interest in masses and could not promise any fortunes to the commercially driven media. I am not entirely blaming media for this ignorance because I understand that media only is the reflection of our overall societal behavior.

I actually mourn the intellectual bankruptcy of our society and seeing that we are losing more minds than we are producing. This supply gap of intellect has already leaded us to the position of being called a ‘failed state’ and a ‘security state’. While as a nation we might remain in the state of denial and chant that all is well, or at least not as bad as the world thinks, we would only be deceptive to ourselves. Art is losing the value in our part of the world and religion has had worst effect on society than it had during 16^th century in Europe. Despite being optimistic, I hardly see any light at the end of the tunnel.