Sixty three years ago today on a cold night of December 28, 1958, the poet Ahmed Riaz passed away at 12:00am from consumption. He was only 36 at the time. How and why this promising poet from Lyallpur passed away is not only a literary but a social question. Did he die or did circumstances kill him?
Riaz, after the partition of India in 1947, kept wandering like the pendulum of a clock daily between Lyallpur and Chak Jhumra till his death. The poet who in lieu of working very hard got a few rupees, and in lieu of a few rupees got chronic fever. Was he worthy of being buried at that age in which others even have the leisure to love? It can be said about him that he worked like an ant and he died like an ant. I therefore regard him as a martyr and victim of the debilitating economic conditions in Pakistan under Pakistan’s first military dictatorship of Ayub Khan.
The following poem Avaami Funkaar (People’s Artist) is from Mauj-e-Khoon (The Wave of Blood), which was sadly Riaz’s last and only artistic memorial. It was published in June 1961, three years after his untimely death. This year thus marks 60 years since its publication. The opening stanza of the poem reads in Urdu:
Mera khuloos, meri jahad-e-be-karaan, mera azm
Tamaam jabar ke ba-vasf raaegaan toa nahin
Hazaar raah mein kaante sahi babool sahi
Mere safar ka bam-o-zer be-nishaan toa nahin
The forthcoming year 2022 marks the birth centenary of Ahmed Riaz, and it is hoped that this original translation of his beautiful poem from his lone poetic collection will spur interest in the life, legacy and memory of a man whose work was praised by the likes of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi and Muzzafar Ali Syed and whose art was the prophet of an awakening history!
‘My sincerity, my immense struggle, my determination
Is very much not in vain notwithstanding all the oppression
Indeed there maybe a thousand thorns and acacias en route
The highs and lows of my journey are not without indication.
Though my hand and feet are bound by chains
Though the language of the narration of reality is under watch
Though even my pen is snatched from me
Though grave are the dark night’s remains.
But Riaz sifting from this gloom
My consciousness warmed the banquet of life
The concretization of my great demands
Kindled the fire that till now was burning.
All those expelled from the royal etiquettes steadied
The magic of the conditions of the gallows met with defeat
This universe awakened with the news of sunrise
From the sheet of the darkness of the night a beam leaked.
All the ancient traders of the stock of politics
Are trembling today for the end of their safety
Those who have looted the beauty of the world
Today they are witnessing the highs and lows of the world.
My sincerity, my immense struggle, my determination
Is very much not in vain notwithstanding all the oppression
Indeed there maybe a thousand thorns and acacias en route
The highs and lows of my journey are not without indication.’
*All the traslations from the Urdu are by the writer.
