A few lines about me.....

 

I admit that my claim to fame rests upon plays I wrote for television. This is because the plays address a wide audience whereas only a select group can be the audience of poetry. Some art forms by their very nature are outward looking whereas others are inward looking. Drama falls in the first category as it represents society and, therefore, can be popular though people may not know what they like most in a play. But some parts of every piece of art are addressed only to experts, the ones who could understand what made the piece artistic and how. These experts are more cultivated than ordinary people. Their opinion, therefore, is valuable but popular art is no anti-thesis to good art.

Perfect art, however, is the one which is for all and for all ages. Excellence in art, in fact, means ease in communication. It is your capability of rendering the most complicated experiences in the simplest possible style. In an age when social, religious, political and mental barriers are falling down, only that art will survive which is communicative.

Experiences of daily life are the material an artist draws upon to express himself in forms and images. In other words, he is very much indebted to his surroundings. He, therefore, must pay the society back the debt he owes which, I think, can best be returned by involving as many people as he can in his art.

I think I have tried to keep alive the revolutionary Amjad Islam Amjad by translating Palestinian and Negro poetry. Then I wrote Waris, a play that highlighted the absurdities of feudal culture—and that too during martial law when so called champions of revolution were in the hiding and no one was speaking. Moreover, I wrote two TV serials against student mafia despite my apparent vulnerability as a college teacher.

Dhaleez centred on the urban life. Only one character comes from a village, but the rest of the characters were city-people.

The story revolved around five friends in Samandar, who start a joint business and go nuts afterwards because of mistrust. One among five major characters was feudal. Three fourth part of the serial Waqt was about urban activities. And no village life at all was shown in Raat. It was about an aging man who falls in love with a girl who’s his daughter’s age. In Fishar, educational and youth problems were discussed. In Din all characters except Mehmood Aslam belonged to the urban area.

I usually complete a serial in two years because it includes subject hunting, materialization of the concept, research, studies, rest etc., otherwise the actual writing lasts for 3 to 4 months only.

It is my creative urge that makes me explore varied areas. In the Last Days of Autumn is a selection of English poems that I has translated, and Kehkashan is an anthology of the works of women Urdu poets. In Nai Purane I have critically interpreted the works of Mir Taqi Mir, Mir Dard, Sauda, Ghalib, Aatish, Nazir Akbarabadi and Iqbal. I have also written travelogues.