Amjad Islam Amjad

Playing the Creative Role

Khuzaima Fatima Haque

In the last fifteen to twenty years, literary editions of newspapers have come up. Thus today’s poet has more contact with his audience and the exposure he receives is immense. Therefore Amjad the poet is mow more read and known along with the playwright. “Television has a wider range of audience. There is more feedback. Comparing it with poetry which is a limited art form is not justified,” says Amjad Islam.

Amjad Islam Amjad firmly believes that “The form of verse is only incidental to poetry. The content brings with it its form.” So readers of Amjad’s poetry have witnessed him exploring both the forms, ghazal and nazm. Another form like the geet is more related to craft and the poet has also ventured into this realm.

“In real life people have a set word bank that they use. There is no written rule that so many number of words have to be used by a poet in a poem. If the words are used correctly and are coveying the message then there should be no problem,” says Amjad as he defends a consistent repetition of vocabulary in his poetry.

Amjad has to his credit twelve serials spread over his 23-year-old professional life as a playwright. “This isn’t much as compared to my contemporaries. But I am satisfied. The majority of my plays have won me awards and I have got the recognition,” says Amjad who last year voluntarily announced his resignation from future national awards. He even gave away the award for his play Inkaar.

Inspired by Bano Qudsia who was the first to do this, his is a graceful exit from the competitive world of playwrights thus placing him at a much higher plane. Very intent on carrying on his work, he nevertheless faithfully believes in creating a tradition of “leaving the stage for the younger generation when the time is right”.

Tracing his steps back in time when television was a new medium and he himself was just an emerging poet and playwright, he moved on to writing plays for television because television offered a whole new world of opportune expression. But television and fame that it later brought him did not come easy to Amjad. Time and again he would submit his work to the producers who would return with the words “rejected” stamped on it. “Unfortunately that was the time when nobody was actually trained for television. My predecessors were trained in radio and thus were unable to pinpoint my mistakes.

“I learnt through a process of trial and error,” explains Amjad Islam Amjad. Starting with a few short plays for television a time came when he began to make people take notice of him. Not yet a front liner, Amjad persevered his way to the top. It so happened that a 25-minute slot was left empty on PTV and had to be filled. Amjad was assigned the job. With Ghazanfar Ali as the first producer Amjad Islam took the challenge very seriously. Waris, the classic TV serial was now born.

The first seven episodes were an absolute hit and PTV, for the first time in its history, increased the duration of a running programme from 25 minutes to 50 minutes. This was no mean achievement. The man in the field saw himself on screen and TV became the media of the masses. The environment, the language, the nuances and the clothes all communicated the plight of the common man.

Ever since his university days Amjad had been intermingling with people from a varied background. He came to understand the injustices of the feudal society and was pained to see the reality of life beyond the urban divide. “It was evident that a feudal’s dog was more important than all the villagers put together. Any humanist is sure to react to this inhuman treatment,” says Amjad Islam. “My reactions to this system gave a surge to creativity.

“Strangely enough the peak of my career as a playwright came right in the beginning with Waris,” admits Amjad Islam. Nonetheless he has explored a new theme in each of his plays. Ranging from university politics producing professional gangsters, to a drive against narcotics, to recreating historical characters, his themes are unique. Currently he is also writing a sound and light show on Heer Ranjha for a private company.

A great believer in translation as means of international communication, Amjad takes pride in using the medium to communicate his creativity with a non-Urdu speaking audience. A collection of works by poets from the subcontinent done in 1990 in Canada carries some of Amjad Islam Amjad’s poems. His play Dhokon ke Chadar carried sub-titled by Navid Shehzad for an international channel.

His play Waris was also published, dubbed and telecast on Chinese Television National Network in Chinese. Contented with his professional life he says, “I see the social change setting in our society. I have played my role as a creative mind and I feel hopeful about the future.”