Sarokaar-Special issue on Paash

Davinder Sharma’s play on Paash poem

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Paash Memorial Literary Function on 13-09-09

Paash’s birthday

सपनों को जिंदा रखने के पक्षधर थे पाश   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

नई दिल्ली। समाज की चुभती हुई सच्चाइयों को बेहद तीखे शब्दों में पेश करने के बावजूद मनुष्य के बेहतर भविष्य की उम्मीदों से कभी निराश न होने वाले पंजाबी के कवि पाश दरअसल भारतीय कविता का एक प्रमुख स्वर बनकर उभरे और उन्होंने आतंकवाद के नासूर पर करारे प्रहार किए।

साहित्य आलोचकों के अनुसार पंजाबी भाषा में प्रगतिवाद को नई दिशा देने वाले पाश की कविता कम्युनिस्ट आंदोलन से जुडी होने के कारण आम समाज को बेहद प्रभावित करती है। उन्होंने अपने तेवरों की वजह से न केवल हिन्दुस्तानी बल्कि विदेशी भाषाओं में भी काफी लोकप्रियता पाई है। पंजाबी में उन्हें जुझारू या खाडकू कवि कहा जाता है।

राजधानी के जवाहरलाल नेहरू विश्वविद्यालय में हिन्दी के प्राध्यापक चमनलाल ने पाश की शैली का जिक्र करते हुए कहा कि उनकी कविताओं की भाषा बेहद सरल होने के बावजूद काफी धारदार होती है और आक्रामक शैली न केवल आपको आकर्षित करती है बल्कि लंबे समय तक आपको सोचने को विवश कर देती है। उन्होंने कहा कि पाश की जुझारू कविताएं समाज के कामकाजी वर्ग, विशेषकर किसानों की समस्याओं को लेकर लिखी गई थीं। ये कविताएं जमीन से जुडी होने के कारण काफी असर छोडती हैं। पाश की कविताओं का संकलन कर चुके प्रोफेसर चमनलाल ने कहा कि पाश ने अपनी कविताओं में बिल्कुल नई भाषा ईजाद की। यह भाषा बहुत सरल होने के बावजूद काफी असरदार है। इसे यदि लोकभाषा कहा जाए तो गलत नहीं होगा।

उन्होंने कहा कि पाश की सभी कविताओं का तो संकलन हो चुका है लेकिन उनका गद्य अभी तक इधर-उधर बिखरा पडा है। उन्होंने पत्रिकाओं के लिए वैज्ञानिक विषयों पर आलेख, निबंध, पत्र और डायरी भी लिखी। प्रो. चमनलाल ने कहा कि क्रांतिकारी मुहावरा रचने के बावजूद पाश मनुष्य के भविष्य के प्रति बेहद आशावान थे। इसीलिए उन्होंने सपनों के मरने को सबसे खतरनाक बताया है।

आलोचकों के अनुसार पाश की कविताओं की लोकप्रियता का आलम यह है कि वे पंजाबी के कम और विभिन्न भारतीय भाषाओं के कवि अधिक बन गए हैं। हिन्दी के साथ साथ गुजराती, बांग्ला, मलयालम, मराठी सहित कई भारतीय भाषाओं में उनकी कविताओं का अनुवाद हो चुका है। पाश लोहा शीर्षक की अपनी कविता में वर्ग भेद को बेहद तीखे अंदाज में स्पष्ट करते हैं-

आप लोहे की कार का आनंद लेते हो,

मेरे पास लोहे की बंदूक है

मैंने लोहा खाया है

आप लोहे की बात करते हैं।

पंजाब में जालंधर के तलवंडी सलेम गांव में नौ सितंबर 1950 को जन्मे पाश का मूल नाम अवतार सिंह संधु था। उन्होंने महज 15 साल की उम्र से ही कविता लिखनी शुरू कर दी और उनकी कविताओं का पहला प्रकाशन 1967 में हुआ। उन्होंने सिआड, हेम ज्योति और हस्तलिखित हाक पत्रिका का संपादन किया। पाश 1985 में अमेरिका चले गए। उन्होंने वहां एंटी 47 पत्रिका का संपादन किया। पाश ने इस पत्रिका के जरिए खालिस्तानी आंदोलन के खिलाफ सशक्त प्रचार अभियान छेडा। पाश कविता के शुरूआती दौर से ही भाकपा से जुड गए। उनकी नक्सलवादी राजनीति से भी सहानुभूति थी।

पंजाबी में उनके चार कविता संग्रह लौह कथा, उड्डदे बाजां मगर, साडे समियां विच और लडांगे साथी प्रकाशित हुए हैं। हिन्दी में इनके काव्य संग्रह बीच का रास्ता नहीं होता और समय ओ भाई समय के नाम से अनूदित हुए हैं। पंजाबी के इस महान कवि की महज 39 साल की उम्र में 23 मार्च 1988 को उनके ही गांव में खालिस्तानी आतंकियों ने गोली मारकर हत्या कर दी।

समाज में फासीवादी प्रवृतियों पर कडी चोट करती उनकी यह पंक्तियां किसी को भी झकझोरने के लिए पर्याप्त हैं-

सबसे खतरनाक होता है

मुर्दा शांति से भर जाना

न होना तडप का सब सहन कर जाना

घर से निकलना काम पर

और काम से लौट कर घर जाना

सबसे खतरनाक होता है

हमारे सपनों का मर जाना।

 

On Paash’s birthday today-09-09-09

21st Paash Memorial Literary Function in Jalandhar on 13th Sept 2009

Paash poetry on a school wall

This image was sent to me by my friend Kulbir Singh from Govt High School AADHI (Jalandhar).

Seminar on Jithe Paash Rehanda Hai

Paash in Saeed Mirza’s autobiography AMMI

In  the autobiographical novel by Saeed Mirza ‘Ammi’ (2008), I found the following paragraph:

‘I did read some of the works of Premchand, so much like Gorky, was the master teller of rural and small-town tales of north India. His grasp of the caste and class division of those feudal times in transition, of power equations and the human stories within these equations, opened up a new world for me. And then I read Rahul Sankritayan, another great Hindi writer. He was a Marxist abstractionist, a merchant of ideas. His analysis of an India moving from a past into an uncertain future was electrifying. Later still I discovered the strength of writers like Harishankar Parsai, Mahasweta Devi, Manik Bandopadhyay, the poets Namdeo Dhasal, Dushyant and Paash …’  

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Writing a letter to a dead woman

Jai Arjun Singh

Saeed Mirza’s first book is a multi-layered reflection on the forces acting on the world today, and the importance of looking back.

Filmmaker-scriptwriter Saeed Mirza is speaking with a friend when I arrive for our appointment at the India International Centre. The details of the conversation escape me, but it has to do with the ongoing month of Muharram and its attendant rituals.

“So this can only be done on the ninth day?” Mirza is saying, “It can’t be, say, the 14th day — or the fifth day? I see.”

The tone makes it apparent that he doesn’t see, but it’s only mildly sardonic, his eyes are sparkling and he’s quick to change the topic. It’s a moment that captures two things about the man, both of which can also be seen in his first book: he’s iconoclastic, questioning, not particularly respectful of traditions that don’t make sense to him; but he’s disinclined to push the rationalist point too hard.

As a staunch Leftist who admits to being spiritually influenced by Sufism, he understands the value of contradictions. And besides, how does a rationalist justify writing a letter to a woman who has been dead 18 years?

Mirza’s Ammi: Letter to a Democratic Mother has been billed as a novel, but this is an inadequate description.

Though the first half includes a novella-length section where he reimagines the early lives of his parents and the unusual circumstances that lead to their wedding, this restless, engaging work is also part-memoir, part-travelogue, part-film script and a number of other things besides, with reflections on the injustices of history, the perceived clash of civilisations, and the importance of learning lessons from the past.

All this combines to form a lengthy, thoughtful letter addressed to Mirza’s mother, who died in 1990 — so that Ammi is personal and polemical at the same time. How did he settle on such an unusual structure?

“This form was the only way I could encompass everything that was going through my mind,” he says, “The idea for the book came from the way certain words are casually bandied about in today’s world — words like ‘democratic’ vs ‘undemocratic’, ‘rogue states’ vs ‘law-abiding states’, and so on. I wanted to look at how the meanings of these words have been lost or distorted.”

The book’s longest section is the tale of Jahanara Begum and Nusrat Beg, the former from a Mughal background, the latter a Pathan, who meet in Quetta in the early 1930s.

“Fictionalising the lives of my parents,” Mirza says, “created a background for the bits that are more explicitly about my own family and childhood.”

The result is an absorbing mix of fiction and non-fiction — it’s as if a line has been drawn down the book’s centre, separating the Nusrat-Jahanara story (which is abandoned at a point where the couple are about to start a family) from the autobiographical sketches of later years: the one about his parents’ stoical reaction when he unwittingly ate a ham sandwich in school, for instance. (“A sinner is someone who sins against people — not because he eats pork,” his mother hesitantly concludes after thinking things over for a while, though she quickly adds, “But in my house there will be no pork!”)

“That dividing line was important to me,” Mirza says. “The book’s structure begs the question: could this woman (Ammi) have been Jahanara? Could this man (my father) have been Nusrat Beg? I thought that would be an interesting way of telling a story. It also makes it more universal. There were many couples like Nusrat and Jahanara — people who came together from different backgrounds and who had to struggle with issues of faith, conservatism, the importance of education and freedom. These are ordinary lives and we tend to deny the incredible grace and dignity of the ordinary.”

More than anything, Ammi is a cry for inclusiveness, for being able to absorb various things from around the world while retaining the flavour of one’s own culture (Mirza himself is quite capable of linking disparate things — like placing the lyrics of John Lennon’s Working Class Hero in the context of the story of the underprivileged Eklavya).

As Nusrat asks the conservative elders in Jahanara’s family, “Do we want to live in a well from which we can see only a patch of sky or do we want to live outside the well and see the world?”

“That frog-in-the-well analogy is a peculiarly Eastern one,” Mirza says, “and it’s a pity how the West, on the other hand, has been playing up this paranoia about everyone else being The Other. People like Samuel Huntington, with their insistence on the ‘clash of civilisations’, have helped to ghettoise minds.”

It’s also a pity, he says, that modernity (“another word that has lost its meaning”) is defined by the Western model. Ammi is full of pointers to the spirit of radical thinking in Islam, something Mirza feels has been suppressed or misrepresented.

He includes stories about the scholars Ibn Senna and Ibn Rushd, who were among the world’s first freethinkers, maintaining their religious beliefs while at the same time daring to suggest that “the design of Allah needs to be studied further”.

He discusses the great tradition of Arabic literature from a thousand years ago, which later found echoes in the works of many European masters. And he throws in parables about the legendary figure of Mulla Nasruddin, “a genuine international folk hero� the classic Fool, who poked fun at royalty and pomp and protocol, who attacked mindless ritual and orthodoxy and everything that stifled the spirit of man”.

“I don’t think these aspects of Islam are in danger of being lost,” he says, “They exist in Turkey, on the Arab streets, but they don’t exist with the leadership, and they get misconstrued as being Islamist.”

Is it difficult to be both a Muslim and a rationalist in today’s world?

“It does become an issue at times, but I’ve been fortunate,” he says. “My mother took all my anti-religious talk with incredible equanimity. Liberals tend to scoff at spiritual-minded people, but I wonder if I would have been as tolerant if the situation were reversed!”

Mirza, best known for his work in films — he was the writer-director of movies like Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho! and Albert Pinto ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai as well as the popular TV serial Nukkad — is starting work on a new feature next week.

“It’s time to get back to work,” he jokes. “I’ve spent the better part of the last decade travelling — within India, in particular, learning about how different people live and think.”

Some of these anecdotes have made it to the book, such as the one about the truck drivers who put a huge painting from the Sohni-Mahiwal story on the back of their vehicle, because “nowadays no one has time for true love. So much tension! Fighting about money and religion. Since we travel around the country, we thought why not spread this message?”

“When you travel for 45,000 km on the smaller roads of this country, avoiding the highways,” says Mirza thoughtfully, “you realise how utterly insignificant you are, how foolish your arrogance is, how little you know of the world.” It’s clear that even at the age of 64, he’s eager to keep expanding his horizons, to escape the frog’s eye view. 

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Paash Pathak Manch in Lakhewali School

lwKyvflI skUl `c bixaf ‘pfÈ pfTk mMc`

 

mukqsr

 

ividafrQIaF ivc sfihqk, klfqimk qy sucwjI jIvn jfc vflIaF rucIaF ivksq krn dy mksd nfl srkfrI kMinaf sYkMzrI skUl lwKyvflI ivKy ‘pfÈ pfTk mMc` bxfieaf igaf hY. ies dI plyTI kfrjkfrnI ivc rfjvMq kOr ƒ pRDfn, eykqf rfxI ƒ skwqr qy kulvIr kOr ƒ ivwq skwqr cuixaf igaf. nvjoq kOr, hrmn, gurpRIq kOr, guirMdrpfl kOr, ivjYqf rfxI qy prmjIq kOr ƒ kfrjkfrnI mYNbr bxfieaf igaf.

 

qrkÈIl lihr qy sfihqk Kyqr nfl juVy skUl dy aiDafpk rfm svrn lwKyvflI ny dwisaf ik skUl dIaF kfPI ividafrQxF sfihq dIaF pfTk hn aqy AunHF dI ies rucI ƒ hor pRPuuwlq krn leI sLfier pfÈ dI Xfd ivc ieh mMc bxfieaf igaf hY ijs qihq ividafrQxF ƒ pMjfbI sfihq dIaF pusqkF muhweIaf krvfeIaF jfxgIaF. hr pusqk pVHn mgroN mMc vwloN Aus Aupr ivcfr crcf kIqI jfvygi qF ik ividafrQxF ilKqF ƒ vwK vwK nËrIey qoN jfxn dy smrwQ ho skx.

 

mMc dIaF mYNbr ividafrQxF vwloN afpxI jyb Krc ivcoN bcfey pYisaF nfl hI ikqfbF KrIdIaF jfxgIaF. pihlI koiÈÈ vjoN dlIp kOr itvfxf dI pusqk ‘eyhu hmfrf jIvxf` dIaF pMj kfpIaF KrId ky mMc dIaF mYNbr ividafrQxF vwloN pVHIaF geIaF qy crcf kIqI geI. mMc ividafrQIaF dy lyK, khfxI, kivqf qy nft mukfbly vI krvfeygf. skUl muKI qy ivaMg lyKk bldyv isMG afËfd  ny mMc dI sQfpnf `qy KuÈI df ieËhfr kIqf hY.

 

 srkfrI sYkMzrI skUl lwKyvflI ivKy bxfey ‘pfÈ pfTk mMc` dIaF mYNbr ividafrQxF  aiDafpk rfm svrn lwKyvflI nfl