During one of my numerous informal talks with Jnanpith Award winner, renowned Urdu poet Ali Sardar Jafri, I asked him : who is a poet, in your views ? How would you define a poet ? He told me : real poets are the saints of our society. I would call them derwesh.
As the world was celebrating the international women’s day on 8 March, plethora of events were held across the globe to mark the day, to honour women achievers and to express social gratitude to them as a society. Cutting across the lines of caste, creed, religion and nationality lakhs of programmes must have been organised across the globe to eulogise the role of the fairer of the sexes and underline their contributions to the progress of the mankind as such.
The city of Jammu did not lag behind and practically all educational, social, cultural and government establishments celebrated the day in different fashions. But, we forgot that this day also marked the birth of a poet who wrote poetry eulogising the status of womenfolk, their sterling global contribution to the entire mankind, more than seven decades ago. He sang songs to her glory no other poet could do in our extremely male dominated society.
The city of temples, somehow, forgot to remember a derwesh, a poet who paid unusual tribute, honour and gratitude to all the women of the world and sang unforgettable songs of her unflinching sacrifices. This derwesh of a poet we know as Sahir Ludhianvi.
Only one organisation, the newly formed Jammu & Kashmir Institute of Art and Culture ( JKIAC ) remembered to recall the life, time and sterling contribution of this hugely popular Urdu poet. The JKIAC collaborated with Jammu & Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages ( JKAACL ) and Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts ( IGNCA ) to hold two days’ special event to mark the International Women’s Day, and birthday of Sahir Ludhianvi.
Who else, but the great Sahir Ludhianvi, could write :
Aurat ne janam diya mardon ko,
Mardon ne use bazar diya.
Jab jee chaha masla kuchla,
Jab jee chaha dutkar Diya.
( Women gave birth to mankind,
Men traded them as sex slaves
Used them as sex dolls, no esteem
Lust fulfilled, threw them in streets )
The lovers of great poetry forgot that this day in the year 1921, a male child was born to Sardar Begum, wife of a wealthy zamindar in Ludhiana district of the erstwhile undivided British India. He was named Abdul Hayee. This boy was to be later recognised by the literary world as Urdu poet Sahir Ludhianvi.
This boy of a rich father suffered innumerable insults and financial deprivation in his life. These tormentations of his childhood stayed with him for the rest of his life, undiminished. His father left his mother for other women and fought a long legal battle for the custody of the boy. Destiny intervened and despite his wealth and political clout, he lost the battle to his wife.
Abdul Hayee loved his mother no end. He was forced to watch her suffer social stigma and financial hardships to bring him up. He empathized with his brave and loving mother more than anything in this world. She refused to accept any financial support from her deviant husband to bring up the child ; she refused all kinds of charity.
His father is said to have married several times in the hope that a male child be had by him. Sahir never forgave his father all through his life. His father later migrated to Lyallpur ( modern day Faislabad ) where he breathed his last in 1964.
In times to come, the boy rose to be one of the most cherished and loved poets of Urdu language. Sufferings of his mother always stayed with him as unwanted tormentations . Not only that he refused to give in to any kind of hatred for men at large, he saw his mother in all womenfolk. He wrote some of the most poignant poems and lyrics ever written in support of womanhood. Just savour this :
daulat ke liye jab aurat ki ismat ko na becha jaega
chahat ko na kuchla jaega ?hairat ko na becha jaega
apne kaale kartuton par jab ye duniya sharmaegi
vo subah kabhi to aaegi…
( When honor of a women shall
not be sold for money
Neither love shall be trampled,
nor self-respect traded
When mankind shall be
ashamed of bad deeds
We eagerly await such a dawn …)
There is an interesting tale how Abdul Hayee became Sahir Ludhianvi. As a anguished child, Abdul Hayee was a quiet and reticent boy who was instinctively driven inwards. He eventually sought peace and refuge in poetry. Literature acted as a balm to his crushed self-respect. Luckily for us, he wanted to express his unreleased anger in a creative manner. Even during exams he read literature to soothe his tattered soul.
In 1937, at the tender age of 16, he came across a poem by Mohammad Iqbal. I quote a couplet :
Is chaman mein honge paida bulbul– Shiraz bhi /
Sainkron Sahir bhi honge, sahib-e -ijaaz bhi //
Bulbul -e-Shiraaz refers to famed Persian poet Hafiz, ( also called Hafiz Sherazi ) who hailed from Shiraz. The term “saahib-e-eijaaz” in the couplet refers to those who perform miracles. The word “Sahir” means magician. The literal meaning of this couplet would be :
(There will be poets like Haafiz who will be born in this garden /
There will also be thousands of magicians and those who perform miracles )
Abdul Hayee loved the word Sahir so much that he adopted it as his pen name. Adding the name of his birthplace to this, he called himself Sahir Ludhianvi !
It is interesting to note that Sahir has a close association with the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. His maternal grandfather, Abdul Aziz, belonged to a Kashmiri Muslim family. He had migrated to Ludhiana in the British India. In times to follow, his youngest child, Sardar Begum, gave birth to Sahir Ludhianvi.
On the national highway 144, near the Sainik Colony, Jammu, a grand structure stands in pristine white colour. This is the building of Gurjar Desh Charitable Trust. The largest, most prominent and majestic part of this structure is named Sahir Ludhianvi Auditorium. This auditorium is a tribute to the magician wordsmith, the great Urdu poet who himself belonged to the Gujjar community.
When the political bigwigs agreed to partition the British India in August 1947, Sahir was in Delhi and his mother in Lahore. After the partition, he went to Lahore to fetch his mother. Lot many migrations were taking place those days. People were shuttling between the two newly formed nations.
When Sahir was in Lahore preparing to bring his mother back to Delhi, his friend Hameed Akhtar arrived in Lahore. He had shifted from Bombay and insisted Sahir stayed put in Lahore. With reluctance he agreed and started his job editing literary periodicals. But, this could not be continued for long. Sahir was under the influence of communist thought process and never accepted the two nation theory. Moreover, he had an anti establishment attitude, which did not augur well for him.
Soon enough, arrest warrants were issued against him for propagating communism. He had to rush out of Lahore without his mother and came to Delhi where he lived with his close friend Prakash Pandit in Pul Bangash area of the old Delhi city. After some time, he requested his dear friend Prakash to go to Lahore and bring along his beloved mother.
He later left for Bombay in search of a livelihood. His poet friend Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, the famous writer and poet, had already adopted the city for his residence and career.
Sahir faced very tough times in Bombay and had to even copy manuscripts written in bad handwriting to a legible hand, for benefit of publishers. Interestingly, he performed this job for his friend, renowned Urdu writer Krishan Chander also who later started writing in Hindi as well.
Sahir had a close and caring friend in Mohan Sehgal, the famed film producer, director and actor who came to his rescue. Mohan Sehgal had two more siblings in the film industry : Naresh Sehgal was a writer, producer and director of films like Jab Yaad Kisi Ki Aati Hai, and Ramesh Sehgal, producer, director, writer, actor. He introced Sunil Dutt to films. The three brothers wielded great influence in the film fraternity.
Mohan Sehgal was confident of the writing prowess of Sahir and spoke to his friend, music director Sachin Dev Burman, to try him out.
With a strong recommendation from Mohan Sehgal, Sahir went to meet SD Burman, in search of a job. Burman used to stay in Green Hotel in Khar area of the erstwhile Bombay., as a permanent guest. He gave a tune he was working on to Sahir and told him to provide him the lyrics. It is in this Green Hotel that Sahir wrote :
Thandi hawayein
Lehra je aayein
Rut hai jawaan
Tum ko yahan
Kaise bulayein..
This song was evocatively sung by Lata Mangeshkar and became hugely popular. This set Sahir on a journey from a serious poet of social concerns to a lyricist of some of the most profound songs of Hindi films.
There were times when Sahir lived like a pauper and slept even on footpath. But, with great determination, exemplary grit and shining talent, he kept moving ahead ascending towards stardom and attained great popularity and big financial success.
In times to come, Sahir built a three storey mansion just across the footpath on which he once slept , in the most expensive and tony area of Juhu, at a stone’s throw away from five star hotels like Sun-n-Sand and Novotel. The large mansion called “Parchhaiyaan” stands witness to the charisma Sahir weaved through his words.
Besides his undying love for his mother, Sahir is reputed to have loved three women in his life. His first love was a Sikh girl he befriended in Ludhiana. It is said that her name was Ishar Kaur who married someone in Bombay and was lost in oblivion. Second love was a singer called Sudha Malhotra. Religion stood between the lovers. Sudha is happily married to a big businessman in Mynbai.The third woman, we learn, was renowned Punjabi writer Amrita Pritam who was madly in love with him.
In 1977, Sahir lost his mother and three years later, on 25 October 1980, before he could even touch the comparatively young age of 60, Sahir Ludhianvi suffered a fatal heart attack. Let us recall his song from a 1964 film titled Chitralekha. To me, this philosophical and haunting melody created by Roshan and Sahir reads like an abhang bhajan :
Itna hi upkar samajh koi jitna saath nibha de /
Janam naran ka mail hai sapna, yeh sapna bisra de /
Koi na sung mare /
Man re tu kaahe ba dheer dhare….
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