Ustad Amanat Ali Khan, the famous descendant of Patiala gharana [clan] Of our classical music, he did wonders when he started singing geet and ghazal. When I was young, I used to regularly listen to Khan's classical and semi-classical renditions, including ghazals, on those audio cassettes that had to be turned manually inside the metal or plastic chamber of the recorder every 30-45 minutes.
Some of my older contemporaries and friends will remember that we always had a pencil handy to fix the cassette when the tape got stuck in the chamber. The pencil was placed in one of the two holes in the cassette and slowly rotated within the hole to return the tape to its original position.
On summer evenings and during school or college vacationsโin the humid heat of Karachi or the dry heat of Lahore or HyderabadโI remember switching off the ever-irritating ceiling fan in the room and gladly bearing the brunt of the heat while listening to music. All other sounds and noises had to be eliminated to fully enjoy the musicโespecially when it was something like Ustad Amanat Ali Khan singing Ada Jafareyโs ghazal, the one that ends with the couplet: โBaaqi na rahay saakh Ada dasht-i-junoon ki/ Dil mein agar andesha-i-anjaam hi aaey [The wilderness created by my madness, Ada, will lose its integrity/ If my heart, for once, feels fear of the consequences].โ
This year marks the centenary of the birth of Ada Jafarey, the remarkable poet who is not entirely unknown but certainly less recognised today than many less talented ones. But what does that matter? It doesn't matter to the genuine artist, for she transcends praise and appreciation. They are irrelevant in the larger scheme of things, whether literary criticism or canonisation.
But it is important for society in general in these times, which oscillate between mediocrity and mediocrity by not knowing how to appreciate the best in us. Jafarey was one of the best.
Those who heralded what is considered feminist verse in Urdu โ from Kishwar Naheed to Fahmida Riaz โ have gained more prominence in our literature and public life due to the oppressive cultural and political environment in which we live. However, it is equally important to critically appreciate the different voices of those who chose not to shout, but to whisper.
From Ada Jafarey to Zehra Nigah, Shabnam Shakeel, Parveen Fana Syed, Parveen Shakir, Yasmeen Hameed, Hamida Shaheen and Fatima Mehru, many people of all generations fall into that category.
There are many others too. Jafarey precedes them, as does the first of five collections, Main Saaz Dhoondti Rahi. [I Kept Looking For the Tune]appeared as early as 1950. Her many female Urdu predecessors over the centuries, from Mah Laqa Bai Chanda to Rabia Pinhan, never received the comparable attention that Jafarey was able to command from her fellow male poets in her time.
Her facility with language and idiom was unparalleled. She would take a word and mould it to mean something different from its ordinary meaning. Most of Jafarey's ghazals (her favourite genre) use universal expressions rather than the gender-specific language that most of her successors chose to write.
Jafarey was born as Aziz Jahan in the town of Badayun in India and began composing verse at the tender age of 12. She chose as her pen name Ada Badayuni. In 1947, after marrying Nur-ul-Hasan Jafarey, a bureaucrat who, fortunately for her, was also a literary man, she became Ada Jafarey. Her autobiography, Jo Rahi So Beykhabari Rahi [What Remains Is Ignorance] โ a title taken from a verse by Siraj Aurangabadi โ was published in 1995 by Maktaba-i-Danyal of Karachi. That was 20 years before his death in 2015.
The book is a remarkable journey into the past, as any good autobiography and memoir should be, narrating his personal history, covering the cultural, literary and social life of Pakistan in particular and the Indian subcontinent in general. In addition, his travels outside Pakistan and the emotions they provoked in him are also described in the book.
Women and men of literary importance are mentioned, as well as people who worked for her family, such as one Badal Khan. Life in Karachi, Lahore and other cities of the country is narrated. There is a moderate feminism throughout the narrative. It is nuanced, but not moderate, in her verse. Or, perhaps, we should distinguish between feminism and femininity when it comes to her work, be it poetry or prose.
Jo Rahi So Beykhabari Rahi has been translated into English by Ada Jafareyโs son Aamir Jafarey and granddaughter Asra Jafarey. The translation, titled A World of Oneโs Own, was published in 2023 by our bibliophile friend Zahid Kazmi of Sungi Publishing House, Haripur and exquisitely printed by none other than Tarique Rehman Fazlee of Fazleesons Printers in Karachi.
I am not sure that Kazmi and Fazlee would acknowledge that this is one of the best translations of an Urdu text that they have had the opportunity to publish and print. It is surely comparable to Khalid Hasan's English translation from Urdu of Saadat Hasan Manto's pen portraits and Aseer Abid's Punjabi translation of Divan-i-Ghalib.
Aamir and Asraโs translation is as close to the original as possible without compromising on the language and sensibility of the English language. Ghalib once said, โAaey hai baykasi-i-ishq pe rona Ghalib/ Kis ke ghar jaaey ga Sailaab-i-bala mere baad [Ghalib, I mourn the helplessness of my passion/ After me, who will survive these raging torrents of my heart].โ
Asra Jafarey has proven that she will survive the torrents that continued to ravage her grandmother's heart.
The columnist is a poet and essayist.
His latest collections of verse are Hairaa'n Sar-i-Bazaar and No Fortunes to Tell.
Published in Dawn, Books and Authors, June 30, 2024
