Jab We Met:faiz Ahmed Faiz and I

Drive.

“He would take a long walk, chain smoking, oblivious to everything.’’

On the 1982 tour, I was reintroduced to Faiz by a music album of 12 of his poems sung by the dulcet voiced Nayyara Noor, having bought a cassette on the Lahore streets on that tour itself, to go with several others of Bollywood songs for a three-month long tour.

The album’s called ‘Nayyara Sings Faiz’ and includes some recitations by the poet himself. Khushwant Singh, who translated several of Faiz’s work, called it a masterpiece, as much for the poetry as Nayyara’s singing. Years later I heard that at a party during a cultural festival involving artists and writers from both countries, Faiz admonished Nayyara for getting into an argument with Khushwant Singh on the ever-contentious Indopak relations.

When putting together an anthology on India’s 50 years of Independence in 1997 to which he also contributed, I asked Khushwant Singh about this. He smiled and waved away the question, saying let’s talk about Faiz. “He was a communist but also an internationalist,’’ said Khushwant of Faiz. “He spoke for the oppressed. He was provocative. Not by asking people to take to arms with thoughtless bravado, but standing up to atrocities with courage and resilience.’’

Let me here return to that cold December day in 1982 at the office of the Muslim in Lahore where the Pakistani journalist and I were seated on a bench, waiting for the editor to finish his meeting.

Shortly, a thickset, whitehaired man with a slightly unsteady gait, presumably because of dodgy knees, emerged from the room with the editor.

He seemed diffident to the world, but had a magnetic presence.

Aly Faiz rose from the bench and walked towards the man, holding him by the arm. While the two were walking out of the office, somebody stopped them and introduced us.

After brief handshakes, both hobbled out.

Curious to know the reason for Faiz’s visit, I asked around. Someone said, “He’s only just returned from exile, does some writing for The Muslim and had come to collect his cheque.’’ If memory serves me right, it was for ~ 300.