Book Review: An archival collection of Urdu literary columns

              An archival collection of Urdu literary columns

                              By Syed Afsar Sajid            

                       Title:  ‘Taak Jhaank’ (Snooping)

                              Author: Fayyaz Tehsin

              Publishers: Sukhan Saraye Publications, Multan

                          Pages: 114  -  Price: Rs.600/-

Fayyaz Tehsin is a retired bureaucrat and a noted veteran litterateur --- poetry, criticism, and column writing being his major literary pursuits. He has two Urdu verse collections to his credit viz. ‘Rizq-e-Hava’ and ‘Bab-e-Khata’ besides a recently published collection of literary columns in Urdu which is the subject of this review.

The columns in question, eighteen in number, were published in the daily Nawa-i-Waqt, Multan over a period of one year (1995-1996). The collection in hand carries prefaces by the author himself, Anwar Jamal (famed poet, painter and academic), and this scribe. Anwar Jamal traces the wherewithal of these columns to the heyday of the Urdu Academy Multan—a prestigious body of poets, critics, writers and aesthetes, committed to the cause of literature and allied arts, holding regular periodic meetings at a given venue (in town) with a view to promoting and popularising literary activity in Multan and its adjoining areas besides providing a viable platform to the young literary aspirants to demonstrate and vet their innate creative skills.

Litterateurs of the name and calibre of Arsh Siddiqui, Asghar Ali Shah, Ibne Hanif, Mubarak Mujoka, Salahuddin Haider, Khalid Saeed, Muhammad Amin, Asghar Shahia, Farooq Usman, Anwaar Ahmad, Farrukh Durrani, Asghar Nadeem Syed, Masood Ash’ar, Arshad Multani, Iqbal Saghar Siddiqui, Zawwar Hussain, Anwar Jamal, Noshaba Nargis, Alamdar Bukhari, Naeem Chaudhry, Rauf Sheikh, Iqbal Arshad, Hussain Sehar, Ahmad Khan Durrani, Fayyaz Tehsin et al sponsored and regularly participated in the activities of the Academy. Thus Urdu Academy was instrumental in generating a genuine creative-cum-critical fervour in the enthusiasts of literature in the whole region.

Fayyaz Tehsin’s columns mostly relate to the proceedings of the Academy meetings; he extensively talks about the men, matters and discussions forming an integral part of these sessions. He is candid,  lucid, and moderate in his appreciation. His style is purely literary, though sparsely anecdotal, drawing its vim and vigour from his vast but practical knowledge of comparative literatures, humour and wit sans sarcasm or invective, and a dynamic critical fecundity.

Subjects treated in these columns are fairly contemporaneous involving issues of wider literary context such as the 30-year history of the Urdu Academy, the three schools of the genre of Urdu inshaiya, literary significance of TV dramas, Urdu as the national language, literature of resistance, bureaucrats and their interest in literature, divers cultural entities and the national mainstream, some personal impressions reflecting the literary contributions of writers namely Samar Bano Hashmi, Shoaib ur Rahman, Ahmad Khan Durrani, and Shakir Hussain Shakir. The narrative in all of these columns is racy and engaging.

The book is handy and incisive with a neatly suggestive title. Hopefully it is likely to interest both the common reader and the one who is adequately conversant with the theory and practice of literature.