Najam Hussain Syed (Punjabi Poet/Writer)

The artist knows time as an ever-present reality….

Najam Hussain Syed

The artist knows time as an ever-present reality….

Najam Hussain Syed

Najam Hussain Syed is a prolific Pakistani Punjabi language writer, poet, playwright, creative non-fiction writer, the most dynamic and versatile Music Director, journalist known for his insightful articles on a wide range of topics including politics, culture, and society. He is a prominent figure in the literary scene of Pakistan and has contributed to various newspapers and magazines. He has authored over 100 books. He is considered pioneer of the modern Punjabi literature. Najam Hussain Syed has mentored many writers and has been a source of guidance for many others interested in Punjabi literature. Reportedly, he does not give interviews. He also shuns publicity and public appearance and quietly works in his domain of work, especially in the domain of literary criticism. He chooses to publish his books with relatively less-known publishers.

Najam Hussain Syed was born in a Qadri family in 1935 in Batala, East Punjab, British India. After Independence of Pakistan in 1947, his family moved to Lahore. He received his Master’s degree in English Literature from Forman Christian College, Lahore in 1958 as Accountant General of Punjab. During the time, he also headed the Punjabi Department in Oriental College, Punjab University, Lahore. He joined the Pakistan Civil Service and worked there until his retirement in 1955. He married to classical singer Samina Syed who was a disciple of the legendary Punjabi classical singer Ustad Chotay Ghulam Ali, and she died in 2016.

In the backdrop of acute shortage of notable work in Punjabi literature after partition, Najam emerged with his first poetry book titled “Kafian” in May 1965 and in majority of the poems in this book ‘night’ has been as metaphor. Najam’s second book “Chandan Rukh Tei Vehra” was published in 1969 with the metaphor of a snake charmer in the poems. He founded Majlis Shah Hussain and Punjabi Adabi Sangat simultaneously. From 1970s onwards, all the enthusiasts were keen to attend Najam Hussain Syed’s “Sangat” (company or camaraderie) in weekly gatherings, where he used to keep sitting in the corner without uttering a word. The news of this gathering raised alarm bells in the ‘revolutionary circles’. So, first and most important task was to create a label for this group. In the stigmatization, “Sangat” was named “The Hoo Group” on the assumption that group used to chant Allah Hoo or other Sufi mantras, where Kafis of various Sufis were sung different Raags (organums). Najam Hussain Syed’s major works include: “Alfo Pairni Di Vaar and Bar Di Var” (1969), “Deewa Mundri” (2010), “Gal Waar Di” (2010), “Khyal Dukkar” (2011), “Ik Wast Agochar Johni” (2017), Rang (2000), “Khappay” (1986), “Kyal keh Khayal”, Takht Lahore.

Najam Hussain Syed has been acclaimed by the critics. One of comments encompasses all the traits of his poetry. “All of Najam Hussain Syed’s poetic work has been written in rhythm and rhyme, meant to be sung or dramatically recited like most classical Punjabi poetry……” By Nadir Ali.

(The NEWS – Sunday, November 30, 2003; https://apnaorg.com/articles/najam2/)

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Since Najam Hussain Syed is a shy person and has always avoided giving any interview, hence the following extracts have been taken from his some of selected essays:

It may be asserted that poetry is often written to be sung. And all poetry carries, through manipulation of sound effects, some suggestion of music.

The music that we have here is not the vague suggestion of melodiousness one commonly associates with the adjective “lyrical” — it is the symbolic utterance of a living social tradition. The “Kafis” draw for their musical pattern on the Punjabi folk songs. The Punjabi folk songs embody and recall the emotional experience of the community. They record the reactions to the cycle of birth, blossoming, decay and death. They observe the play of human desire against the backdrop of this cycle, symbolizing through their rhythms the rhythms of despair and exultation, nostalgia and hope, questioning and faith. These songs comprehend the three dimensions of time — looking back into past and ahead into future and relating the present to both. Also, these songs record the individual’s awareness of the various social institutions and affiliations and clinging to them at the same time — asserting his own separate identity and also seeking harmony with what is socially established.

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The voice of the folk-singer has for ages protested against the bondage of the actual, but its fleeting sallies into the freedom of the possible have always been a torturing illusion. The voice of the folk-singer is dragged back to its bondage almost willingly, because it is aware of the illusory nature of its freedom and is reluctant run after a shade, fearing the complete loss of its identity.

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The river for centuries has flowed between desire and fulfillment. No one knows where it goes; it has no beginning and no end. The river is ancient and unfathomable — holding mysterious dangers. It causes both life and death but shows a fascinating indifference that compels awed men and women to kneel and worship the river. There is another reason for this homage. The river bounds the village. It limits and defines the known and tried capacities of humanity.

The ecstatic rhythm brings to the refrain a tone of finality — a finality comparable to that of death.

In the beginning was the stone. And man stood before the stone possessed by the need to live and the urge to be. In the end, too, is the stone and man stands before it as un-satiated as in the beginning…. This two-fold character of human history points to only one direction inexhaustible continuity. No action is decisive, no ideology is absolute. What has been is always accompanied by what could have been and no end is completely and finally achieved.

The two worlds of experience are as different from each other as the familiar life and the unknown beyond.

(from essay “Shah Hussain”. Courtesy: Shah Hussain By Najm Hussain Syed (apnaorg.com)

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In the beginning was the stone. And man stood before the stone possessed by the need to live and the urge to be. In the end, too, is the stone and man stands before it as un-satiated as in the beginning.

Between these two points there is movement — movement that cuts and chisels the stone to form the axe, that strikes two stones against each other to rouse the slumbering spirit of fire, that smithers the stone to fragments to touch off the multifaced dance of water, that splits the very being of the stone to release demons whose dance is infinitely subtler and infinitely mightier. The movement breathlessly explores the mazes wrought by its own course and then shapes the stone into forms of pain, pleasure and silence, to envision through them what is beyond pain and pleasure and silence.

It is this movement which is the history of man past, present and future. Within the course of this movement is contained all that man has felt, thought and done. Also within the course of the movement lies the dimension of unrealized potentiality. Whatever man has felt, thought and done carries the memory of what he could feel, think and do — the memory of the stones that hedge the movement.

This two-fold character of human history points to only one direction inexhaustible continuity. No action is decisive, no ideology is absolute. What has been is always accompanied by what could have been and no end is completely and finally achieved…. One is never prepared to bargain the smug solidity of familiar objects for the chimerical flux of unending time. There is nothing surprising in such an inhibition. No one can actually see or feel the movement of the earth.

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Instead of discovering what trends in history are responsible for our frame of attitudes and emotions have zealously busy ourselves in fitting history to our frame of attitudes and emotions. The nature and extent of our willingness to associate ourselves with the past, present and future time is determined by our own impulse for personal security. Such an attitude towards history represents a consciousness which has foregone the opportunities of expansion, marking out a narrow path in past and future, sidetracking discovery and challenge. The awareness of time we thus achieve is a projection of a private

The artist knows time as an ever-present reality. To him the moment is an ever-open door — a door which within its shape integrates his entire experience as a unit of creation. He finds himself perpetuated within the door. He knows that the door is not the final end —and nothing that he knows, is constantly yearns to realize what is beyond the door. The artistic creation too is not an end in itself; it is an act within the door.

sentiment, an exaggerated dramatization of personal frustration and daydreaming.

Any vision of history is thus both an index of, and a primary factor in, the spiritual makeup of a person or a group. Once you finally commit yourself to a particular limited vision of history and your hedged place in that vision you deliver yourself in the hands of ruthless gods who are jealous of the intrusion of human will in their realms. They grip you, mould you and set you in motion according to their own designs. And ironically you maintain the belief that your actions and thoughts are the results of your own conscious will. You scarcely have the detachment to reflect that your conscious will itself has been harnessed by the image to which it surrendered itself. The physical or ideological tyranny to which our honest hands subject others is only a reflection of the tyranny of a partial vision of history to which we submitted ourselves.

The individual sentiment is comparatively flexible but the group sentiments and attitudes pile up in the course of ages and harden to a degree where it is difficult to successfully resist or dislodge them.

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There was an intense synchronization between the acts of contemplating. The artist-man was not perhaps conscious of his contemplation as one is conscious of an expressible idea. He lived his vision of time rather than formulate it. He felt himself to be a part of the creation and not a product of a creed or ideology. He found his fulfillment by affirming his contact with the current moment. And art was not a by-product of his internal deferred living. The distinction between internal and external living is of later origin. It was after the synthesis was disturbed that human consciousness found it impossible to retain the spontaneous wholeness of experience. And those who still sought a personal contact with the current moment were termed as artists, mystics, heretics or lunatics.

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In fact the “artist” and the “mystic” were only a disowned part of the ordinary man; they themselves were more genuinely ordinary than was realized. It was left only to “the artist’. or “the mystic” to retain an intimate relationship with time. The artist knows time as an ever-present reality. To him the moment is an ever-open door — a door which within its shape integrates his entire experience as a unit of creation. He finds himself perpetuated within the door. He knows that the door is not the final end —and nothing that he knows, is constantly yearns to realize what is beyond the door. The artistic creation too is not an end in itself; it is an act within the door.

Associating the performance of Ragas with particular seasons and particular hours of day is a really significant phenomenon. The Raga itself is a comprehensive formulation of human experience; it is the door. The performance of the Raga is an act within the moment — the moment which is physically present as an hour of the day or a season of the year. The performer and the listeners with him try to enter into an intimate relationship with the moment. The artist’s relationship with time is not one of antagonism resulting if1 either his surrender or the conquest of time. This relationship is undertaken as a dialogue between man and the moment. But as the moment itself is not the end man strives to wrestle out of its embrace. The cherished attainment of the former is to arrive at a point where the moment wanes and the Raga itself is left behind.

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Art is essentially an act of impulsive meditation in which life tries to measure and stretch its limits; the knowledge of the limits implies the strength to stretch there. The artist has little use for chronology. For him past is not made of events but of experience; and experience lives when events are dead. And for a communion with experience he does not go to events; he goes to his own consciousness — which contains the past in a living form and which contains the future too. He is not haunted by fear of the past or fear of the future nor is he shy of facing the present because in his consciousness they live as one intimate experience — an experience not based on any principle of moral or dogmatic selection but comprehending all harmopies and discords implicit in the fact of existence.

(from essay “Bulleh Shah And the Artist’s Vision of History”. Courtesy: Bulleh Shah And the Artist`s vision of History (apnaorg.com)

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The commonly prevalent notion of poetic tradition is that of a body of defined principles, and accepted practices, concerning the more obvious aspects of poetic art. Tradition in this sense is thought to take a concrete shape at an early stage in the hands of masters and then passed down to posterity who are to follow it to the detail with meticulous fidelity. This distorted view of tradition and its relation to poetry at any given moment results in the development of a conventionalized idiom. As the poets assiduously imitate the idiom of their predecessors preserving sanctity of old technical modes, they identify the word tradition with the tyranny of certain images, words and rhythms. This tyranny is hard to resist by their daily surrender the poets continue to authenticate and perpetuate it. They are forced to exercise their ingenuity within the scope offered by these words, images and rhythms.

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Using an old analogy, poetry is the changing, developing foliage, tradition the sap that issues from the past. Tradition to the poet at any particular moment manifests itself in a series of recurrent patterns in the work of the poets before him. These recurrent patterns have corresponding patterns in the consciousness of the people to which the poetry belongs. Poetic tradition thus is a dynamic factor that asserts itself on its own, interpreting the present through its present shape and assuming fresh shapes with every new moment.

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The austerity of rhythm is supported by a strikingly plain vocabulary…. The austerity of rhythm is the product of the poet’s contemplating wisdom….The vigilant shouting moreover represents the self-conscious publicizing of the fact of immaturity. The shouting, more than keeping the harm away, provides an outlet for the anxious mind of the watchman. As the ripened bushel is safely collected, the shouting ceases. As life draws towards its end and the jealously nurtured fruit of a fulfilled stay is gathered home, a contended silence begins to settle.

(from essay “Austere Rhythms of Farid ”. Courtesy: AUSTERE RYTHMS OF FARID (apnaorg.com)

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Rehan Islam

6 months ago

Informative

arooj

8 days ago

interesting