Nida Fazli — a voice of sanity falls quiet

A poet of immense virtue, he was admired in both India and Pakistan

MUMBAI:

When he did not pick up his cell phone despite repeated attempts, we left him a text message, requesting him to join us for dinner. A few close friends were coming over, all of them great admirers of him. The dinner happened and we never heard from him. This was last Wednesday, February 3. Little did we know that a catastrophe was waiting to happen. Five days later, he passed away at age 77.

Nida Fazli was a man of great virtue; a poet, lyricist and critic who was admired in both India and Pakistan. He too was a native of Jammu and Kashmir like me so whenever noted thinker and family friend Balraj Puri would visit Mumbai, Fazli would join us in the long hours of eating and discussing everything under the sun, from politics to literature to social issues. More than often we would rub shoulders during our morning walk in the park on Yari Road.

Fazli’s language was simple yet he managed to touch upon matters of significance with great passion. Classical giants like Ghalib and Mir resonated with him and his understanding of Western modernist literature was impressive. He once wrote:

Uske dushman hain bohat, aadmi acha hoga,

Wo bhi meri hi tarah shehar mein tanha hoga!

Like his contemporaries across the border, Fazli was equally perturbed by Partition and the onslaughts between communities that had lived together for centuries. His parents had migrated to Pakistan but he refused to join in and stayed back, praying for the madness to stop.



His grief echoes across the body of work he produced over a long writing career. I composed and sang many of his ghazals. He was present in the audience during one of my earliest concerts at Nehru Centre, Mumbai where I sang his words:

Hindu bhi mazay mein hai, Musalman bhi mazay mein,

Insaan pareshan yahan bhi hai wahan bhi!

When I sang a dedicated concert of Mir at National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, Fazli opened the show with a master class on the great poet, in his typical inimitable style and erudition. After the concert, he extracted a promise from me that I shall put together an entire concert using the works of legendary Urdu poet Firaq Gorakhpuri. “Firaq is the greatest Urdu poet of the 20th Century. I will be honoured to introduce the concert for you,” I still remember his words.

He was a voice of sanity in this chaos of nonsensical lyrics. His timeless classics like Hosh Walon Ko Khabar Kya, songs from Kamal Amrohvi’s Razia Sultan and even the more recent work like songs of Sur – The Melody of Life are still fresh and relevant. Alas, that voice has been silenced by divine intervention. 

The writer is a renowned ghazal exponent based in Mumbai, India. Her album ‘Sarhad’ was presented by Prime Minister Vajpayee to his Pakistani counterpart as a gift during the historic Lahore Bus Yatra in 1999. The album is dedicated to Indo-Pak amity 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 10^th,  2016.

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