Hafeez Sarwar — my father

Abdul Hafeez Sarwar Hashmi, my father, breathed his last on March 31, 2001. Declared the APNS cartoonist of the year 1982, he was only the second to win this award, after its institution a year earlier. His career did not start as a cartoonist, though. Drawing and calligraphy ran in the family. He had a natural flair for both. He never had any formal training. Born in Gojra in 1919, a small town of what was then the district of Lyallpur, he went to a school in Mehdi Mohalla, where Mumtaz Mufti taught English. The latter inspired my father into the world of literature. Literary sensibility added lustre to the ability to draw and compose letters beautifully. Indeed, he started writing poetry under the name of Hafeez Batalvi. He even tried his hand at writing a novel and a script for a film that was never completed. Mostly on demand and for competitions, he did a number of paintings in oil and water colour. One such painting won an award in an official competition to reflect the theme of One Unit. It showed traditionally dressed women from all provinces performing the Kili dance. I suspect that the first governor of West Pakistan, Mushtaq Ahmed Gurmani, asked him to design the official logo of the newly-formed province.



Choudhry Inayatullah, known for many innovations in Urdu journalism, was my father’s classmate. The two left their homes and went as far as Calcutta to produce a magazine for children, Bachchon ki Dunya. The venture turned out to be a non-starter, but the two were together until the launch of the daily Mashriq by Inayatullah, when my father decided to side with Nasim Hejazi and stay on for the venture Kohistan, which was also the creation of Inayatullah. Earlier, he and my father were together in the production of Hidayat, a children’s magazine published by the famous Qaumi Kutub Khana on Railway Road in Lahore. We lived on the top floor of the office, next to Arab Hotel, an intellectual talk shop of the day. I still remember the domineering Chiragh Hasan Hasrat and a thoughtful Bari Alig. Inayatullah moved to Rawalpindi when daily Tameer was brought out. My father stayed in Lahore, but was encouraged by him to send cartoons. This was the beginning of his career as a cartoonist. His last and longest stint as a cartoonist was with the Nawa-i-Waqt. It wasn’t a happy ending; until his death, he kept wondering why that institution was so unkind. After his exit from the newspaper, he did not draw a single line.

A specialty of my father was designing book covers. He had designed the covers of almost all novels by Nasim Hejazi. His popularity with women writers for designing covers was the envy of many. Besides others, AR Khatoon’s name comes to mind. This should not be surprising. When asked to adopt a shorter name for print media, he picked up Hafeez from his own name and Sarwar from his mother’s name to become Hafeez Sarwar, or HS for short. Shorish Kashmiri, Altaf Hasan Qureshi and Niaz Ahmad of Sang-e-Meel Publications would also approach him for art work. I think he was on the side of Mujib Shami when the latter fell out with Qureshi and created his own weekly, Badban. Interestingly, his entire career as a cartoonist/artist was along the side. Throughout, he was an employee of the Punjab government’s department dealing with agricultural information. Art alone can’t feed a family, he would say. He was very strict in keeping all of his seven children away from the world of art.

May his soul rest in peace.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2013.