More Than a Poet: My Father, Hasan Naim

Shahira Naim

‘An indicator of one’s growing up is acceptance of one’s parents as persons’. This is what I had read somewhere long ago. Since then I periodically review if I can consider myself grown up enough and calculate how much ‘growing up’ remains to be done.

I guess it is difficult for anyone to write about one’s parents. In my case the task becomes doubly difficult. More than a quarter century’s experience as a blue- collared journalist has taught me to be objective, to get all sides of the story and treat facts as sacred. “When in doubt check out” my journalism teacher, the legendary H.Y. Sharda Prasad kept grilling into us.

So the kind of writing that comes naturally to me is one in which I do not figure anywhere. It is always from the head, written meticulously, often with passion but always steering clear of emotions.

That obviously is not possible if I attempt to pen down my thoughts about my father Hasan Naim whom we brothers and sisters called ‘Abbi’.

 If Imtiaz bhai had not been so persistent, I may have never gathered the courage to write. In his most affectionate manner he has patiently been coaxing me to share a few memories about my father.

For me opening the Pandora’s box of memories about Abbi is a task I have been dreading.

 I had hoped that as the years roll by I might well develop a level of detachment required to look back at those years spent with him without churning my very soul.

It is sort of family folklore that I was Abbi’s favorite and vice versa. My mother recounted how as a toddler I could not bear to be separated from him and howled so much when he left for work that someone had to engage me in some activity when it was time for Abbi to leave for work.

 One day not finding me around creating a ruckus he vanished quietly for work only to discover that I had been smarter and had hid under the backseat of the car popping up dramatically when he was half way to office!

As a child some of my most vivid memories are of him taking me to literary seminars, art exhibitions, music soirées, mushaira, dance recitals or both of us quietly sneaking away for a late night movie.

 He always wanted to know what I thought of the experience. Now I realize how these discussions helped me develop a critical understanding.

One lucid scene that is clearly etched in my mind’s eye is of a sad hot May afternoon of 1964 when he tugged me along to India Gate to join millions of Indians who felt orphaned that day.

He raised me high enough so that I could sit atop the car and get a ringside view of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s last journey.  

Most interesting were the personal meetings with writers, singers, painters, poets and dancers. I remember once after a rare recital of Sitara Devi in New Delhi he along with a friend took me backstage. She on the spur of the moment asked us to join her for dinner and a most memorable evening ensued.  

Music was in his soul.  He not only had a fine ear for classical Indian music but also had many leading singers as his personal friends.

I not only have memories of Begum Akhtar singing in our drawing room but burning her fingers while learning to make typical Bihari bar-be-que Seekh Kebab in our kitchen at Aiwan-e-Ghalib.

No dinner party at our house was complete without a few artists –ghazal singer or dancer adding sparkle to the evening.

Abbi was equally interested in sports. In fact, he always told us that the motivating factor for him to join the Aligarh Muslim University in the late 40s was simply because it had the best hockey team in those days.

However, when he could not make it to the University hockey team he decided to switch over to table tennis and ended up becoming the university champion and India No 6.

My outings to Ferozeshah Kotla or National stadium in New Delhi were always with him to watch an occasional DCM final or Durand Cup.  

Like a true blue football fan he stood up gaily waving and cheering the team he supported often making me wonder at this side of his personality.

 He was an obsessive bridge player. My mother being only the rummy types suffered in silence when he either disappeared during the weekends or when our house became the bridge lovers’ adda. His bridge playing days fortunately came to an abrupt end after he quit the Foreign Service.

When I reflect about him from the gender perspective I never fail to appreciate that he always treated me as someone very special – never like the way girls are treated in typical Indian households.

Before I turned nine Abbi had taught me cycling and I was cycling down to school several kilometers away. I remember hailing an auto rickshaw and going from Curzon road to Connaught Place to draw money from his bank even before my tenth birthday.

It was his encouragement that had turned me a veteran at buying groceries and milk for the family at a very early age.  

However, I was never singled out to do any household chores.

Later when we did not have any full time servants to indulge us my mother expected me to occasionally share the household work.  Abbi always asked her to leave me alone as the only work I should then be focusing on was my studies.

I remember distinctly that on one occasion when I was in college and we were living in Ber Sarai the part time maid had not turned up and my mother had asked me to clean the house. He snatched the broom from my hands and swept the house himself.

When on a rare Sunday afternoon I ventured into the kitchen to cook an occasional Rajma-chawal or some other dish from some recipe book he would make it a point to praise my cooking to high heaven making me believe that I was the best cook ever born.   

I was in tears when I got an honest feedback on my cooking after marriage. However it did help me to overcome this disadvantage by quickly learning the tricks of the trade.

Abbi was very particular about our Urdu pronunciation and did not encourage us to speak in any other language at home. While we never learnt the language formally at school or college he did find us an Urdu teacher one summer when we were living in Aiwan-e-Ghalib so that I can manage to read and write.

But his lessons in Urdu poetry were truly unique. These sessions started when I and my brother Irshad (Arshi to us) were in college. Abbi used to recite one of his favorite shairs and ask me or Arshi to deconstruct.

An ardent admirer of Mir Taqi Mir he often explained various aspects of the greatness of Mir’s poetry.  

 For instance he told us how Mir spoke about the class theory decades before Marx when he wrote:

Amirzaadon se Dilli ke milna tha muqaddar
Keh hum ghareeb hue hain inhee ki daulat se”

Or how Mir spoke of the theory of relativity in the following couplet

Sarsari is jahaan se guzre

Varnah har ja jahaan e digar tha  

 Now that I look back I see a contradiction in my relationship with my father.  At an abstract level we shared an excellent relationship. To me he was a resident philosopher and guide who I could reach out to when I wished.

However, as a daughter I found it very difficult to reach out to him.  As soon as we switched into the father-daughter role our expectations from each other went sky-high creating heartbreaks.

Sixteen years have passed since that frightful Saturday morning on 23 February 1991 when a phone call from Dalvi aunty in Mumbai informed me of Abbi physically not being there anymore.

If you ask if this has been sufficient time to get a grip over myself all I can say is that perhaps I may need several lifetimes. With each passing day I feel him close by.

There are two shairs in one of his ghazals that I often feel were speaking to me:

Tu hazaar mujh se alag rahe, mein hazaar tujh se juda rahoon

Kabhi neend ban ke sulaaunga, kabhi dard ban ke jagaaunga

 Tu jahaan chalega chalunga mein, tu jahaan rukega rukunga mein

Teri rahguzar ka ghubaar hoon, kabhi tujh se dur na jaaunga

 Recently in a roundabout way I discovered how much I owe to the rich legacy of values and perspective that my father, in fact both my parents left for me.

When in a letter a maternal cousin complained about his parents leaving him nothing worth mentioning, the string of thought made me assess what I had inherited from my parents.

 I can say without a moment’s doubt that the education I received from my parents is invaluable. I cannot categorize these learning into any ‘isms’.

 As for them values were not something theoretical to be articulated at appropriate occasions but something far more tangible which was practiced in our day to day lives as a family – at times with a heavy cost bereft of worldly comforts.

 I can carry on forever telling stories about my father. But I think what needs to be told here is that there is a need to make an honest and holistic assessment of his contribution.  

 Perhaps few truly appreciate what he accomplished not only as a poet but also as an ordinary mortal.  

 Like a Sufi he had managed to cross, and in some measure help his children cross – the divide from this worldly to the

Otherworldly.

 My memories of an early childhood in New York where my father served in the Indian Mission are as wonderful as the relatively frugal existence in South Extension and Ber Sarai in New Delhi in the later years.  

 People who renounce power, position, wealth and even their loved ones in search of what they perceive as their life’s calling are glorified in history. No such luck for my father. It would be unfair to project him as a failure by judging him strictly by our own narrow perspectives.

 It is not that my father did not get an opportunity to acquire worldly things that we all generally crave for. He had set very high standards of personal morality for himself and made a deliberate choice not to make compromises.

 He remained focused and selflessly strove to excel in his chosen mission. In Abbi’s case he remained true and loyal to Urdu ghazal till his very last day. He lovingly nurtured it with all that was at his disposal.  

 For his contemporaries it is perhaps difficult to value the mindset of a person like Abbi who decided to opt out of the rat race and consciously do without all that it promises.

 As Abbi aptly put it in one of his couplets:

Garde shohrat ko bhi daaman se lipatne na diya

Koi ahsaan zamaane ka uthaya hi nahin