Bashir Badr: A Modern Poet Of Contemporary Times
· Free Press Journal
Creating a nation is one thing, keeping it together and building its character is quite another. The first can be achieved by creating borders on land, water, and sky and keeping them safe from the enemy; the second needs a much wider as well as in-depth approach at multiple levels to ensure the ideals on which the nation was formed remain intact and relevant. The first needs soldiers to do the job; the second, litterateurs. And, just like how the loss of a soldier is colossal to the entire nation, so is the loss of a writer or a poet. India recently suffered that loss when renowned Urdu poet Bashir Badr bade adieu to this world, leaving behind a legacy of emotions.
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Like many before him, his poetry centres around love, loss, and longing, yet he stands out because of the way he expresses his thoughts—simple, contemporary Urdu that can be understood by the masses and, more importantly, resonates with them, keeping his works alive in public memory. His greatest contribution to literature has been to make the Urdu language accessible to the masses. He revolutionised the traditional ghazal form and used the common man’s language instead of archaic Urdu phrases to portray complex human emotions. In his 1985 book Aamad, a collection of ghazals, in a prefatory note he states, “In 1955 I became convinced that the foundation of the ghazal should be placed not just on the guilelessness of emotions but on the living and changing power and elegance of language.” Perhaps his greatest feat is to treat ghazal as a language in itself, not just a form of Urdu poetry. That gave a new lease of life to a language that has been in decline since independence. It was Badr and poets of his ilk who drew young people to Urdu.
Take for instance these couplets: aas hogi na aasra hoga/aane wale dinon mein kya hoga; main tujhe bhool jaonga ik din/waqt sab kuchh badal chuka hoga. The language is simple, yet the multiple contexts and the depth of emotions are staggering. While the first couplet talks about the political and social uncertainties and fears gripping the people today across the world, when combined with the second, it forms one of the most tragic notions of romance, portraying the despair felt by a man struggling to retain his bearings. Incidentally, Badr battled age-related dementia for several years before passing away on May 28.
A poet who suffered the pain of betrayal by fellow countrymen during the communal riots in 1987 that led to the tragic loss of his life’s work deserves to be remembered for the greatest lesson he taught—pain and loss need not turn a person bitter; they can make him creative too. He expressed his grief thus: Bade shauq se mera ghar jalaa, koi aanch tujhpe na aayegi/ye zubaan kisi ne khareed li, ye kalam kisi ka ghulam hai...