It was December 16, 1951. Saadat Hasan Manto, one of Urdu literature’s brightest stars, was sitting in his Lahore home to write the first of his famous Letters to Uncle Sam. He began, “This letter comes to you from your Pakistani nephew whom you do not know, nor does anyone else in your land of seven freedoms. You should know why my country, sliced away from India, came into being and gained independence, which is why I am taking the liberty of writing to you. Like my country, I too have become independent and in exactly the same way. Uncle, I will not labour the point since an all-knowing seer like you can well imagine the freedom a bird whose wings have been clipped can enjoy.”
Little did Manto know that the letter would be read one evening by Urdu lovers gathering under the banner of Mehfil@Prithvi in Bombay, a city that he was madly in love with. And one that he could not forget even after moving to Lahore post Partition.
Arwa Mamaji, one of the founders of Urduwallahs, a group that organises monthly gatherings at Prithvi House in Juhu to discuss Urdu language and literature, says, “Letters have had a significant role in the historical evolution of Urdu prose. When you read letters by writers such as Amrita Pritam, Mirza Ghalib, Safiya Akhtar, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Josh Malihabadi, Maulana Azad, you get a sense of the place and the period they lived in. You learn about what they were interested in, what bothered them, who had an influence on their art.”
Many of these letters are available in published form, and will be read aloud at the Mehfil@Prithvi gathering today. Some have been recorded on video by respected names in Urdu literature whose popularity cuts across national boundaries. One is poet-lyricist Gulzar, who lives in Mumbai but was born in Dina, now part of Pakistan. Another is Pakistani actor Zia Mohyeddin, who has appeared in several plays and films, including BBC’s A Passage to India.
The organisers will also play video clips of excerpts from plays based on some famous letters from Urdu literary history. Theatre director, Salim Arif, who has scripted and directed Main Tumhe Phir Miloongi based on Amrita Pritam’s letters to her lover Imroz, says, “The kind of reflective position a letter allows you is not possible with an electronic medium. You can take time, and say things. Many young people today are limited by their vocabulary. To express thirty varieties of anger, they use just one cuss word. They are attracted to Urdu because of its finesse, beauty and nuance.”
Arif adds, “When young people watch a film like Rockstar , and they hear a song like ‘Kun Faya Kun’, they are curious about the meaning. They want to learn about the words used in Urdu to talk about different shades of love. Many of them have begun reading the works of Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai, Intizar Hussain and other Urdu writers in English translation.”
Arif has also directed Sonali Bendra-Farooque Sheikh starrer Aapki Soniya , a play scripted by Javed Siddiqi, as a sequel to Tumhari Amrita , a play about the love between the characters Amrita Nigam and Zulfiqar Haider. Both Arif and Siddiqi will be present at the gathering to share their thoughts and experiences.
The evening will also feature a 15-minute tribute to deceased ghazal singer Jagjit Singh whose birthday is on February 8, just a day earlier. Singh had collaborated with Gulzar on Tere Bayaan Ghalib, an audio compilation based on Ghalib’s letters.
It’s through such events, that the Urduwallahs want to demolish the misperception that Urdu is for Muslims alone. “It is only people with vested interests who link language to religion. Look at Firaq Gorakhpuri, Premchand, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Krishan Chander. They were stalwarts of Urdu literature, and continue to be. They were all Hindus. Look at Prithviraj Kapoor, who was the first one to do Hindustani theatre professionally. His family is still carrying on the legacy of Urdu,” emphasises Arif.
Mehfil@Prithvi will be held at 7 pm today at Prithvi House
The author is a freelance writer
