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The compulsive dreamer
By Peerzada Salman
 When friends and acquaintances die, you feel sad. When poets pass away, you feel devastated. That's exactly how I felt when Munir Niazi breathed his last. However, this write-up is not a result of some morbid afterthought. It takes tremendous temerity to put pen to paper with the intention of discussing a literary colossus.
(Dreams are for dreaming / Live them not)
Munir Niazi was a compulsive dreamer. Dreamers construct their own world and try and fit everybody, and everything, else into that world. But dreams seldom come true. So the sense that all exercise is 'futile' creeps in invidiously "” the feeling of everything being otiose. That's where doggedness helps their creative abilities reach unimaginable heights. They yearn for beauty and truth all the time. Munir Niazi was one such dreamer, who longed for beauty and truth all his life, creating one masterpiece after another, rendering the word 'consummate' meaningless.
Munir Niazi's extraordinary ability to personify every aspect of nature, and do it with such genuineness that doesn't leave room for the critic to find contextual flaws in his poetry, places him head and shoulders above the poets that represented his generation. In Munir Niazi's ghazals and nazms trees speak, flowers sing, waterfalls dance and the sky weeps.
(It's the rainy season / The nightingale coos / Mango trees emit / A pungent, green fragrance)
Even with such colourful imagination, the innate darkness in Munir Niazi's poetry can't be missed. One of the key words that can be drawn from his verses to exemplify his inner sadness is 'raigani'. Any effort to translate this word into English or any other language would be a 'futile' exercise.
(Call, and you might meet / Life's journey is but in vain)
Ironically, sad people make the best romantics. Their constant craving for beauty and truth keeps them falling in love over and over again. Munir Niazi's poetics brim with romance. But even in his affections and adorations he never lets go of his ego. Yes, he nurtured his ego like a brat, for he knew that the awareness of an ego within a person doesn't come easy. You have to be a man of substance to have that. Munir Niazi never stopped loving himself, because only then could he look at others with fondness.
Ahmed Nadim Qasmi once said: 'The one thing that has made Munir Niazi noticeably different from his contemporaries in his progress as a poet is his sharp-edged individuality that manifests itself in his ego. It's not an ego in the general sense, but it constitutes certain specific experiences. Therefore, aesthetically his ego carries, in a clandestine way, the details of hundreds of thousands of sensitive, conscientious and unsatisfied people.'
They say Munir Niazi was snooty; an intellectual snob. He wouldn't shower praise on other poets. He would try and run down other eminent men of letters of his time, not to mention masters with established credentials "” such as Ghalib.
Munir Niazi knew the sanctity of words. So he used them with special care, which is why his poetry never smacks of grandiloquence, yet it is grand in sensibility. For it is of utmost significance to know when 'not' to use certain words. And if you're capable of doing that, the words that are employed become more poignant and substantive. Munir Niazi practised this art in his real life as well.
(Let some of it be unsaid / Let some of it be unheard / If all's said, all's heard / Life shall remain An elusive restlessness / On a colourful, unmade world / Let a window stay un-opened)
They say Munir Niazi was snooty; an intellectual snob. He wouldn't shower praise on other poets. He would try and run down other eminent men of letters of his time, not to mention masters with established credentials "” such as Ghalib. They say he looked down upon life. They say he believed that he was living in a fatalistic environment, which is why nothing would make him guffaw or even smile wholeheartedly. They say he was extremely self-indulgent, he couldn't see beyond his nose. Well, why deny all of this? Munir Niazi was no two-bit poet. He was no smalltime creative individual. He was not an ordinary human being. Whatever he created was not run-of-the-mill. Man is what he does. Extraordinary people act (and react) in extraordinary fashion. If you expect them to behave in an ordinary manner, you yourself are to be blamed.
Not enough has been written on the songs that he wrote for Pakistani films. It's time we realised that it was not just lyrics writing. The master poet was earning a living the way he knew best: verse-wielding. It was not commercial stuff at all. It also needs to be understood and analysed as pure work of art.
For those who are sticklers for fact files, it does not matter where Munir Niazi was born. It does not matter when he wrote his first ghazal. It does not matter which city he loved the most. It does not matter who his favourite poet was. It does not even matter whom he had his first crush on. What matters is Munir Niazi lived, breathed and composed poetry among us. And we should feel blessed, and be proud of it. We are fast becoming a society that is facing a noticeable dearth of people to look up to. Our dreamers are slipping through our fingers. We must hold on to them.
(Hard days when I cannot help / Nor put down the onslaught of grief / A wall I erect between us / Weaving a dream over the cruel world)
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