WASHINGTON DIARY: A master of wordplay —Dr Manzur Ejaz
One more tribute for Khalid Hasan ~~t
Khalid Hasan left the world with many stories untold. He left in such haste that I did not even get a chance to tell him things I had always planned to tell him. He had two complaints against me: one, it was always he who called me and I never called him; and two, I didn’t read his column regularly.
It was always my bad luck that whenever I called, either his wife or the answering machine replied as he could seldom be caught in the comfort of his home. Even at the age of 74, he was spending more time in the wilderness of Washington than his younger journalist colleagues.
I did not get a chance to reveal the embarrassing reason why I did not regularly read his column.
Sometimes, as a deliberate defensive mechanism, I would not open his column. The reason: whenever I read his column, I was overwhelmed by his command of English and the power of his subtle phrases and wordplay. I was sure I could never be that good. I wanted to keep writing and not abandon this profession, just like I had quit writing short stories after reading Dostoevsky.
Ustad Chhote Ghulam Ali Khan used to say that when listened to Baday Ghulam Ali Khan, he would fall sick, frazzled by the fact that someone could sing so beautifully. Similarly, the late Faiz Ahmad Faiz disclosed to me that when he read Waris Shah or Bulleh Shah, he was convinced that he could never write like that and therefore decided to pursue Urdu poetry.
Therefore, in my defence, if stalwarts like Faiz can be intimidated, a small fry like me should have the same right.
WASHINGTON DIARY: A master of wordplay —Dr Manzur Ejaz
Khalid Hasan left the world with many stories untold. He left in such haste that I did not even get a chance to tell him things I had always planned to tell him. He had two complaints against me: one, it was always he who called me and I never called him; and two, I didn’t read his column regularly.
It was always my bad luck that whenever I called, either his wife or the answering machine replied as he could seldom be caught in the comfort of his home. Even at the age of 74, he was spending more time in the wilderness of Washington than his younger journalist colleagues.
I did not get a chance to reveal the embarrassing reason why I did not regularly read his column.
Sometimes, as a deliberate defensive mechanism, I would not open his column. The reason: whenever I read his column, I was overwhelmed by his command of English and the power of his subtle phrases and wordplay. I was sure I could never be that good. I wanted to keep writing and not abandon this profession, just like I had quit writing short stories after reading Dostoevsky.
Ustad Chhote Ghulam Ali Khan used to say that when listened to Baday Ghulam Ali Khan, he would fall sick, frazzled by the fact that someone could sing so beautifully. Similarly, the late Faiz Ahmad Faiz disclosed to me that when he read Waris Shah or Bulleh Shah, he was convinced that he could never write like that and therefore decided to pursue Urdu poetry.
Therefore, in my defence, if stalwarts like Faiz can be intimidated, a small fry like me should have the same right.
WASHINGTON DIARY: A master of wordplay —Dr Manzur Ejaz
posted by temporal at 2/11/2009
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