Today is the chehlum of my uncle Tajammul Hussain in Lahore. He died and was buried in Karachi on February 24, just two days after his 86th birthday. Flying to Karachi from Islamabad, Iqbals verse occupied my mind.
Those who drink from the cauldron of Love are fast departing;
Sometimes, just sometimes, offer the water of eternal life O wine-bearer.
Now I was on my own in a tumultuous sea of change after his demise. Now we will be treated as guides by our children, a station that is thrust upon us when our elders pass on. Thats the way it has always been. Thats the way it will always be. The idea of eternal life on earth is but a selfish dream. Death is a problem for the living, not the dead. The living are left to cope with the wretched limitations of the mind held captive in a decaying body.
Tajammul Hussain was my father Altaf Gauhars younger brother by two years. Theirs was a friendship unique, a love beyond measure. It was Ishq. There is no equivalent word in English that conveys all the nuances of Ishq. The literal-minded translate it as love, but it is much more. Ishq is made from the fermenting, bubbling clay of mysticism and spirituality. Ones relatives are genetic accidents; ones friends one chooses. Best is when relatives become friends.
Nature meant Tajammul to be a poet. At heart he was. I so regretted visiting your city, O Beloved; Agitated, I took silent refuge in a deserted corner. Intellectual loneliness has been the constant companion of the good and the great. These people were romantics, in all three senses temporal, intellectual and spiritual. Sadly, they couldnt follow their nature because they were diverted by the need to earn a living when opportunities for educated young men in British India were woefully limited. They could only write in snatches, in moments of emotional stress.
During the 1965 War Tajammul was in Lahore, from where he read Shehar Nama on Radio Pakistan Story of the City. It was a hit and helped raise morale. It was at Tajammuls house that poets and singers like Sufi Tabassum and Nur Jehan gathered to write and compose war songs. This is the stuff romantics are made of.
Tajammul Hussain first chose the legal profession, but fate had ordained otherwise. He had many things to be grateful for. Thankfully, if I might say so, he was bitten by the dog of a famous Hindu lawyer whose chambers he was to join. Laid up for a month, Tajammul had time to reflect. He decided to join the civil service. Had he become a lawyer his horizon would have been limited to looking at everything, including love, legalistically. His bureaucratic career, though meritorious, was thankfully again cut short by General Yahya Khan when he, his brother and many others were thrown out of service. This is the greatest medal of honour you have, I told them, to be illegally forced out by a drunk and debauch country-breaking, surrendering general. It gave Tajammul the opportunity to enjoy life and read and read and write more.
Combined with tremendous wit and repartee, his was a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional personality that made for great company, which one only left reluctantly. In fact, it was more an assemblage of sages, poets, writers, actors, singers, wits and the fun loving, including us young ones who learned a lot from being there. Tajammul was a great storyteller in the tradition of our famous qissa goh. Here is a line from a verse by Jamiluddin Aali: Rai Tajammul Sain ka ghar tha Inder ka darbar Prince Tajammul Sains home was like Raja Inders durbar The second line is best left unsaid.
His friends were his treasure; his shirt was for them. When he left Karachi for Peshawar he was bereft, separated from his Assembly, and said the ghazal I am sharing with you: It is said that there is great peace in the city after I brought my junoon here with me. The word junoon too has no equivalent in English, for it comes from the Arabian legend of the love of Majnoon for Laila, the girl he found beautiful. It encompasses obsession, fixation, madness, rapture, love and more all at once that make for junoon, the condition of the lovelorn Majnoon. It is symbolic of the spiritual and would not be a legend if love were requited. These are idiomatic, not literal translations. I have left my happy, laughing friends of the Assembly who are closer to me than my heart; the Assembly that partakes of wine from the cauldron of Love.
One great favour Tajammul Hussain did to history was to write his autobiography, Jo bachay hain sung samait lo in Urdu and It Was Only Yesterday in English. His was a generation that lived in tumultuous times. It saw the ebb and flow of history, sometimes participated in its making. It changed nationalities thrice while staying in the same place. It saw the breakup of India and the making of Pakistan. Then it saw the breakup of Pakistan and the making of Bangladesh. Now it was witnessing the slipping away of Pakistan, its original ideal lost. It is a generation with much to celebrate and much to regret. That is why it is incumbent upon those who have something to say to tell it. In doing so, Tajammul Hussain has paid his debt to society.
When he left his beloved Lahore for Karachi, we all knew that he had gone there to die, for he wanted to be buried next to his mother. They had all gone, family and friends. Now who will come to my funeral? he asked when the last of them, Mian Sabahuddin, died. Look at it this way, I said. You will get a great a reception when you go there. Tajammul Hussains death is not just the passing of a man; it is the passing of a beautiful moment in history, the dispersal of an assembly unique.
His was a life, lived richly and intensely, on his own terms. He died on his own terms too. As life slowly ebbed away, he was surrounded by his children and grandchildren two younger generations present at the passing of the older one. This too is the way it has always been. Sitting up in bed, he died so peacefully, with a smile on his face, that it took them some moments to realise that the Caravan of Life had moved on.
Phir raat bauhat beet gayee ajnabi raho; ab tum he Tajammul say kaho voh kahin so jaai.
The writer is a political analyst. He can be contacted at [email protected]
