A look at Iqbal’s actual room at Govt College’s Quadrangle hostel

-If walls could speak…

• Committee of history-sleuths managed to locate exact room only a few months ago
• The first year topper gets dibs on coveted cubicle

It was an ordinary room constructed with bricks and walls but a person gets surrounded by great reverence and an inexpressible feeling when he comes to know that the ‘poet of east’ Muhammad Iqbal spent five crucial years in this room during his five-year stay as a student at Government College, Lahore from 1895 to 1900.

No one was sure about the exact location of the room where Iqbal had resided for five years as a student until recent past. The late son of the national poet Javed Iqbal had also mentioned that no one is sure about the actual location of the room of his father as there is no evidence available in this regard.

One thing was clear that Iqbal had spent his five years in the Quadrangle (the hostel where he lived and it was named after him as Iqbal Hostel in 1977) but everyone was clueless about the actual location of his room.

A committee comprising distinguished Professor Dr Khursheed Rizvi, Professor Dr Zaheer Ahmed Siddiqui and Dr Khalid Mahmood Sanjarani (Superintendent Iqbal Hostel) was given a task to locate the exact room of Iqbal by the university Vice Chancellor (VC) Dr Hassan Amir Shah a few months ago. The committee succeeded to locate the room after going through the write-ups written by the contemporaries of Iqbal.

“Ghulam Bhik Nairang, a poet himself and a contemporary of Iqbal at the hostel, had written an essay describing his days spent at the Boarding House (first name of the hostel) and had given a complete sketch of the hostel of that time which helped us to locate the room of Iqbal,” Dr Khalid Mahmood Sanjarani, incumbent superintendent of Iqbal hostel and the member of that committee told Pakistan Today.

“Iqbal was allotted a cubical at the southern end of a western lane of rooms on the first story and we used to spend most of our time together after the class,” an excerpt from the essay of Nairang reads that has now been pasted at the wall of Iqbal’s room.

The authenticity of that essay has been verified by members of the committee and Nairang himself was a poet of good repute, Sanjarani added.

“I am a student of literature and have close association with Iqbal. My romanticism with Iqbal prompted me to locate his room after assuming the charge of this hostel,” Sanjarani, a post-doctorate in Urdu Literature commented.

VC Shah said that the room is in its original shape and it is allotted to the student of second year (intermediate) who gets the maximum marks in his first year exam in order to give him more motivation. “It is a national monument for us and we feel great honor when international delegations request us to visit the room of Iqbal,” he said.

According to Shah, Iqbal was a great Ravian and Government College University Lahore always tried to give him a befitting tribute as a delegation from his Alma mater has visited his mausoleum every year on the eve of his birth and death anniversary.

Awais Alam, the student who lives in Iqbal’s room nowadays, told this scribe that it is a great honor for him to reside in a room that has been a place of living for Iqbal for five years.

“I came from Bhakkar to study at GCU Lahore and got 483 marks out of 505 in first year and was allotted this cubical,” Alam said. There is not even a single night when I go to sleep before thinking about the days Iqbal spent in this room, he said with a great pleasure in his eyes.

It may be relevant to mention here that there are several things named after Iqbal in his Alma mater including ‘Majlis-e-Iqbal’, a literary organisation where students of the university used to recite their literary pieces.

Formed in 1902 as ‘Majlis-e-Urdu’, it was named as ‘Majlis-e-Iqbal’ in 1938 and many literary icons of the past including Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Sufi Tabassum, Noon Meem Rashid and A.S. Patras Bokhari were associated with ‘Majlis-e-Iqbal’. It is on record that great fiction writer Saadat Hasan Manto was annoyed once when he was not called in the sessions of ‘Majlis-e-Iqbal’ for some time to read his short stories.