The Warmth I Miss...

Part 4

Anwar Sahab's deteriorating health condition and age factor was not allowing him to be as active as he wanted to be, still he always acknowledged and took time to spend with us at Qabil Ajmeri Library and at Waqar's place. In last few months specially, he had started handing over his new and unpublished poetry to Waqar and often made a statement that he might not remain with us for long now. On morning of Dec 19, 2012 I received a text from Waqar that read that Anwar Sahab had passed away. It was one of the saddest mornings and I was feeling a personal loss and was recalling the moments I had spent with him. A great man had passed away quietly. I was told that, though Waqar was sent text messages and was called by many people (Including poets) to inform him of Anwar Sahab's demise, he was amazed rather disappointed to see that there were only 16 people present at his funeral prayer with no "so called" prominent literary figures of Hyderabad. My dilemma on the other hand and an interesting twist i.e. I was unconsciously waiting for a ticker on all TV channels or may be breaking news or perhaps a small package on his life and work for the next two days but did not come across any news. Obviously, these were my false assumptions because this news would not have generated any interest in masses and could not promise any fortunes to the commercially driven media. I am not entirely blaming media for this ignorance because I understand that media only is the reflection of our overall societal behavior. I actually mourn the intellectual bankruptcy of our society and seeing that we are losing more minds than we are producing. This supply gap of intellect has already leaded us to the position of being called a 'failed state' and a 'security state'. While as a nation we might remain in the state of denial and chant that all is well, or at least not as bad as the world thinks, we would only be deceptive to ourselves. Art is losing the value in our part of the world and religion has had worst effect on society than it had during 16th century in Europe. Despite being optimistic, I hardly see any light at the end of the tunnel.

         Written by,

           Junaid Naseer Faroqui