JAB HAQIQAT YEH HAI KI TU HAR ZARRE MEIN HAI, TOH TERI ZAMEEN PAR KAHIN MANDIR AUR KAHIN MASJID KYUN HAI ?

I basically studied at the Mumbai University and did my M.A. in English literature but still at the end of six years I knew little or nothing about life - ALI PETER JOHN

I worked with the writer-filmmaker K.A. Abbas for two years and learnt much more than what I had learnt in the twenty three years of my life till then. But , it was the six years I spent in different country liquor bars in both Bombay and Mumbai.

I learnt the most and at the end of my six year term with the University of Country Liquor that I learnt almost all about the bitter- sweet and even ugly sides of life. I have written an entire book on my experiences with liquor and the book is called 'Confessions of an alicoholic'.

My classes at this famous University used to begin at 6 or 7 in the morning and continue till I got drunk and lost my senses and regained my senses only when I went back to my classes the next morning.

It was in these classes that I met people from different classes of life and learnt more about them and why they had joined the classes which I had also joined.

There were poets who wrote in different languages who celebrated life in these classes. There were professors who skipped classes in college and chose to join these classes, there were doctors and lawyers who forgot their practise and spent the entire day in these classes.

There was a total spirit of liberty, equality, fraternity in these classes and there were no fights or arguments about politics or religion. The students of these classes had their own problems which they discussed with me till I was sane enough to listen to their stories.

Among some of the poets I met in this University were several Marathi , Urdu and Hindi poets. But the most prominent names were Asad Bhopali who if you don't know wrote the songs of 'Maine pyaar kiya' and even 'Hum apke hain kaun' and other films produced by Rajshri productions and other banners.

The other known poet was Sheikh Adam Aboowala who was a professor and wrote Ghazals and Nazms especially for Pankaj Udaas, there was V.K. Sharma who was a well known theatre personality before he became the guru of Rajesh Khanna.

He had fallen out with his Chela and spent all his time in talking about the days he spent with his chela who had become the first superstar of India and when he told the stories in the class, the fellow students made fun of him and told him on his face ," Saala phenkta hai".

And I used to be terribly disturbed because I knew that Rajesh Khanna had learnt all that he knew about acting from Sharma. And there was an Urdu poet called Sudarshan Faakir who had his books of Ghazals and geets as the syllabus for M.A. students and had post graduate students doing their doctorates on his poetry.

I had the privilege of sharing the same bench with the man who was always silent and never spoke about himself or his achievements. It took me quite sometime to make him open up and tell me as much as he could about him.

Sudarshan Faakir had a very different kind of life and sometimes his life seemed to be so much like my life. Sudarshan was born in pre partition Punjab in a district called Ferozpur and in a village called Retla.

His father was a naastik (atheist) and he had lost his wife when Sudarshan was very young and his grandmother brought him up. In what might seem strange now, the Muslims of the village asked Sudarshan's father to give the child to them and the atheist father was only too glad to hand over his son to them.

The Muslims took the young Sudarshan to Masjid , they gave him the name Mohammad Sudarshan and taught him how to read the Kalma and the Quran, and Sudarshan's grandmother took him to the Mandir and read out the Ramayana and the Bhagwad Gita to him.

He said ,he was too confused about what was being taught to him and wondered as a child ," Masjid mein Mandir jaane vaale kyun nahi aate hain aur mandir mein Masjid jaane vaale kyun nahi jaate hain?"

These kind of thoughts haunted him throughout his childhood and his teenage days. And he said that it was Sanskars that groomed his personality and his thoughts.

Sudarshan Faakir was very averse to writing songs for hindi films but it was the flamboyant actor and filmmaker Feroz Khan who visited bars to plead with him to write the songs of his films and he agreed because he said ," Khan sahab ke baare mein log kuch bhi bolen , mujhe toh voh farishte lagte hain."

His writing poetry for literature continued and he wrote several books of ghazals and geets and the one singer who loved his poetry crazily was the Ghazal maestro Jagjit Singh for whom Sudarshan wrote that most beautiful ghazal ,' Voh kaagaz ki kashti ,voh baarish ka paani' , which made Jagjit , his wife Chitra and Sudarshan popular all over the continent.

Why am I remembering Sudarshan Faakir so much today ? Frankly , I must say that I don't know the exact meaning of Faakir which was his pen name , but knowing his way of life I would like to believe that Faakir was the same as fakir. He had no permanent house in Bombay.

He depended on various small dhabas and restaurants for his breakfast, lunch and dinner and he lived in a guest house called the Lovely Guest House in Santacruz East where he had to pay a measly rent which he couldn't normally afford.

I still vividly remember a very intense ghazal he had written when the first signs of the hindu muslim problem had surfaced again after the riots before the partition. I will in the interest of today and the turbulent times we are living in try to remember the lines he had written in a nazm. The nazm read...

Aaj ek daur mein , ae dost yeh mazar kyun hai
Har sar zakhmi aur har haath mein pathar kyun hai
Yeh Haqiqat hai ki tu har zarre mein rehta hai, phir tere zameen par kahin mandir aur kahin masjid kyun hai
Anjaam sabhi ko pata hai, phir bhi har insaan apne aap ko sikandar kyun samajhta hai
Zindagi jeene ke qabil nahin hai , Faakir
Phir bhi aakhon mein ashkon ka samandar kyun hai?

AUR KITNE FAAKIR YEH SACH LIKHTE LIKHTE GHAYAL HO GAYE AUR MAR BHI JAAENGE? AAJ AGAR HUM INSAANON KO INKI BAAT JO INHONE 60 SAAL PEHLE LIKHI THI SAMAJH MEIN NAHI AAEGI, TOH 60 SAAL AUR BHI SAMAJH MEIN NAHI AAEGI AUR HUM TOOTE HUE, BIKHRE HUE AUR BEHOSHI KI BARBARIYAT KI ZINDAGI JEETE RAHENGE AUR AISI ZINDAGI PAR LAAHNAT HAI AGAR HUM INSAAN HAIN.