in

Syed Habib: Tribute to Agha Ashraf Ali

Flowered is the soul of the man that flew away like a songster of the heavens of Kashmir into the limitless cosmic void at the dead of night of August 8, 20, darkened further more by the Covid crackdown all around. It is now free but its flutter for better life of mankind, including in particular of the downtrodden, the forsaken and the forlorn continues, of course fretlessly. Its twitter is different from the political Twitter of the present day world which is yet another feat of the technological glow. It is like the awakening cry of a boozer (in English language there is hardly a better word for MARD-I-QALANDER) at night for those who, following the tradition of Ali, the Caliph of believers), set aside ceremonial shows that waylay crowds.

The beat of the song is so powerful that it wrenches out life from the bosom of the earth to be free so that it can write the name of God on the sheet of TIME here, there and everywhere.

The bird is the soul of Agha Ashraf Ali who passed away between Friday and Saturday night choosing silence rather than the noise of loud speakers, the norm of God–passion of the people during the day. This is the same Agha who in the classrooms of the University bus in the sixties of the last century coined for the University of Kashmir a nickname, MALKHAH, the graveyard of the downtown, through which the buses would then ply to Hazratbal.

To honor the graveyard he coined another name for a Sikh peon as Malkhah SINGH. The Sikh so nicknamed, then worked in the Department of Education of which Agha was the Professor-Head , but now is, haply, still in the administrative wing of the University.

The soul-bird has colorful wings which perhaps indicate his gorgeous personality dyed in versified mysticism, in Goethe’s encounter with Mephistopheles, in Abd al-Karim al-Jili’s Perfect Man (INSAN-I-KAMIL), in Marx and Lenin battling with Capitalism and above all in Islam of the Sufi and the saint as also in the romanticism of Iqbal , the bard of the East, for renaissance.

The madness of a conscious and conscientious man of Iqbal provides strength to the wings of the bird to fly higher and higher like Iqbal’s falcon dashing, tossing, fluttering and preying like a recluse of birds that is interested in warm blood but not in anything like the flesh of the victim. I am not like Nizami, the Persian, the author of Five Treasures, the expert of birds and flights of this kind, but give readers an idea of what I mean by gorgeousness in love of the departed beloved teacher-Agha!

This tribute is written in the ironical style of Lytton Strachey, whose EMINENT VICTORIANS draws the portraiture of Florence Nightingale and Dr Arnold in the height of biographical tempo. It does not for the sake of brevity trace out THEFTOLOGY and NAKHROLOGY as also CULTURAL CONSTIPATION that were coined by Agha in the Post Mir Qasim period to compose the orchestra of the broken musical instruments of Kashmir which Agha in his fierce mood would at times gave vent to.

Ours is a tragic drama in which locals have played the theatrical part and I hope the flying bird will sing in presence of God a benediction- salutation to solicit for the redressal of our grief!

To conclude let me quote Hafiz, the Bulbul of Shiraz:

                                                        چہ جورھا کشیدند بلبلانِ آزادی ۔۔۔۔۔۔۔ بہ بوی آنکہ دگر نو بہار باز آید

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Loading…

0

Kashmir’s Silk Factory Events and Red Flags – a Khalid Bashir column

Agha Ashraf Ali: At memorial event, J&K’s intelligentsia pays rich tributes