Ibn-e-Insha: A sad humourist of Urdu
Dear Urdu Group members,
I wrote the below article last year. The driver was a question from a friend about Ibn-e-Insha.
The article has some excerpts in Urdu script from Insha's work which are missing in below paste. I tried to attach the complete article in PDF format but couldn't.
Incase you would like to read the complete article, please let me know so I could e-mail the PDF document.
Thanks...
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Ibn-e-Insha: A sad humourist of Urdu
Author: Faisal Hanif
I heard someone asking “Ibn-e-Insha is a great writer and poet. Why his writings are humorous while poems carry a touch of profound sadness?” I am taking this question as an opportunity to tribute him and can’t think of a better way of doing it than addressing the said question, which must be taxing minds of majority of Urdu literature readers.
Urdu language is fortunate to have notable humorists such as A.S. Patras Bukhari, Dr Shafiq-ur-Rahman, Ibn-e-Insha and Mushtaq Ahmed Yousefi among many others. No doubt that all of them are brilliant writers and at the same time distinctively different from each other. However, Bukhari and Insha stand unique among them.
Ibn-e-Insha, born in Jalandhar, India (June 1927) as Sher Muhammad Khan, is an acclaimed humourist, travelogue writer, columnist and poet of Urdu. He is one of the few sons of Urdu that the language is proud of. He died in London (January 1978) and was buried in Karachi, Pakistan. He was 51.
Ibn-e-Insha is a writer of great elegance and charm. He is an avant-garde humourist. He maintains his uniqueness in both prose and poetry. This literary genius’ writings are characterised by a remarkable sense of humour which give them the unique Insha-stamp and represent high watermark of great humour in Urdu. His writings are not oriented toward a particular group of people. It is for everyone as he is adept at weaving episodes from many sources into a single narrative. Unlike Yousefi, language is simple and the humour in most of his writings is quintessentially sub-continental.
Some excerpts from his swan song ‘nagri nagri phira musafir’, which was published after his death.
After having read writings of Ibn-e-Insha, I found both his prose and poetry perfectly rounded. Nonetheless, I have not been a great admirer of his poetry; not that I don’t like it but to me it seemed like that it was not in his specific province. He can easily be compared with Ahmed Nadeem Qasemi who is originally a short story writer and journalist but wrote poetry too. His poetry did not get much attention despite it carried great sensibility and excellent themes. His contemporaries including Faiz Ahmed Faiz, dragged their feet in acknowledging him a poet of good merit. Qasemi has mentioned an incident in one of his essays where Faiz introduced Qasemi as short-story writer and journalist in mushaira where only poets were invited. Qasemi was apparently offended. As to Ibn-e-Insha, I feel his poetry is second to his prose. I see his poetry like grafting wings on to a creature that had been planned for walking only.
Why Insha’s prose and poetry are so conflicting? This is certainly a good topic to research by looking at his personality, his personal circumstances and then domestic scenes. To me, Insha is a serious person who turned to create humour in his writings, which he did to a perfect degree of subtlety. He then chose poetry to express the real of him, a sad person. He added slightly unique diction (in his time) as he followed the style of Amir Khusro, ancient poet of Persian and Hindi (Hindvi), in the field of poetry. He is almost certainly the only modern poet to create a distinctive diction of ancient classical Hindi-Urdu complex of languages. I see Insha as a ‘private poet’ like Jon Elia (not comparing the poetry of the two). As with the Jon, with the exception of a few pieces most of his poetry was published after his death. His first book was published when he was almost sixty. Obviously he suffered from some complex or inhibition with regard to the publication of his poetry and therefore desisted from having it published. The case of Insha is different when it comes to publishing but if we group most of his poems under different heads we not only see the sadness in him but also some inhibition. One searches in vain for the more particular signs of romance and philosophy in the poetry of Ibn-e-Insha, they are not particularly found. Romance and poetic philosophy in the traditional sense at least, is not his special gift, though his poetry is distinctive as regards its technique. His technique may be considered under different heads such as the use of words, metrical and rhyme patterns.
See an excerpt from foreword of Insha’s ‘Chand Nagr’ which was published in April 1955.
He further writes
To his prose I would say no other last century Urdu humourist neither Majeed Lahori nor Yousefi ever equalled the writings of Insha. Patras Bukhari, however, falls into a different category.
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