Moneeza hashmi biography definition
•
Writing a biography of someone you are closely related to fryst vatten like tightrope walking, because even if you have the fairest of intentions you can be accused of concealing the weaknesses of the person whose life and achievements you are recording. But Ali Madeeh Hashmi, a grandson of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, had no such disadvantage, for his subject had no weakness worth mentioning, except his lifelong habit of chain smoking, which the writer highlights more than once in his highly absorbing Love and Revolution, Faiz Ahmed Faiz: The Authorised Biography. Hashmi sticks to his decision of keeping himself “out of action”, to use his own words, but he certainly has had the advantage of having access to people who knew Faiz closely, his mother Moneeza Hashmi, aunt Salima Hashmi and father Humair Hashmi. Full marks to the biographer for also digging deep into writings on the poet.
Inarguably the finest Urdu poet of our time, Faiz was a compassionate human being. Soft-spoken, forgiving and large-
•
Conversations With My Father: Forty Years On, A Daughter Responds
By Moneeza Hashmi
Sang-e-Meel, Lahore
ISBN: 978-9693534061
160pp.
Faiz the poet. Faiz translated. Faiz the journalist. Faiz the intellectual idealist. Faiz the free spirit, icon, mentor to generations. Even Faiz the husband.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz was all this and much more. Contemporary literature has a vast collection of texts archiving him as a public figure, but 40 years would have to pass after his death before he was to come alive as Faiz the father.
One wonders why nobody, not even his own daughters, thought of writing about Faiz the father.
Moneeza Hashmi’s Conversations With My Father: Forty Years On, A Daughter Responds clears this long-due backlog to bring out the father, as he figured in her life, through a posthumously conceptualised correspondence.
Moneeza Hashmi’s book is a debt of honour to Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s fans, who would have known nothing about the sentiments Faiz the father harboured for his
•
Conversations with my father - Moneeza Hashmi
For the Reader:
So what took me so long to get this book started?
A good question!
Firstly, I am still struggling with myself, having lived in the “semi” limelight for most of my life. Partly as the daughter of a great poet; partly as the sister of a great painter; partly on management posts of the only TV public broadcaster in Pakistan; partly as the only woman to head the programming of a public broadcaster; partly as the mother of two talented and wonderful professionals in their own right. And so on and so forth.
It may be hard to believe that as time has moved on, my own desire to stand on centre stage and think, “Wow this feels great!” has diminished considerably. I prefer to manage from behind the scenes and let others in the family be in the spotlight and applaud their performances.
Secondly, this has been a private matter between myself and my father. The letters I mean. He wrote them to me and at the time none of us proba