Farehan Shaida

Farehan Shaida



Wednesday, 07 February 2007
His humour had given a stunning defeat to the burdensome sorrows of life.Khurshid Iqbal Khattak
It was a chilly day of the Holy month of Ramzan (in 1992) that the early morning Azaan was followed by the announcement of the death of Shaida Baba, by loudspeakers of the mosques of our Jalozai. I conjured upon the old man with a shower of tears rolling down on my hairy cheeks to make a garland of jasmine blossomed in the memories of the past to glimpse the ever-smiling image of our Shaida Baba. My heart had never throbbed in grief so heavily and my eyes were not wet so much with tears before hearing this sad news about the end of his mortal life.
My eyelids dropped on my listless eyes and the clouds of the hazy memories of my companionship with him clashed and created a thunderous roar to announce departure of Shaida Baba for the other world. In this dirge, I felt that the bride of Pushto literature was wailing for her departed lover in a deep romantic chasm from which gushed out a sparkling fountain of Shad’s enthralling genius of humour.The spirit of such melodies never dies but is mingled in the sweet chirrup of the nightingales:My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains,My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.It is not through envy of thy happy lot,But being to be happy in thine's happiness.Thou was not born for death Immortal Bird!No hungry generation tread thee down. (Keats; Ode to Nightingale)Pushto literature has, probably, never born a humorist like Shaida Baba. Oratory humour was his primal genius. He could not write but had learned to read. Still he was bold enough to stand upright on any stage. There were so many occasions when some good poets had faltered on the stage, but when he walked over to stand on the stage and face the microphone, the atmosphere would change abruptly. Because he showered happiness on the embarrassed hearts by virtue of his sharp anecdotes. He would brighten the cloudy minds and alleviate the heavy hearts of the frustrated poets and overwhelm the unruly audience in the mushairas. He was not a pedantic intellectual, but had fathomed the perplexities of the humour.Throughout his life, Shaida Baba had been ardently endeavouring to paint the bleakness of gloom and grief with the multi-colour rainbow of delights. He did not try to squeeze his exalted human outlook in the narrow tunnel of personal gains but contributed all that he could afford to Pushto literature notwithstanding his personal loss. He used to live in a muddy house under the thatch, and yet he was happy and wanted others also to be happy. The lovers of Pushto literature know the fact that how the audience would become jubilant and gleeful during a mushaira when Shaida Baba would have been invited to the stage. Their implied requests for latifa apart, he himself would start in his low tone saying something which he would, in a quite natural way, support with a spicy latifa, thereby quenching the thirst of the audience. One or two latifa from his mouth would not be sufficient. He would try to proceed further to recite his poetry but the audience would request again and again for telling a few more latifa. At last, he would overwhelm the audience's desire and read his poem in pauses which, too, the audience would listen to impatiently with spontaneous applause for a couplet or two.His verse and prose were written by others. Because he could not write himself. He had just learned reading. And he was a good reader of Pushto newspapers and books. He usually dictated his book reviews, essays, short stories and comments to a writer and then had a look at them. His verse and prose published in newspapers and magazines did not give an impression that they were the creation of an illiterate author. Moreover, he was keeping with great care on record, clippings of newspapers and magazines carrying his writings and correspondence with different people. In literary meetings, he took active part in critical evaluation of literary items in prose and verse.Shaida Baba was less a dweller of his own house and more of the office of Kamil Pukhto Adabi Jargah on the first floor of the Ghazi market in the main bazaar of Pabbi town. He was in charge of the office. Any lover of Pushto language (be he a poet, writer or ordinary man) who visited the office of KPAJ was welcomed and held in great esteem by him, and was offered, invariably, tea from the nearest tea-shop. During the monthly mushaira of our KPAJ at Pabbi, he would call upon the servant of the tea-shop and would ask him to bring a number of big chainaks of tea plus a small one without sugar which was meant for him only because he was suffering from diabetes. At the end of mushaira, he would announce the date of the next meeting and would request all the present to come on due day.Farehan Shaida was a man with a mission. Indeed he had undertaken a task of making the people laugh by virtue of his humorous style and habits. Being an altruist and optimist, he always exposed the bright side of the life. Nature had endowed him with great patience. He never complained of his poverty. Rather he was generous and hospitable to the extent that sometime he had to borrow money. His humour had given a stunning defeat to the burdensome sorrows of life. Farehan Shaida was all selfless, having reached the acme of sincerity and devotion. He lived very simple life as a staunch religious person with deep nationalistic feelings. It was not only diabetes that he was suffering from, but other diseases, too, and the worst of all his poverty and old-age weakness, that were wearing his mortal being. But he exercised strong will power to activate his life. In his last days, he was taken to hospitals, first to Nowshera civil hospital, then Khyber teaching hospital and then Lady Reading hospital. He was visited by a great number of admirers. When he was brought back to home, after amputation of his one leg, he said to one of his admirers, with an agonized smile; "I had gone to hospital with two legs, and came back with one leg. Now I will not need even this one leg to go to my eternal home." Farehan Shaida belonged to Dag Behsud village. He was a poor man but had attained high social status due to his punctual social contacts and utmost sincerity. That was the reason that his death was announced by loudspeakers in almost every village in Pabbi area. But the funeral gathering was more thick than normal consideration. Because there were people from other areas and districts also, including a number of officials from the government departments. That was a reality which stunned the common man who considered Farehan Shaida an ordinary poor man of a village in which he seldom lived. Farehan Shaida was a skilled carpenter but he could not confine his mercurial nature to the job. He was interested in travelling and sociability which dragged him on to learn driving. He was driving passenger buses on daily wages. His honesty bridled his materialistic ambition of competition with his colleagues who made fortunes out of their profession and became leading transporters. He had developed one, and the only, mania of participation in mushairas. Having spent most of his time as a driver in Mardan district (now division), Shaida Baba used to make his last trip of the day to the village in which a mushaira would have been arranged. None of his masters had ever objected to his this luxury which, at last, made him a poet. His aptitude compelled him to learn reading. And then he took to formation of literary associations. He was patron-in-chief, patron or president of more than one associations at a time. He could build up his image and respect to that extent that the literary circles would were feeling pride in claiming his patronage. In Mardan, his permanent abode was a room in Khaksar Manzil where, too, he seldom stayed.In his last years he resigned his profession due to old age and returned his village. But he did not stay there regularly. He still continued his movements. Then he was the moving spirit of the literary associations at Pabbi and Nowshera, in addition to his regular participation in the activities of other associations. Shaida Baba had a magnetic personality to attract the poets and writers to gatherings. He was such a catalyst that had created many a good poets. His gentle nature, philanthropist ideas and humourist style exalted him to the climax of his fame.(Courtesy; daily Frontier Post, Peshawar; 3 April 1993)