A Poet’s Personality By Munir Ahmed Badini
A Poet’s Personality
By Munir Ahmed Badini
In the ‘First Circle’ Solzhenytsen has spoken something very important through the utterance of one of the characters of the Novel, that to live in this world, and to face it’s odds nothing else is required but a strong personality.
And today we are sitting in this august gathering in the memory of a man who, in spite of all the odds and unfavorable circumstances lived a full life through the sheer force of his personality.
And, perhaps stealthily a smile may be dancing there at your lips and, you may be asking yourself that ‘Did Gul Khan Naseer really live a full life’? And your thinking is right in the sense that apparently the facts of Gul Khan Naseer’s life show the contrary to what I have just said. As we see that Gul Khan Naseer was never happy; all the time he was in jail; all the time the forces of tyranny and suppression hanged over his head therefore, how one could say about such a personality that he lived a ‘full life’ Strange.
He was born in a desolate village at Nushki. And the first things which he saw there, in his surroundings were the rugged mountains and dry hills that made a queue to the south-east of his village, and a desert lazily stretched to the northwest of that silent and lonely village which reminded one about the infinity, quiet, deep and eternal…
The camel caravan, the herds of sheep and goat, the azure sky, the bristling spring waters and the birds flying over the desert were the physical background in which the poet first found himself. And apart from his physical background existed the closed and narrow bonds of tribalism, tradition and superstitions in which the mental and spiritual growth of the poet was occurring…
Therefore, your smiles, dancing at your lips, are meaningful smiles and carry some weight that how personalities can develop in such an atmosphere?
But let me say that Gul Khan Naseer, out of the strength of his personality did cross all these narrow bonds and faced them courageously. He bravely fought against the forces which were anti-personality, anti-man, anti-social.
And let me say before this intelligent gathering that I am not going to discuss Naseer as poet, as politician as journalist and as an historian but, Naseer as a personality.
Again you may be thinking that I may be confusing things. But my reply to you is that first I want to be clear in my own thoughts about this man; as I visualize that he was not a saint nor a prophet nor a mythological being, but a human being, a poet, a politician, a journalist and an historian, but he carried something different in his personality. No doubt he did poetry; he wrote history: he created sad songs and composed songs of love too, but all this came afterwards; after deciding the important question of all questions: What he wanted to be in life? Or say ’what I am’? And I fell that without answering this question first, possibly he might have bowed down before the might of the tribal chiefs of his will might have ceased in the goals…
A strong personality first answers the basic question of his life; the remaining actions that emanate from it are in fact the reflection of that basic question…
The famous Denish thinker Kierkegaard, a century back had said that three stages come I each man’s life. The first stage being the aesthetical’ in which the man shuns pains and avails pleasure; in the second stage, which is the ‘ethical stage man bows down before the idols which once he had rejected and had rebelled against them, but now he accepts the ‘truths’ of ethical stage as normal, logical and beyond any doubt; his rebellion of ethical stage is an old story now…
Therefore, according to this great hunched back thinker of Copenhagen, most of the people after crossing their first stage of life become stuck to the second stage till their death, but there are certain authentic personalities which cross the second stage and enter into the third stage, which he calls the ‘religious stage’. In this third stage they become full personalities. Kierkegaard gives the example of Prophet Ibrahim who sacrificed his son Ismail at the altar. Ethically it was illogical, irrational and nonsensical but, religiously he felt that it is ‘The Truth’, the ‘Reality’ so he went on with the ritual of sacrificing his dear son…
The main characteristics of this religious stage are that man feels no doubts about his actions; he becomes totally convinced of the truth of his intentions and actions…
Gul Khan Naseer’s experiences were not religious. Gul Khan Naseer was not a philosopher in the strict sense of the word. Perhaps he had never heard of Kierkegaard. But he was a truth seeker, as we all are truth seekers; Gul Khan Naseer wanted to understand his reality as we all want to understand that. Gul Khan Naseer wanted to comprehend the reality which is related to our political, social, economic and cultural life and expressed I in his poetry. And like him we are also interested to know our collective life, that what we are? Where we stand in today’s changing world? What is our future? Perhaps we don’t know all this, or perhaps some invisible forces are stopping us from knowing our truth or to let us enter into the third stage of our lives. Or perhaps our conceptual thinking is in its infancy that we don’t perceive the real meaning of our lives… And in spite of all our confusions there is restlessness, and an urge to understand, change and to be transformed, right from our hair to our feet…
We feel that we are fed up from this happening in our surroundings, but there is a great fear to come out and say it openly; we are stuck to our ethical stage, although we want a great leap; a big jump and a jump into the abyss of our being… But oh our fears and our trembling!: A ‘yes’ and a ‘No’ at the same time. Isn’t it a contradiction to live in ‘yeses’ and in ‘Nos’ at the same time? Moreover, how can we live, in such a situation, for a long time? Tragic.
We are in a crisis, but we don’t accept it: although we discuss it in our day to day talk that there is a crisis, but perhaps we, in our heart of hearts are convinced that all is ok, all is well and we are secure, and things are going smoothly, no problem… May be we are waiting for somebody to tell us about our crisis and put before a solution. We want out ‘reality’ and our ‘truth’ from the mouth of somebody else. Isn’t it strange! Who is going to save us from this crisis? Our God But how that could be possible if we don’t believe that there is a deeper experience of our hearts, the real source and the strength of our personalities…
Are we personalities? May be we are worms on the surface of the earth. But no, we are human beings, breathing, walking, sleeping, drinking and eating and thinking. But why during this period of crisis we lack something very substantial, our infinite freedom and with it attached our great fears. O god we are waiting but, waiting for whom?
Our crisis is perhaps that we are missing our strong personalities who though had all those contradictions, all that restlessness and nauseating feelings which we feel, but who taught us the way to fight, to struggle and not to bow down… Where are these people now in this darkness? Perhaps we don’t need their poetry and their tales but, we need their personalities in the midst of this crisis…
But they can’t come back; to think of their coming back is an absurd idea, but nostalgia is there, it is natural…
Giul Khan Naseer is one of such personalities which we always miss. Why? I must not answer this question for you, you better ask your own hearts and accept that which your heart tells you about.
To praise our personalities is not a sin but to create myths is bad. The basic need of the time is to understand the works of your scholars, poets and politician objectively, so that we may analyze their works in the light of reason and logic.
To know that how Gul Khan Naseer resisted evil; how he fought against all types of oppression. Be it social, political and cultural we must acquaint ourselves with his vision about our individual as well as collective life. We may not agree to what he had said but, we can’t deny the fact that he gave such vision; the vision that we the inhabitants of this part of the world have a future, and that we have to realize this vision first in our own hearts; in other words to become strong personalities first, so that we may be in a position to resist that which negates us which annihilates us and which makes us nobody…
It was this vision for which Naseer always invoked us for action and it was this vision for which he tried to awaken us from our deep slumber…
Perhaps he was impressed from the philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore, who ad given the concept of ‘Universal man’ is the ideal of all mankind, brave, courageous and master of his own destiny…
Gul Khan Naseer’s vision of Bloch is not different from that of Tagore; Naseer infact always tries to paint this vision with different colours; sometime very clearly and at other times vaguely but, he is persistently after it to paint it in perfect colours… Therefore, his interlocutor is no doubt Baloch, but he is after the ‘universal man’ ; Baloch is a part of that…
All the great writers of the world have their starting pints; from Peblo Neruda, the rivers of Cuba; for Naguib Mahfooz streets of Cairo and for Solzhentysen the Grulags so, far Gul Khan Naseer this village and the desert that stretches at its back is the starting point of all his creations but like all other great poets and writer of our time his end is universal progress, equality of men and the end of all those ‘negations’ which turn man into not being.
At the end my first question again, Did Gul Khan Naseer live a full life? Yes. Because he sacrificed all that was an impediment in the growth of his personality. That is his true greatness.
Man is mortal, Gul Khan Naseer was a man therefore, he was mortal, but mankind for which he composed poetry is immortal; you cannot eradicate mankind, it is immortal and the good deeds for mankind make a great personalities immortal too…