I met Firaq Gorakhpuri (Raghupati Sahai) only once but have vivid memories of that meeting. I had heard a lot about how university students would go to his house, sit for some time, and then make some comment that would annoy him. And then, in rage, he would abuse them and throw them out. It was a cold January evening in 1975 and when I, accompanied by a few friends, reached his Bank Road house, we found him lying on his bed. He had great difficulty in moving the lower part of his body but was mentally very agile.
Contrary to my expectation, he turned out be very hospitable and when I requested him to recite a few of his couplets, he said they were worthless and he would recite from the masters of the past. Not only did he recite Urdu couplets of Sauda, Aatish, Mir Taqi ‘Mir’, Ghalib and many other poets, he also explained them. And that was a real treat. A great conversationalist, he quoted from Prince Kropatkin, Stalin, Gandhi, Tilak, Tulsidas, Shakespeare and many more. The meeting went on for more than three hours and my friends started feeling bored. So, they did what they used to do and received the desired treatment. We were unceremoniously thrown out of the house after having spent an unforgettable evening.
These memories came as I read “Firaq Gorakhpuri: The Poet of Pain and Ecstasy” written by Ajai Mansingh who was the great poet’s nephew (sister’s son) and died before the book could see the light of day. As a close relative, Mansingh knew Firaq and his family like nobody else and this makes the biographical sections in the book fabulously rich in information. Firaq would often blame the incompatibility of his marriage (he was duped because he was shown a girl different from the one whom he married) as his uneducated wife could not offer him companionship. Some attribute this to his attempt to seek solace in homosexual relationships.
Born in a wealthy Kayastha family of Gorakhpur, Raghupati Sahai (August 18, 1896 -March 3, 1982) became Firaq in 1918 when he adopted this takhallus (non de plume) for his poetry. He was selected for training first for Provincial Civil Service and later for Indian Civil Service but did not join it. Instead, he became active in the national movement and became a part of the extended Anand Bhavan family. In 1923, Jawaharlal Nehru asked him to accept the organisational responsibility as the undersecretary of the Indian National Congress. He spent many years in jail. Later, he achieved fame both as a teacher of English at Allahabad University and as a great Urdu poet. He was the recipient of many awards and honours, including the Sahitya Akademi award, Jnanpith Award and Fellowship of the Sahitya Akademi. In his autobiography “Yadon ki Barat”, Josh Malihabadi writes: “I have to state with considerable regret that India is yet to recognise Firaq’s greatness. ...Anybody who refuses to acknowledge that the great personality of Firaq is the tika on India’s forehead, the honour and dignity of the Urdu language, and the ornament of the Urdu poetry is nothing but a sheer oaf.”
Firaq never cared for social taboos. He wrote a long essay on love poetry in Urdu when the editor of “Madina”, an influential literary journal published from Bijnor, requested him to write for its Jubilee number that came out in 1939. An expanded version of this essay was later published in the form of a book and was also brought out in Hindi by Vani Prakashan in 1998. In this essay, Firaq discussed the issue of same-sex relationships in considerable detail and concluded that they were in fact a form of “rebellion” against social stereotyping and taboos.
Although Ajai Mansingh paints Ramesh Chandra Dwivedi in black because of Firaq’s “lust” for him and his alleged machinations to take over Firaq’s household and worldly affairs by fomenting trouble in his family and getting his wife Kishori Devi banished, it is also true that the same Dwivedi wrote a wonderful book “Firaq Saheb” that throws valuable light on his multi-faceted and attractive personality. The fact that Jagdish Gupta, a well known Hindi writer who once headed the Hindi Department at the Allahabad University, wrote the preface of Dwivedi’s book, and Amrita Pritam and Gopi Chand Narang were among those who were present when the book was released by the then Vice-President of India, Shankar Dayal Sharma, shows that Dwivedi was taken seriously by those who knew Firaq.
Mansingh’s book is really a labour of love as he was very much attached to his maternal uncle. I cannot resist the temptation of quoting from it an excerpt from an interview given by Kishori Devi to Amir Ahmad Siddiqui as its offers a glimpse into an aspect of the great poet’s life. Says she: “I respected and cared for all his friends, relatives and acquaintances. I never failed to host them in the best possible way. They could be Josh, Nirala, Majaz, Kapilji, Mahadevi Verma, Amar Nath Jha, Ram Kumar Verma, Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, Munshi Ishwar Saran, Majnun Gorakhpuri or Bachchanji. Niralaji visited him more frequently. I used to cook a special type of dish for him, which he loved. He was fond of hard drinks, which would often make him unmanageable. Josh Saheb used to dance very well after drinks.”
And Firaq wrote about himself:
“Aane wali naslen tum par rashq karengi hamasron, Jab ye khayal aayega unko, tumne Firaq ko dekha tha.”
(Future generations will feel envious of you when they would think that you had got a chance to see Firaq.)
Nothing could be closer to truth than this.
The writer is a noted literary critic
