PART TWO

Personalities

The Word, the Voice, the Troubled Truth Remains

THIS IS third time I am attempting a piece on Mohammad Idrees. I did two pieces last week but tore them up. Where's the use? I asked myself. Where's the use? I ask you.

          On Wednesday, however, I decided to break a pledge. You know why? Someone brought fragrant rosemary leaves for me from Manila that day, and rosemary is for remembrance.

          There used to be a running joke between Idrees and me. "If you die before I kick the bucket, I'II do my best column on you. What will you do if the bucket gets the boot from me and you are witness to the free hit?"

          "I'II do nothing of the sort. You won't get half a line from me. I promise you," I told him.

          Today I break that resolve. Much has been written on Idrees and I will try not to do that. A single moment of sorrow cannot be allowed to outweigh the millions of moments of happiness Idrees gave me and to thousands of others.

          Idrees was my personal god of joy and the gods don't die, do they? So expect no tears from me. Therefore I admonish Munnoo Bhai for his sentimental piece in a Lahore  paper a few days ago. The column was called "I can't believe it." I must be permitted to reproduce parts of it. Says Munnoo Bhai:

I can't believe it that my friend Mohammad Idrees . . . (How can I complete the sentence unless I believe that it is true?).
I can't believe that when I'II call at his Gold Road  residence now he won't answer the bell with open arms and embrace me.
I can't believe that he won't answer my telephone call and invite me to come on over.
I can't believe that when I visit the Model Town  residence of Zafar Iqbal Mirza, Idrees won't already be there.
I can't believe that there will be no response when I leave a message for him. . . .
I can't believe that such a full life has come to an end so suddenly. . . .
I can't believe that the Munnoo Bhai who lived in the Idrees heart and who was handsomer than the real Munnoo Bhai, more intelligent, wiser and better, is dead. . . .

He lives in my heart, and unless he dies there, I won't believe that he is dead. Until Dr. Nighat Ara Shah tells me so and unless Zafar Iqbal Mirza confirms the fact, I won't believe that Idrees is dead. And until I can bring myself to believe that he is dead. I won't do a column on him.

Well, I don't know about Dr. Nighat Shah, but I do confirm that Idrees is dead. Death is the deadliest reality, and I hate it but there's nothing I can do about it.

          When A. T. Chaudhri died in 1984, I had cheered him in. "Well Played, Sir," I had said. He had made a sedate 63. I say the same now as Idrees returns to the Eternal Pavilion, Well Played, Yar! Made 52 and he didn't do it in singles and twos. He made them all in fours with 13 hits to the fence.

          So, these are more in remembrance than in mourning. Why should I mourn a brief separation? There are a thousand things to remember about him and then there is the fond memory of two thousand and one evenings spent in his company.

          On a glorious morning in the February of a lost year, he drove down to my place in his beat-up Dodge Dart and did the Cha Cha Cha on his horn at my door.

          "Stop this racket. What's the matter with you so early in the morning?" I said, growling at him through the window.

          "Come on out, lazy bird and let's go on a picnic. It's too beautiful a day to lose in a dark and dirty bedroom," said Idrees.

          "All right, on one condition. Faiz is in town and we must call on him before we go wherever you want us to go," I proposed, and he readily agreed.

          We drove to the Faiz house and were called into bedroom where we found the poet reclining on his bed, feeling a bit under the weather. But he cheered up as we talked and was soon at his generous best. When it was time to take leave. I asked Idrees to recite the Faiz poem he loved best. The poem is called ' Arzoo ' (Wish) and Idrees recited:

I do not believe in miracles but do wish that when Death
Takes me away from this world,
It should permit me once again
To return from the grave
And come and knock at your door
And if you require someone with whom to share your grief,
I should be with you.
Should this not be so, I should once again take the road to Eternity.

Faiz was pleased at the recited but said: " Arey Bhai , this is not my work, I just translated the Soviet poet Rasul Hamza."

          "No Sir, this is your work. Or don't you remember Fitzgerald? Listen again."

          And Idrees recited ' Arzoo ' again. He was even more impressive this time. Faiz was delighted. "Don't do it a third time or I will really begin to believe it is an original poem," he said as we took our leave.

          Idrees put the car on the road to Sheikhupura where we had a whole of a time at the Hiran Minar. Right through the afternoon he kept reciting ' Arzo ,' and it later became his signature tune. And when we were together, he would sign off almost all evenings with ' Arzoo . '

          Perhaps he knew this is how it was going to be. He, like the poet, did not believe in miracles. But had the ' Arzoo ,' again like the poet. I am even more modest. I don't even have the ' Arzoo ' and I hate the seven lines quoted above.

          All I can do at the moment is to recall the lines Roger Woddis of the New Statesman  wrote to honour James Cameron in February 1985:

 

Now the best is laid to rest,
And the grieving heart counts
Its multiple joys, too many and too large
To fit into a headline.
. . . he is gone,

Not to meet his Maker but a deadline
No banks of flowers for James [Idrees]
It was his trade. His eyes and ears
Were all he had to offer,
And a weary honesty his only pride.
We took for granted what we owed him.
The debt will never be repaid
. . .
Only the body has been removed
But not the passion, nor the wit.

January 4, 1989