Pen name is more important to become popular…
Writing – is it an art or science? In fact, the question makes no sense. Yet, it is surely an art and at the same, it is a spiritual journey, an emotional odyssey, which gives a series of experiences and knowledge or understanding to someone.
No doubt we write and speak for others otherwise there is no necessity to write or speak. But writing is an art and natural gift and writers are the true scientists of our age, of every age. It is said that the writers compose their compositions by reaching at the state where the normal thinker cannot reach.
During 90s when I became a member of Sahit Sangam, there used to be regular meetings of writers. In one such gathering, I read out my latest composition and later on, it was rejected by all during the course of discussions, which was routine matter to comment about the contents of thewrite-ups and in the case of a ghazal, if the same is in metric or not etc.
From the very beginning, I was very much against writing vulgarity and even I used to hold responsible both the writers for writing and singers for singing.
There is only one writer –Sadat Hassan Monto, a Pakistani writer, playwright and author, considered among the greatest writers of short stories in South Asian History – who has written the maximum short stories –Afsanas – and he too was charged for writing vulgar. He was the most widely read and the most controversial short-story writer in Urdu. He was tried for obscenity half a dozen times, thrice before and thrice after independence. Not always was he acquitted. Some of Manto’s greatest work was produced in the last seven years of his life, a time of great financial and emotional hardship for him.
But the plus point about him was that there were number of his fans standing in his support in the court. In the preface of Mantonama, Monto has written, “I am writing, whatever society is doing. Let the society stop doing wrongs, I will stop writing”. He had also shared that “Monto has so many stories in his mind and if anyone is ready to put them in a bottle, he is ready to die”.
Frankly speaking, I cannot forget the incident, which is still alive in my memories, when we had a annual meet in one of the hall of the government school, where we still sometime meet.
When my turn came to share something new, I flatly told that I have not written anything in the past but I have brought something very interesting written by ‘Dutt Bharti’. When I read out the contents to the present members of Sahit Sangam, – Is Paar Vi Chup, Us Paar Vi Chup – its’ silence here and there also – it was applauded by one and all and I was flooded with a number of questions – Who is Dutt Bharti?, Where he lives?, Have we met him so far? Has he ever come to our meetings?, Do call him, Harish, in the next meeting? Contents and ideas are really appreciable, said another prominent writer.