Prevalent literary scene in Urdu & Punjabi

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Those passing through their 6th & 7th decades should remember the prevalent literary scene in Urdu & Punabi literature at the dawn of independence on August, 1947. Initially the nation was passing through the trauma of partition, dividing families on the basis of religious beliefs; ultimately resulting in geographic division & rehabilittion in alien regions & culture. Slowly & gradually literary activities caught on with the passage of time to the extent that old literary magazines of standing were pubilshed with vitality & vigour unseen before independence. Progressive Writers Movement started by men like Miraji, N. M. Rashid, Saadat Hassan Minto, Ismat Chughtai, and Krishan Chander was on its last leg; and these writers were being replaced by revolutionaries like Habib Jalib, Munir Niazi, and others. Saadat Hassan Minto's writing were sub-judice on the charges of obscenity; whereas Ismat Chughtai preferred staying in Bombay.

There were very few magazines of good standing like Adabi Dunya started in the second decade of 20th century by late Tajwar Najibabadi, and subsequently purchased bylate Maulan Salah-ud-din Ahmad who kept publishing it till his last moment. Sir Abdul Qadir had been publishing Makhzan, and magazines like Aaj Kal,Mah-e-Nau,Beesween Sadi and Adab-e-Lateef were also in circulation. There was only one Punjabi magazine by the name of PUNJDARYA.

Late Tufail Sahib was publishing Naqooshwhereas late Hakim Habib Ashaar and Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi were publishing [/i]Funoon. All of these magazines were of high literary value because of their contents & covering various genres (including criticism) of enviable quality, presenting an admixture of literary sensibilities in the East and West. Arab Hotel and Mohkim Din Bakery were not the venues like pre-independence days; but Urdu writers had started assembling in Pak Tea House, whereas Punjabi literateur generally met in YMCA. This was the period when Lahore was throbbing with literary activities, producing men like Qayyum Nazar, Sajjad Baqar Rizvi, Ehsaan Danish, Habib Jalib, and others in Urdu; and men like Raja Risalu, Sharif Kujahi, and Shafqat Tanvir Mirza in Punjabi.[/i][i]
This was the time whenstudents of English Literture were returning from Oxford and Cambridge after acquiring B. A(Honours), and experiments were being conducted in Urdu for bringing it at par with the contemporary human experience getting guidance from Eliot & Ezra Pound etc.These lines written by Eliot were generally echoing in Pak Tea House'I am growing old I am growing old, I wear the bottoms of my trouser rolled.........'
'Come on then let us go you and I when the evening is spread out against the sky,
like a [patient etherised upon a table'.
After describing this milieu, I should be discussing the experience of the age ias relected in the Pak Tea House sometime later. Jameel Zaidi