Javed Quraishi
A modern Urdu ghazal poet whose verse was taken up by the subcontinent's greatest singers — better remembered as a cultural figure than a prolific author.
The Javed Quraishi best documented in the archives died in Lahore in April 2014, and was that rare thing — a senior civil servant who was also a real poet. He served at the top of Pakistan's bureaucracy, was a connoisseur and patron of classical music, and wrote modern Urdu ghazal whose lines were carried into the wider world by the voices that sang them: 'Aashiyane ki baat karte ho' by Farida Khanum and Noor Jehan, and a ghazal taken up by Mehdi Hassan.
We add one honest caveat, in the spirit of this shelf. The archives are unambiguous about this Lahore poet-bureaucrat, but we have not been able to prove beyond doubt that the particular couplet we keep here is his rather than a namesake's. We present it, and him, with that uncertainty stated plainly rather than smoothed over.
dil jalane ki baat karte ho …
“You speak of a nest to come home to — you speak of setting the heart alight. Having handed over all the sorrows of the world, you speak of smiling. It was a calamity, it will have passed — whose departure is it you speak of?”
hairan hun main kya hai jahan kya dikhai de
“Sometimes a desert looks like a river to me — I am bewildered: what is this world, and what is it that I actually see?”
har charagar mujhe to lutera dikhai de
“Whom should one trust and whom not — every supposed healer looks like a robber to me.”
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