Jaun Elia was a great poet

There comes a time in the life of almost every great writer when they have to choose between their passion and mundane comforts. They become many things to many people due to diversity of expectations. Since they are not jugglers, they fail to keep many balls in the air.

They make gains but then they also make losses and gradually a sense of loss take them over, making them restless and urging them on. When we place them on high pedestals, we need to acknowledge that they are human beings and every shade of their life cannot be perfect. Jaun Elia was one such great poet.

“He (Elia) was a sadist,” said his daughter Sohaina Elia, whom he used to call Ghamcho with love. “He would put himself in pain. Seeing him in pain, others would also be in pain. And in seeing others in pain, he would sort of take pleasure,” she said.

She was, or should be, the key speaker at an event arranged by Madeeha Arslan at her residence in Naval Anchorage in memory of the great poet. Though of late this housing society has attracted public attention for wrong reasons, events like this are an aberration.

Known civil society leader Haris Khaleeq shed light on Elia’s work and Nasir read out his poetry in a lively manner. As has been logical, listeners were mesmerized by the poetry but I was possessed by the unaffected posture and looks of Ghamcho. All through the event, she sat back in her elegant style and spoke only when asked to.

“My father wanted to become a wrester (pehlwan) but he could not. All his life, he was pilloried in this sense of loss,” she recalled. He would eat nuts and other stuff in private and keep it hidden in his pockets. Sometimes, one of his kids would eat it and Jaun would be perturbed.

She said that her father would not cook at home and was about to speak on how he was for the women at home but held back her comments sensing that many an ear were cocked. Suhaina was not very warm to public attention.

The programme took an interesting turn when the participants started comparing Jon with Mirza Ghalib. It was not less than a blasphemy for the classic school to even imagine about such a comparison and they reacted very strongly to it. Fortunately and timely, Haris Khaliq intervened and explained that every poet has his strengths and weaknesses. He quoted examples from work of different poets to make his point.

Jaun wrote prolifically and was uncompromising in his own. His work also attracted some mainstream political players but he refused to be associated with any one of them permanently. For all his poetry, he remained hard-pressed to make both ends meet. There are many others who became popular and lived close to power corridors. They were given medals, government offices and many titles but their work died as they died. They were popular poets. But Jaun was a great poet which is why he lives in the hearts of the masses even after his death. He may be a sadist but the one message that his poetry gives is — rebellion. So I would say that he was a rebel more than anything else.