I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use – silence, exile, and cunning.

— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

rom my early youth, I have been an avid fan of Zia Mohyeddin. His renditions of poetry, recitations of prose and the precision with which he expressed himself made him someone in a league of his own. He was an actor, director, producer, broadcaster, writer and an ardent student of literature rolled into a single person.

Mohyeddin had three books to his credit. His profound understanding of Urdu poetry was, indeed, unique. His distinguished career ranged from his critically acclaimed performances on television, stage and film in Britain and the United States as well as his enchanting renditions of Ghalib, Nazir, Faiz, and NM Rashid in Pakistan.

Khaled Ahmad wrote about him many years ago, “Give him classical Indian music and Shakespeare and he will eat out of your hand. He is high culture, distant and un-talkative with an ability to communicate in accents Alcibiades would envy. Zia is meiosis personified.”

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end. Albert Einstein once said that creativity was seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought. Zia Mohyeddin seemed a personification of this thoughtful expression of a great scientist.

Merely listening to him opened a process of learning for those interested in the art of locution. He had a great sense while reading a classical text of how to start, where to pause, when to go to a higher pitch and when to scale down to an undertone. He was a one-man institution.

His renditions of Shakespeare’s plays provide us with vivid elucidation of the extent of subtlety that he possessed. Amazing was his ability to read inordinately long passages in a single breath without breaking the rhythm. Before him, only late Zulfiqar Bokhari was known to have that ability. (Zia acknowledged Bokhari as an inspiration.)

He was born on June 20, 1931, in (Lyallpur) Faisalabad, to Khadim Mohyeddin, who was a mathematician, musicologist, playwright and lyricist associated with various theatre groups. There had been no dearth of talent in the family. His family was originally from Rohtak (pre-partition East Punjab which later became the state of Haryana).

Zia Mohyeddin spent his early life in Kasur and Lahore. He graduated from Government College, Lahore, and worked at Radio Pakistan before joining Radio Australia. He was a debater in Urdu at GC but was finally drawn to the stage in England to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

The acclaim and popularity that he got because of the role of Dr Aziz he performed in A Passage to India in the 1965 BBC television production added another dimension to his artistic career. So good was his performance that it drew EM Foster’s personal attention.

Mohyeddin became famous for the eponymous Pakistan Television show that ran from 1969 to 1973. The show is best remembered for his rap-style song segment, which he would introduce with his trademark phrase of “zara theka lagaiye.”

He was appointed director of the PIA Arts Academy in 1973, a role he held until 1977 when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s regime was undone. Zia’s affiliation with progressive writers was the main reason for his differences with the military regime of Gen Zia-ul Haq. He returned to the UK in the late 1970s. During the 1980s, Zia worked in Birmingham where he produced Central Television’s flagship multicultural programme Here and Now (1986–1989). He also hosted a weekly magazine programme.

He was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London from 1953 to 1956. After stage roles in Long Day’s Journey into Night and Julius Caesar, he made his West End debut in EM Foster’s A Passage to India from April 20 to December 3, 1960, at the Comedy Theatre, which ran for 302 performances. That established him as a stage actor.

The acclaim and popularity that he got because of the role in A Passage to India in the 1965 BBC television production added another dimension to his artistic career. It was directed by a 24-year-old Waris Hussein. So good was his performance that it drew EM Foster’s personal attention. Later, the two forged a bond of friendship. Zia used to call Foster, Morgan Sahib.

When Zia first played Dr Aziz, South Asians were not given leading roles in mainstream productions in the West, on stage or film. He made his film debut in the Lawrence of Arabia (1962), playing the role of Tafas (the Arab guide who is shot by Omar Sharif for drinking water from the wrong well). In that role, which was not more than seven minutes long, Zia made a tremendous impression with his spontaneity, particularly in the death scene.

Working in the direction of David Lean was an experience he greatly cherished throughout his life. He made numerous TV and film appearances. As an actor, he worked for nearly 47 years in the United Kingdom. He worked in around 15 films and many TV shows. His multi-faceted talent made him an asset for the country of his origin and far beyond its confines.

I conclude by quoting three sentences from his book, A Carrot is a Carrot. “The power of authority over belief in the present day is vastly greater than before. No one can deny, in the face of evidence, that it is easy to produce a population of fervent patriots. It ought to be equally easy to produce a population of sane, thinking people, but authorities do not wish to do so, since then it would be difficult to admire those in authority.”

The writer is Professor in the faculty of Liberal Arts at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. He can be reached at tahir.kamran@bnu.edu.pk