Razi Uddin Razi’s humouros columns : Book review by .. Syed Afsar Sajid

1. Title: ‘Column, KahaniyaN, Khakay’
Author: Raziuddin Razi
Pages 136 – Price: Rs.500/-
2. Title: ‘Column Hotel Baba Kay’
Author: Raziuddin Razi
Pages: 208 – Price: Rs.1,000/-
Raziuddin Razi is a veteran column writer, poet and journalist from Multan. Humour is his forte. He has lately released two afore-mentioned collections of his columns in periodic succession (2022, 2023). An undercurrent of a sardonic satire runs through his prose writings in general and columns in particular. Satire as a fecund variant of humour usually targets social and political conventions, or individuals and situations. It reveals much about its cultural context, informing readers of the manners, politics, or behaviour of its time besides exposing and contemplating change in outmoded beliefs and actions. Thus it turns out to be a vehicle of correction or reform in the manners and morals of a given society. The satirist is often a non-conformist, a rebel against the status quo or a dreamer of what ‘ought to be’ instead of what ‘is’. He has a discerning mind but an irascible temperament. Quite often non-fulfilment of his ideals in his personal life tends to augment his ire.
The first book (‘Column, KahaniyaN, Khakay’) carries forewords by noted humourists Ata-ul-Haq Qasimi and Gul Naukhez Akhtar who have appreciated Raziuddin Razi’s art and style as a humourist with a specific reference to his biting irony which enables him to differentiate between appearance and reality or fake and fact.
Humour in the Bergsonian context implies a laughter arising from the incongruities latent in human behavior. The laughter in satire, though instinctual, is tinged with disapprobation of the extant societal norms leading to self-awareness on the part of the reader. Raziuddin Razi’s columns, stories, and pen-portraits bear an iconoclastic stance. He hits social evils like hypocrisy, snobbery, ignorance, beggary, corruption, favouritism,
adulteration, self-aggrandizement, indiscipline, theft, larceny, hoarding, profiteering et al. Selection of titles of columns is discreet, eponymous, and meaningful like ‘Adab may lota’ism’, ‘Aik graduate rukn-e-assembly ki mutawaqqo taqreer’, ‘Jhurlu kyuN roya’, ‘Load-shedding, mome batti, aur agar batti’ ‘Anjuman sarqa pasand musannefeen’, ‘Wicket keepery say time keepery tak’, ‘Dr. Aleel Haiderabadi ki akhri beemari’, ‘Suf0300 6337065i Abdul Quddus ki sha’iri aur Munir Niazi disposal pump’, ‘Ibadat guzar Ramzani Bhai ki munafa khori’, ‘Dr. Adeeb Shakargarhi — Aik shohrat pasand naqqad’, and ‘Deeng Mar Khan aur dengue’.
Most of the characters in these columns are not strangers to us either. They exist, talk and move around us in their true colours — with all their vices and virtues. The issues discussed here are generally apolitical and cursorily, political. One cannot but laugh at the whims and caprices of characters like Rashid BA, Sufi Abdul Quddus, Siddique Pardesi, Boota, Master Riaz, Dr. Aleel Haiderabadi, Bedar Sahib, Malik Hatim, Saeed Patwari, Nazir Gappi, Nazir Niazmandi, Dr. Adeeb Shakargarhi, and Fazil Sahib. Some of them are types while others, individuals.
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The second book ‘Column Hotel Baba Kay’ relates to columns that their author Raziuddin Razi contributed regularly to Urdu dailies ‘Imroze’ and ‘Jasarat’ besides a fortnightly ‘Deed Shaneed’. These columns mostly covered the literary activities pursued
regularly at Baba Hotel (like the Pak Tea House in Lahore), a popular rendezvous for local writers and poets, located on the confluence of Multan City and Cantonment. Credit goes to late Dr. Anwar Sadeed who assigned Raziuddin Razi the nom de guerre of ‘Hotel Baba’ in consideration of the latter’s fast association with the said hotel.
Dr. Anwaar Ahmad, Dr. Khawar Nawazish, Athar Nasik, and Zaheer Kamal have written eulogistic forewords to the book. All of them concur on the positivities of Razi’s person and art. As many as 67 columns form the content of this book. They encompass literary men, avenues, events, books, controversies, pen-pictures, and issues aside from ‘literary bureaucracy’. A fairly long list of litterateurs is described in the work in a humorous vein and style characteristic of Razi. Irony, exaggeration, understatement, inversion, censure, and parody are the chief ingredients of his humour.
Aizaz Ahmad Azar, Tahir Taunsavi, Ahmad Nadeem Qasimi, Iqbal Arshad, Prof. Muhammad Amin, Hussain Sehar, Fayyaz Tehsin, Athar Nasik, Akhtar Shumar, Abbas Tabish, Salahuddin Haider, Prof. Arsh Siddiqui, Fahim Asghar, Murtaza Birlas, Iqbal Saghar Siddiqui, Aasi Karnali, Dr. Farhat Abbas, Shahzad Qaiser, Bedil Haideri, Hanif Chaudhry, Ghazala Khakwani, Najma Iftikhar, Tufail Ibne Gul, Arif Moeern Balley, Nasim Shahid, Qateel Shifai, Jafar Shirazi, Anwar Jamal, Ghazanfar Mehdi, Dr. Anwar Sadeed, AfshaN Abbas, Sardar Ghulam Abbas, Munir Fatimi, HazeeN Siddiqui, Umer Ali Khan Baloch, Ashraf Javed, Sibtain Raza Lodhi, Ibne Kalim, Khalid Parvez, Muhammad Islam Tabassum, Muhammad Hafeez Khan, Naeem Chaudhry, Javed Akhtar Bhatti, Afsar Sajid, and Shakir Hussain Shakir, among others, have been captioned or highlighted in these columns.
It is an interesting read covering the diverse parameters of the literary panorama of Multan. One may differ from the author on his quasi-subjective permutations and combinations about literary men and matters inscribed in the columns, but there is little to doubt his mental integrity in his statements or observations in general. At places he laughs at himself too which tends to preclude any personal malice or vengeance in his portrayal of literary or non-literary figures, as also the anecdotes imputed to them. The satirist in him motivates him to squarely look into the incongruities intrinsic to the conduct of a person or inherent in the mechanics of an event and spotlight them to enlighten his readers. In these columns transition from suave humour to pungent satire is quite swift yet sensational.
Summing up, the two books taken together contain a glowing picture of the literary scenario of Multan circumventing a whole decade around the fag end of the past century. Readers will enjoy reading them just for a change in the midst of their monotonous professional routines.