Amjad Islam Amjad - Playing the Creative Role |
Written by LegendsofPakistan | |||
So when he says "I'm fifty-nine now, and so to see and describe things is easier," it cer¬tainly doesn't come as a surprise. "But when I started everything was hazy," he adds. And from those hazy days he has travelled a long way to success. He is also the recipient of fifteen Graduate Awards (1975-2000) and five Best Playwright Awards from Pakistan Television. Sitting comfortably behind his office desk at the Children Library Complex, he is a man quite satisfied with his contribution towards society. As Project Director of the institution, he has added a science museum to the complex and on his cards is a state of the art mini complex for handicapped children matching world standards. "As a child I hated maths and science. The reason being that I was never shown the proper approach towards science. I felt that if we want to prosper as a nation we must make our children confident and for that scientific knowledge is a must," reaffirms Amjad Islam Amjad. One expects a more creative line of action than this from him. Yet "creativity has many forms", says the poet inside him.
Amjad started writing poetry when he was studying at the univer¬sity. In the 1950s romantic poetry was in vogue and he followed suit. "I was an emerging poet without a sound academic knowledge of the genre. The young blood in me was adventurous and even if I made mistakes they were overlooked." However he now feels that as an established name in literature the "mental world may have opened up for him but otherwise the limitations are many." Stopping by a chollaywala and devouring the taste of a hot plate of desi cuisine or buying a gallery tick¬et at the cinema house or walking on the canal with friends without any fear of breaking the rules of recog¬nition are memories of a time in his life that he sometimes misses a lot. Amjad explains the background to his emergence as a poet.
However when Amjad Islam entered the era the first cause had already been addressed. The second remains to the present day.
He is also among the few poets of Pakistan whose books are printed more than once in a year. Amongst his fans is a new class of expatriates who often invite him to tmishairas abroad. Therefore media coverage has led to the public knowing more of the poet's activities. In the last fifteen to twenty years, literary editions of newspapers have come up. Thus today's poet has more contact with his audience and the exposure he receives is immense. Therefore Amjad the poet is now more read and known along with the playwright. "Television has a wider range of audience. There is more feedback. Comparing it with poetry which is a limited art form is not justified," says Amjad Islam.
Amjad has to his credit twelve serials spread over his 23-year-old professional life as a playwright. says Amjad who last year voluntarily announced his resigna¬tion from future national awards. He even gave away the award for his play Inkaar. Inspired by Bano Qudsia who was the first to do this, his is a graceful exit from the competitive world of playwrights thus placing him at a much higher plane. Very intent on carrying on his work, he neverthe¬less faithfully believes in creating a tradition of "leaving the stage for the younger generation when the time is right". Tracing his steps back in time when television was a new medium and he himself was just an emerging poet and playwright, he moved on to writing plays for television because television offered a whole new world of opportune expression. But television and the fame that it later brought him did not come easy to Amjad. Time and again he would submit his work to the producers who would return it with the words "rejected" stamped on it. "Unfortunately that was the time when nobody was actually trained for television. My predecessors were trained in radio and thus were unable to pinpoint my mistakes. "I learnt through a process of trial and error," explains Amjad Islam Amjad The first seven episodes were an absolute hit and PTV, for the first time in its history, increased the duration of a running programme from 25 minutes to 50 minutes. This was no mean achievement. The man in the field saw himself on screen and TV became the media of the masses. The environment, the lan-guage, the nuances and the clothes all communicated the plight of the common man. Nonetheless he has explored a new theme in each of his plays. Ranging from university poli¬tics producing professional gang¬sters, to a drive against narcotics, to recreating historical characters, his themes are unique. Currently he is also writing a sound and light show on Heer Ranjha for a private company. A great believer in translation as means of international communica¬tion, Amjad takes pride in using the medium to communicate his creativ¬ity with a non-Urdu speaking audi¬ence. A collection of works by poets from the subcontinent done in 1990 in Canada carries some of Amjad Islam Amjad's poems. His play Dhokon ke Chadar carried sub-titles by Navid Shehzad for an interna¬tional channel. Written by Khuzaima Fatima Haque
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