The Urdu Majlis enthusiasts met after a summer break on August 18th at the Caldwell Hall of NCSU in Raleigh, NC and discussed poet Mughisuddin Faridi. Urdu ghazal, with its kaleidoscopic rainbow like beauty, does not stop with the poetical works of Faani, Faiz, Firaq and Maikash Akbarabadi; it keeps its continuity by adding new stars along the way.  One such glowing star was Mughisuddin Faridi whose ghazals have a classical touch, imbibed in the backdrop of the Taj Mahal and through literary associations with the famous poet Maikash Akbarabadi and Professor Hamid Hasan Qadiri. His writings reverberate with imprints, reflections and surroundings of Hazrat Saleem Chishti and the Aligarh tradition.

Mughisuddin Faridi

Born in 1926 at Fatehpur Sikri in Agra, he was from a family, which traced its lineage to the legendary 16^th century Sufi saint, Shaikh Salim Chishti. He started writing poetry when he was in eighth grade, and wrote both nazms and ghazals, which were published in Lahore, in the Khayyam and Alamgir and in Khatoon-e-Mashriq of Delhi. He completed his B.A from St. Johns College, Agra in 1946 and his masters from Aligarh University in 1948. Prominent Urdu professors at Aligarh, such as Rasheed Ahmed Siddiqi, Aale Ahmed Suroor, Masood Husain Khan and the poet Moin Ahsen Jazbi were some of his major influences.

After completing his masters, he joined St. Johns College as an assistant professor of Urdu in 1948. He became an associate professor of Urdu in 1962 at Delhi University. Mughis Faridi was not only a great poet but also a great teacher and a scholar. He was a well-read man and taught Hafez, Nazeeri, Urfi, Meer, Ghalib and Iqbal. In 1975, he obtained his PhD in Urdu from Delhi University under the guidance of Prof. Khwaja Ahmed Faruqi. His topic of research was “Aspects of Nationalism in Urdu Poetry.” 

Only a short selection of poems was published by one of his students Feroz Dehelvi, who collected his poetry and published it as Kufre Tammna in 1987. On Sunday July 16, 2001, Mughisuddin Faridi died in his sleep at Kanpur in India; a large number of his relatives and admirers attended the funeral. His wife Musharaf Jehan and two sons Faiz and Shahid survived him.

Mughis Faridi led a simple, unpresumptuous life, despising materialism and avoiding the “rat race.”  Coming from a Sufi background, his personality was of a qalander type and his temperament, a clash between tensions and ideals. His poetry reflects a dissatisfactory restlessness; a sense of longing, a feeling of incompleteness, a sense of being unloved, denial, loneliness, and hidden pain, which creeps like a glowing beam. His life was an ebb and flow of patience and afflictions, and he was known to have a very sensitive personality due to some personal problems beyond his control. His younger brother Moeen Faridi died at a young age. One of his sons Shahid was born mentally deformed and would have violent fits. All these things affected his emotional and mental health and also that of his wife.

With a deluge of true emotion from the heart, his ghazals have both beauty and magic. His content is of high standard and quality in which every word is chiseled with likeness of Ghalib, Iqbal, Fani and Faiz. His every stanza represents a new thinking and a new literary standard. His ghazals at times are like petals of a flower layered in colors and whose meaning in a simplistic way is not evident right away. The meaning evolves and become slowly apparent. The fragrances expand leisurely into the stratum and it takes time to comprehend the poet’s feelings.

By studying his ghazal poetry we get a glimpse or a sketch of Mughis Faridi, his character and personality.  He did not hide his feelings and, like a true artist, his life and thoughts mirrored his poetry. His poetry though cast in classical style, is very contemporary being an amalgam of old and new values. The tensions in his life turned him into an emotionally vulnerable man but not a sad one. He faced ordeals in every direction, but this did not let him down, since he met his challenges, full force, and confronted every blow with humor.