Jameel Mazhari

Patna's poet-critic — the eyes teach the lesson of love. Jameel Mazhari (1904–1979), born Syed Kazim Ali on 2 September 1904 at Patna in Bihar, was an Indian Urdu poet, critic and prose writer whose verse joined the classical tradition to modern thought. He took the pen name Jameel and added Mazhari in honour of an elder of his family, Syed Mazhar Hassan, himself a poet. Schooled at Motihari and Muzaffarpur, he went to Calcutta for higher studies, taking his M.A. from Calcutta University in 1931; there he learned from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Aghaz Hashr, Naseer Hussain Khayal and Allama Raza Ali Wahshat, and used to take his verse to Wahshat for correction. After graduation he worked in journalism for about six years, writing political essays, scholarly articles, novels and fiction, and in 1937 he became a publicity officer in the Congress government in Bihar, resigning in 1942 when that government fell. He then withdrew from practical politics and taught Urdu at Patna, at the university and at Patna College, until his retirement in 1964, after which he gave himself wholly to Urdu poetry and literature. His collections — Fikr-e-Jameel, his ghazals, and Naqsh-e-Jameel, his nazms — stand beside his long poem Masnavi Ab-o-Sarab and his much-loved prose work Farz Ki Qurban-Gah Par. His verse ranges from love and the beloved's eyes to the lamps of Diwali, the colours of Holi, and a song for the motherland, Ae Madar-e-Hindustan; he studied the Sufi mystics and the Bhakti saints, and his poetry carries the old and the new together in one voice. His work was honoured with the Ghalib Modi Award in 1974. He died at Patna on 23 July 1979, aged 74.