Saleem Ahmed

Saleem Ahmed (1927–1983), who wrote under the pen name Saleem, was born on 27 November 1927 at Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh. He studied at Meerut College, where the critic and teacher Karrar Hussain was among his mentors, and came to be known as one of the most unconventional voices in modern Urdu letters — a poet, a critic and a playwright. As a critic he stood against the grain of his age: he questioned the ghazal's long hold over Urdu poetry and argued against the modernism of his day, pressing instead for a poetry that faced the whole man and the whole of life. His own verse is spare and unsentimental — short, plain lines in which death, the seasons and the passing of time are looked at steadily, without flinching. His poetry collections — Bayaz, Ikai, Charagh-e-Neem Shab and Mashriq — were gathered after his death into Kulliyat-e-Saleem Ahmed (2003); his critical books include Iqbal Ek Shair (1978), Adhoori Jadeediyat (1987) and Nai Nazm Aur Poora Aadmi (1989). He died at Karachi on 1 September 1983, aged fifty-five.