Dareechah-e-Nigaarish

Munir Niazi (1928-2006) is without doubt one of the top five Urdu poets of the modern era.

The uniqueness of Munir's poems is rooted in three main attributes:

Firstly, Munir Niazi is a maestro of narrative poetry and many of his poems are mini-stories. He loves to tell these stories and sketches just the right amount of detail in them to make them strike a chord with the reader. He shows his eagerness for telling his mini-stories again and again !

Secondly, Munir Niazi is a master word craftsman. His choice of Urdu words is very diverse. Like all great poets, he exhausts his era's Urdu diction. Here I am quoting Wichaar Webcast's Dr. Manzur Ejaz, a critic with a revealing analysis of Munir Niazi's poetry . . . see this link to my YouTube channel Goonj's uploaded video of Dr. Manzur Ejaz's critique of Munir Niazi's poetry.

Thirdly, Munir Niazi championed the art of imagistic poetry. Here I am quoting Dr. Anis Nagi ... see my YouTube channel Goonj's video where Dr. Nagi expresses his views on Munir Niazi's poetry. Munir excels in painting mesmerizing images of the colorful universe he is surrounded by and with which he communicates in an awed child's innocence and directness !

Munir Niazi was born into a Pashtoon family of the Niazi tribe in a small village called Khanpur in district Hoshiarpur, in the heart of eastern Punjab in British India.  He  matriculated and joined the British Navy for sometime.  Later, in 1947, he was studying in a college in Jalandhar, Punjab when the British left India and Pakistan was created. 

At the time of the creation of Pakistan in 1947, he migrated to Sahiwal (Montgomery).   He passed his Intermediate degree from S.E. College, Bahawalpur and his B.A. from Dyal Singh College, Lahore.  He published an Urdu weekly "Saat Rang" from Sahiwal where he interacted with the renowned poet Majeed Amjad. 

 Munir Niazi then established himself in Lahore where he wrote some memorable songs for Urdu films in the 1950's ("Jis Nay Meray Dil Ko Dard Diya; Urdu Art Film "Susraal") and went on to publish many collections of his Urdu and Punjabi poems and ghazals.

He developed a unique and colorful style in his Urdu and Punjabi poetry.  His poems describe a world of  vast landscapes inhabited by raging rivers, towering mountains, lush valleys harboring wild untamed jungles which are the abode of beasts and elusive, mysterious nymphs, mythical female and male characters,  and menacing castles guarded by slaves carrying torches in the dark night.  This magical realism (like the atmosphere in the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez) he fostered and nurtured for decades, forging ahead all by himself on his journey into new vistas of modern Urdu poetry.

Munir's poetry is brimming with the colors and images of wide open landscapes, close ups of tender moments in the lives of men and women and above all with the pure and innocent wonder of a poet as he looks at people and places around him and the universe that he inhabits.

Above all, Munir's poetry is a portrait of the moment...

full of wonder at the beauty inherent in a particular fraction of fleeting Time...  immediate,  palpable, alive!

ٰI have used John Richardson's 1806 "A Dictionary: Arabic, Persian and English" 1806 Edition to find the meanings of some words Munir Niazi has used in his poetry... a pdf file of this dictionary is available for free at Google Books ... click here for a link to this Dictionary on Google Books

The following couplet is an apt description of this great poet:

The photograph showing a beach with the sea and the sky below is by my facebook friend Pervaiz Malik and I have borrowed it to illustrate a masterpiece poem by Munir Niazi, one of my favorite modern Urdu poets from Lahore, Pakistan.



Munir Niazi (first from right) with Urdu novelist and columnist A. Hameed who is also my maternal uncle (2nd from left) in Lahore during the 1950s

 Munir Niazi (first from left) with Urdu novelist and columnist A. Hameed who is also my maternal uncle (1st from right) in Lahore Township neighborhood during the mid-1980s.  A. Hameed had just returned from a 2-year stint at Voice of America, Washington, DC, USA.