Dareechah-e-Nigaarish

Obaidullah Aleem (1939-1998)

     Obaidullah Aleem was a modern Urdu poet. He was a significant voice to emerge in the creatively tumescent Pakistan of the 1960's. 

             He was born in 1939 in Bhopal, India. His father was a Kashmiri (of the Butt clan) from the small town of Sialkot, Pakistan (the town to whom the poet philosopher Allama Mohammad Iqbal belonged). Aleem grew up in the modern, cosmopolitan city of Karachi, Pakistan. He received an MA in Urdu from the prestigious University of Karachi. 

              He began work as a radio producer for the state-run Radio Pakistan and then became a program producer for Pakistan Television's Karachi Studios in 1967.  His first marriage was to Ms. Nigar Yasmin in 1970.  In 1974, his first book of poetry Chand Chehra Sitara AankhheiN was published and won the highest award in literature in Pakistan, the Adamji Prize. Jaun Elia, another modern Urdu poet hailing from Karachi was a close friend and confidante of Obaidullah Aleem throughout most of his life but especially in the 1960's and 1970's.

               With the arrest (and later state-mediated judicial murder) of rightfully elected Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1977 and the coming to power of a radical, right wing military dictator, General Zia ul Haq, Pakistan began a long descent into chaos and fear.  As a result of the tyranny and brutal persecution of the people of Pakistan and its creative artists, writers and poets unleashed under General Zia ul Haq's Martial Law, in 1978, Obaidullah Aleem was forced to resign from his job at Pakistan Television following an edict issued by the state against him in relation to him being an Ahmadi, a member of Ahmadiyyah Muslim community. In 1982, Aleem wrote an article 'Khursheed Misaal Shakhs' in memory of Mirza Nasir Ahmad, the top Ahmadi religious leader.  His second collection of poetry ViraaN Sa-rye Kaa Diya was published in 1986.  In late 1990s he married Ms. Tehseen Fatima.  Obaidullah Aleem's talent and the creative brilliance of his Urdu ghazals was largely ignored within Pakistan... the sycophantic critics, the media moghuls and the socialites all gave him the silent treatment as religious  intolerance, obscurantism, and Islamic fundamentalism started spreading through Pakistani society, abetted by General Zia ul Haq's state drums. Many poets and writers suffered in these black days (Adeem Hashmi is another example).

        Obaidullah Aleem visited England numerous times, first in 1991, and later in 1993, 1994, 1996 and in 1997. In March, 1998  he suffered a severe heart attack while he was in Punjab province, Pakistan and was treated in Fazl e Omar Hospital for a few days. He returned to his residence at House No.4, Nazimabad, Karachi in comparatively good health. Aleem died from heart failure, following a second heart attack in 1998.

(Biographical sketch courtesy of Wikipedia)