“Dekh ākar kūcha-e chāk girebāñ kī bahār
(Excerpted from Lakhnaū kī Pāñch Rāteñ)
Sardar Jafri
Introduced & translated by
Arif Ansari
DOI:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23585172
Abstract: The Progressive Writers’ Movement attracted many young poets. They received a lot of attention when, in December of 1941, a mushaira of novice poets was organized at the All-India Radio’s Lucknow station by its Station Director, Somnath Chib. The poetic symposium was presided by the famous revolutionary poet Josh Malihabadi, and the poets who took part included Asral-ul Haq Majaz, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Moin Ahsan Jazbi, Makhdoom Muhiuddin, and Ali Sardar Jafri. As Sardar Jafri puts it, “They are not great yet, but legends have started being written about them.” In the audience were the crème de la crème of Lucknow’s literati, such as Sajjad Zaheer, his wife Razia, Maya Sarkar, D P Mukerji, Ahmed Ali, Gauhar Sultan, Hayatullah Ansari, Anwar Jamal Kidwai, and Sibte Hassan.
This essay is an English translation of the account of this poetic symposium, and the ‘after-party’ that took place at the home of Sardar Jafri that he shared with Majaz and Sibte Hassan. The original essay is from Sardar Jafri’s collection of Urdu essays titled Lakhnaū kī Pāñch Rāteñ.
Arif Ansari was born in Lucknow and grew up in Aligarh, where he attended Our Lady of Fatima Secondary School and the Aligarh Muslim University. He earned his MS and PhD in electrical engineering from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. A wireless telecommunications technologist by training and profession, he has translated several books of fiction and nonfiction from Urdu to English. He is a winner of the 2025 Jawad Memorial Prize for Urdu-English Translation.
Email: arif.rf.ansari@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-8849-4374
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
