Down Melody Lane..::..Article on Films, Personalities, Music Reviews and More..

Dr. Rahi Masoom Reza was the last of the travelers; he was the last of the master Urdu writers who journeyed from literature of films or from a literary to a popular culture.

Clearly, there is no dearth of Urdu writers today. But cinema has lost its allure, or that infinite power which used to draw writers of eminence to its embrace.

Rahi Masoom Reza was at ease, with both prose and poetry. But poetry he flirted with; with prose ha had a more durable relationship. He wrote novels, articles and essays. For years, he wrote films reviews for the Urdu magazine, Shama. Satire and humor were not mere ingredients he resorted to in his writings. His novel, Topi Shukla, with its inherent comedy, bears eloquent testimony to this.

He relished the art of argument; he loved to lock homes, initiate discussion and spark debates. He appeared to derive the same pleasure from this as the Nawabs of yore derived pleasure from court cases. A trip to law courts depresses all of us, but for the Nawabs the ritual was amusing and even thrilling. The same form of sensation was evident in the persona of Rahi Masoom Reza when he participated in the ritual of seminars. When he held forth at any seminar, it was often in Urdu and the way he used the language would be magisterial. On the occasions, he spoke in English, his language had the kind of crispness and precision we associate with our venerable school teachers.

But then he was always a teacher at his heart and practice. A lecturer at Aligarh University, the scholarly demeanor was ingrained within him. This significant phase of his life never left him and we could always detect the scholar in him, both in his behaviour and his writing. His diction was quintessentially Aligarhi. It took him just a fraction of moment to move from one thought to another; taking about the same amount of time he would to pop a 'paan', a favourite habit of his, into his mouth.

Rahi Masoom Reza was an impressive orator. That he had an endless repertoire of dialogue at his command, was evident from the richness of the lines he penned for films. Can anyone of us forget his dialogue in Mili and Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki?
His crowning glory was the TV serial Mahabharata. In Fact, his authoritative Hindi dialogue for the serial was a revelation. Incidentally, one is told that his hand writing was as beautiful as the depth and the clarity of his words. Through his writing he asserted that even in this day and age, spoken Hindi can be pithy and poignant. Aryaputra; Pitashri; Bhimnoj; Jyeshta Bhrata were some of the splendid appellations which were revived and given a new thrust by him. Perhaps these have not been employed before in any popular medium of expression. Indeed, if Aryans did address themselves like this, Rahi Masoom Reza made that possibility entirely credible.

He always laid great stress on the chastity of the language, both in the manner it is written and spoken. He experimented with the language though, took liberties with it and devised his own words and phrases. However, if someone else dared to do this he would be miffed, even outraged. He would thunder, "What do you know about language? Have you spent time researching it? Have you studied it at all?" If one told him that you were a writer too, and therefore had regard for language, he would retort, "But what on earth do you write? Do you think you are a creative writer? What gives you the idea that you are creative?"

One day, he came to my house to break a roza. I was not surprised when he put the question to me, "What do you mean by the lyric Naam gum jaayega? The correct way to write it is Naam gum ho jaayega." He said that I'd dropped 'ho' only for the convenience of the song's metre." If I had told him, "But you take liberties with language, too," he would have snapped, "But I have the right to, I'm a professor, you are not. I have devoted my life to the language but you haven't."

Rahi Masoom Reza was bonded to the Urdu language. His magnificent obsession was to create awareness for the need to preserve the language. This he felt could be done if Urdu was written in the Devnagari script. Earlier, the same opinion had been advanced by Ali Sardar Jafri and had raised the hackles of the Urdu purists. When Rahi Masoom Reza reiterated the need for the Devnagari script, the purists were provoked once again. They would have liked to haul him over the coals. But he stuck to his belief, to his conviction and said of his detractors, "They have a very limited view of life itself. It they had an iota of foresight, they would not raise such objections."

He felt that those who did not seek to preserve the scent, the fragrance of Urdu, did not know the immense force and grandeur of the language. He would say, "Whatever I want to convey, I convey through the medium of popular cinema. I do this by using both Urdu and Hindi. For me, that is the real language."
Today, there can be no more Rahi Masoom Rezas. There are no more travelers, spurred by a sense of daring and adventure. No one wants to leave the safe and steady confines of their homes any more; no one wants to leave literature for the baffling, alien world of cinema.
With him a great journey has ended.