Apathy reigns where literature ruled

Darpan Singh
Gaungauli (Ghazipur), April 27
As one enters Gangauli, a nondescript hamlet, situated on Kasimabad-Mohammadabad road, some 25 km from Ghazipur, there is hardly anything that would suggest that the village is the birthplace of Dr Rahi Masoom Reza, one of the finest writers the country has ever produced. About half the population in the village is muslim (mostly Sunnis) and almost all of them are weavers.
Reza’s house in the ‘dakkhin patti’ of the village collapsed long time back and it has now lost its existence. Both his Mardana and Janana imambadas, which is under the care of his distant relative, Saiyad Abdur Hussain, are also on the verge of collapse and being used for community purposes. The ‘nimbars’ in his house on which clerics would recite religious books during the ‘mazlis’, is lying abandoned. The ‘palki’, then used by women for visiting the ‘uttar patti’ and supposed to be the ‘aakhri nishani’ of his family has been left to the mercy of weather.
Manzar Ahmad (65), a villager, said, “Reza was born here 1n 1927 in a zamindar family of Shiya Muslims and studied at the Gangauli primary school. His father Saiyad Bashir Hussain Sahab Aabdi was a leading lawyer of Ghazipur.” He said the family later shifted to Ghajipur and stayed at Bashir Manzeel located in Barbarahna. Reza did his high school from there. His two sisters still stay in the house there.
According to him, he started taking interest in ‘shayari’ and writing soon after doing his high school. After some family problems, he went to the AMU where he took a PhD. A brilliant student of Urdu, Hindi and Sanskrit, Dr Reza subsequently taught at the AMU and was a proponent of Urdu in the Devanagari script. He later moved to Bombay and became a successful screenplay writer and wrote the screenplays and dialogues for over 300 films including B R Chopra's television series, Mahabharat.
Another villager, who claimed to be his contemporary, attributed the poor condition of their ancestral house in the village to the apathy shown by Reza’s family. He said, “Reza’s elder brother Munis was once the VC of Delhi University, while his younger brother Menhadi was HoD at the AMU. Bashir’s fourth son Ahmad, who died in US some three months back, was a top officer with the RBI. However, they never tried to renovate their ancestral house for preserving the fading memory.” He said that Reza last visited the village in 1970 during Muharram and never returned again till he died in 1992 in Bombay . According to him, during partition, several villagers went to East Pakistan and, after the creation of Bangladesh , they finally moved to Pakistan . He said, “They have good businesses there in cities like Lahore and Karachi .”
Incidentally, several works of Reza vividly depicts the agony and turmoil of the consequences of partition, and its effect on the Hindu-Muslim relationship in the Indian subcntinent. His novel ‘Aadha Gaon’, set in his village Gangauli and published in 1966, unfolds during the latter years of the Raj and the first decade of Independence and portrays the rival halves of a zamindar family, their loves, fights and litigations. It attacks the creation of Pakistan . His another work Neem Ka Ped portrays the tension between the landed aristocracy and their serfs. His most popular and famous Gjazal is Hum to hain pardes me, Des me nikla hoga chand.
A youth of the village, Danish Hussain, begged to differ with Reza’s writing in Aadha Gaaon. He said, “He has described several instances where people from the ‘uttar’ and ‘dakkhin’ patti resorted to violence and clashed with each other quite frequently which is not true.” He further said, “No one form his family ever visits the village. Had they tried, a lot of things could have been preserved. There is no effort to mke the new generation aware of Reza’s association with the village.” Till recently, there was nothing in the village which could remind the visitors of Reza. However, this is the story thus far. Now the script is getting restless to change.
Shadab Fatima, who enjoys the status of an state minister and contesting Ghazipur sadar seat on SP ticket, is getting roads and bridges built in his name. Fatima, incidentally, happens to be a distant relative of Reza and locals call her his granddaughter. She has also got a 100-bed hospital, a library and a stadium sanctioned which would be constructed in his name. Her son Kashif Abbas, while talking to the HT, said, “We are proud of his (Reza’s) association with the village and doing a lot make the local people aware of the same but his family hardly contributed anything to the village.”