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TILOK CHAND MEHROOM
(1885-1966) |
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Tilok Chand Mehroom was born in 1885 in a village of Mianwali district, West Punjab (now Pakistan). After doing his B.A. he joined, in 1908, the Mission High School at Dera Ismail Khan as a teacher in English. In 1932 he became the headmaster of Cantonment Board Middle school, from where he retired in 1943. After the partition of India, Mehroom came to Delhi where he spent the rest of his life. He had to suffer a number of shocks in his personal life, the greatest being the death of his young wife, a bare five years after her marriage. The sorrow of this tragic event sank deep into his heart and coloured his mind and art. His poem, "Ashk-e-Hasrat", written when his wife was on her death-bed, shows the intensity of the poet's affection for his wife, and the sorrow of losing her. This poem is a part of the collection called Toofan-e-Ghum, which contains a series of sad poems such as, "Na-paidaar Rishte", and "Soz-e-Dil", all reflecting his disenchantment with the ephemerality of life and instability of relationships. His poetic name, "Mehroom", appropriately expresses the general sense of deprivation that pervades his mind and art. Even in the midst of spring, he can find a cause for grief.
Mehroom's first major publication, Ganj-e-Maani, contains a rich variety of 175 nazms, besides rubaies, qasidas, sehras, and nohas (elegies). A persistent note of sadness, and a pronounced didactic strain are the two chief characteristics of his work. He has been called the poet and painter of sorrow, "musawar-e-ghum". In one of his rubaies Akbar allahabadi has thus summed up his poetic and human qualities:
The poetry of Mehroom deserves full praise,
It contains deep thoughts in perfect word and phrase,
Beneficent is its content, instructive is its mode,
No wonder, he's admired all over the place.
Appropriateness of language, grace of style and nobility of thought are the chief marks of Mehroom's poetry.
The poem, "Nur Jahan ka Mazaar", is a fine specimen of Mehroom's descriptive skill and pensive frame of mind, seeking inspiration in neglected graves, mouldering mansions, twilight shades, and black bats, symbols all of death and decay. He has also written poems on religious topics, such as "Rawan ka Matam" and "Sita ki Faryaad", but in this domain he is surpassed by Chakbast whose "Scene from Ramayana" sounds more convincing and more powerful. His elegies on the death of Chakbast and Saroor again point to a sensitive heart, easily moved by the spectacle of death.
His famous works include: Ganj-e-Maani, Rubaiyat-e-Mehroom, Karwan-e-Watan, Nairang-e-Maani, Shola Nawa, and
Aks-e-Jameel.
Mehroom died on 6th January, 1996. Jagan Nath Azad, the famous poet and scholar of Urdu, is his son and poetic heir.
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