Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi

As many literary critics have observed over the years, humour can be one of the most effective forms of expression, criticism and the description of character. Renowned humourist Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi, who passed away in Karachi on Wednesday after a long illness at the age of 95, had demonstrated how humour could best be used for all these purposes. His five books, the first of them Chiragh Talay, which was published in the 1960s, established him as writer able to use wit with sophistication and without resorting to the crudeness that has often been substituted for humour. In recent years, there have been few humourists of real calibre writing in the Urdu language. Literary figures point out that Yusufi will be almost impossible to replace. The writer had been born in Rajasthan in 1921 and completed his LLB from Aligarh University. He migrated to Karachi after Partition and worked as a banker.

Yusufi’s services were recognised by the Government of Pakistan with the Sitara-e-Imtiaz and Hilal-e-Imtiaz awards bestowed upon him. However, it is sad that in a time when we perhaps need humour most of all in our lives, both as a relief from ongoing events and as a means to better understand them, we are struggling to produce writers in Urdu who can take the place of personalities who represented an entire era. There is a need in our country – beyond awarding writers and poets who stand out – to develop literature and promote it more widely. Sadly this has not happened. At literary conferences and other events, scholars have repeatedly pointed out that the Urdu language needs to be developed further so that great pieces of writing can continue to emerge. Every genre of writing is of course important. But the satire and wit of Mushtaq Yusufi is almost unmatchable. It will take a long time for work of the same quality to be produced in our country unless there is greater support for writers and all men and women of letters. The institutions that already exist to promote writing and literature need more support while the standards of Urdu teaching at our institutions of higher learning also need to be pushed up to encourage talent to come forward and leave with us books that can be read over and over again.