The word was made flesh

By - S. Jauhar Mehdi Naqvi
	Mir Ahmad Navaid has dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the finest poet of our era, full of grace and truth. Yes, The words he pens down come from the fullness of his heart,certainly, they are carrying with them some perfume,some fragrance of his inner space and if you are silent, the word becomes inessential and the fragrance that it is carrying becomes essential. His poetry is nothing but the overflowing of the flood that he has received into his inner most being. These couplets are not only those of a poet, but those of a mystic- one who knows,knows by living it, one who has tasted God, who is drunk with God.  Mir Ahmad Navaid displayed great originality or depth of feeling. He is simply an extraordinary gifted poet, a perfect versifier, a wondrous lyrist, endowed with a grace, ease and power of expression. Mir Ahmad Navaid imbibes his feelings from the poisoned lips of life. His intelligence is born in his heart hence there is freshness,his words are not borrowed, they blossom in the garden of his heart. His intellect,emotions and intuition are such intertwined that reader is swept away by the impeccable beauty of his eloquence. When the poet comes to talking about his spiritual explosion, he uses metaphors and similies. I am reminded of Rubaiyat Omar khayyam,it is misunderstood in its spirit.The Rubaiyyat talks of wine and women and khayyam talks of the women, he is talking about God and the wine is that which happens between the lover and the beloved,it has nothing to do with grapes, The alchemy which happens between the seeker and the sought, between the worshipper and his god- that is wine. let me echo Ahmad Navaid here. i Ahmad Navaid is a rare flower. He hasn't lost his contact with his innocence. One can easily feel the ardour of his simple love through his words. the man inside him doesn't seem to have lost his paradise. He is filled with awe and wonders about the mysteriousness of this world. He looks at the world with empty eyes of a child. Mir Ahmad Navaid keeps his intellect alive with his doubt. he denies all the prejudices of his age and doesn't accept the world as it is with its absurd moralities,its conventions and institutions and social classes. He has the completest independence of mind. He utterly refuses to accept established opinions just because they are established. he probes into the right and wrongs of things. Belief is blindness; thinking is finding one's own eyes, By being blinded with belief, the men are deprived of their eyes forever. Actually, there is no greater sin than killing the capacity to think. Mir Ahmad Navaid inspires his readers to discover his inner light and think afresh about his values. He lays especial emphasis on reasoning so that one can look for new ways of life. For him, Doubt is the beginning, Doubt is the search, trust is the achievement so whosoever begins with doubt , sometime or other does reach trust. Unless you are in a deep communion with the master, everything else that goes on in the name of spirituality is nothing  but spiritual entertainment. In your mosques, in your synagogues. what goes on is simply entertainment. People go to mosque for their whole lives and nothing happens to them. Once a man asked Jesus Christ. What is prayer? Can you teach prayer to me? Jesus replied," It can never be taught, it can only be caught." This is how things are developing in churches,in temples everywhere, there is nobody there to share his being, to share his light, to share his growth. All these rabbis and pundits and the mullahs are people just as drowned in darkness and unconscious as one possibly can be. Mir Ahmad Navaid believes, the future belongs to the creative man. A very stupid idea has prevailed in the world, that only saints are religious, Infact, almost 99.9 percent of saints are not religious. The real religious people will be found in creative dimensions- dancers,poets, painters, singers, musicians,sculptors. So sing without any hesitation, without being worried that you will be thought crazy, Unless a singer is thought by the world to be insane, he is not a singer at all. If a dancer is not forced into a mad house, the world has not given the certificate. All geniuses are bound to be thought of by the world in this way, "something has gone wrong with these poor people." Vincent Van Gogh, one of the dutch painters, couldn't sell a single  painting in his whole life. Now only two hundred paintings have survived  out of thousands that he painted because nobody could take care of them. The man himself was forced into a mad asylum when he was only thirty two. And he was forced because of his paintings- he was not violent,  he wasn't doing anything to anybody but anybody who looked at his paintings  was absolutely sure this man was mad and unreliable. He should be put in a mad house. Every week, his brother used to give him enough money to last for ten days and he was fasting three days in a week and eating four days because that was the only way to purchase the canvas and colors and brushes to paint. Painting was more important than life. He committed suicide at the age of thirty three. Just after his release from the mad house, he painted only one painting, which they had prevented him painting in the mad house. He wanted to paint the sun. It took him one year. he lost his eyes. the burning sun, and the whole day long, he would be watching  all the colors, from the sunrise till the sunset. He wanted the painting to contain everything about the sun, the whole biography of the sun. Everybody who was sympathetic to him told him, "this is too much, just studying it one day is enough;it is the same sun. Van Gogh said, "You don't know, it is never the same sunrise twice, never seen the same sunset again. When the painting was complete, he wrote a small letter to his brother:" I am not committing the suicide out of despair- because I have done whatever I wanted to do in spite of the whole world condemning me, I am the most successful person in the whole world, I am immensely joyful but this was my last wish, to paint the whole biography of the sun, now there is no need to live. I was living to paint; painting was my life, not breathing and he shot himself dead. Every creative artist  has to understand this: the moment people start thinking about him that he is a little bit off centre, he should rejoice that he has crossed the boundary of the mundane and the mediocre, now he has grown the wings. Socrate says, I would rather be an unsatisfied socrate than a satisfied pig. This flame of discontent glows in mir Ahmad Navaid being, he is aflame with the desire to actualize his potential therefore on the altar of poetry,  he has sacrificed everything, his health, his relationships nevertheless he doesn't grow loathsome but sometimes he falls into the abyss of dejection. Blessed are those who have met him for in his presence,the formless descends and becomes a presence and through him one can have a look at the farthest star,through him, you can have a feeling of God himself, through his word, silence speaks, and through his eyes, the infinite peeks at you. He is vehicle, a bamboo flute on the lips of infinite. If you allow his vibe to reach you, you will move into the same wavelength in which he lives. This is a discerning utterance, no flippant jest.( koran ) Ahmad Navaid sayings are not moral maxims. These sayings are more concerned with inner transformation. In addition, they unfold another aspect of his being. They are so penetrating and possess great insight about our living. Ahmad Navaid has given all the keys possible to enter into the inner mysteries. He has said everything that can be said. He is, in a way, a full stop. His book sada e navaid is to be studied again and again; only then slowly it seeps through you. It starts touching you, it becomes alive then it is no longer a book but a person. As Imam Ali has influenced almost every great poet of urdu, persian, arabic and even punjabi tradition so has he taken hold of Mir Ahmad Navaid poetic vision. In manqabat, he holds on to his peculiar style which was imitated even by his contemporary poets.His love for Imam Ali shines all through his religious poetry. He has seen him through his own insight therefore the reader encounters so many novel and new ideas and feels enriched in his soul. he himself says. NOHA is another genre where Ahmad Navaid manifests the delicacy of his fine poetry. These nohas pass through his innermost feelings. his words don't lose the touch with reality. The agony and sufferings of Imam Hussain and his family seem to have destroyed the whole phenomenon of time and space in his poetry and can be felt poignantly. In this aspect, he surpasses every other poet. As time goes by,Mir Ahmad Navaid fame will not know any boundary. Just as a stone is thrown into a silent lake and then ripples  arise and they go on and on,pushes another, to the very boundaries of the lake.