Poetry
There were no libraries in the schools of North West Frontier Province when Mehroom was growing up. With no formal training or instruction and very limited access to literary works, it is remarkable that he developed a love of poetry and achieved acclaim as a poet himself. He found, read eagerly and was inspired by poetry collections of Mirza Ghalib & Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq during his 4 years in Bannu. He wrote simple couplets whilst still at primary school, but it was in Bannu that he started taking his writing seriously. He composed a nazm entitled Khidmat-e-Validain when he was about 12/13 years old. It earned him the praise not only from the Divisional Inspector of Schools but also from the Director of Education.
By the time he finished his studies at Diamond Jubilee School (Bannu), his poems were being published in Makhzan (Lahore) and Zamana (Kanpur). Once he moved to Rawalpindi, he became a frequent invitee to the annual mushairas organised by Khwaja Abdul Raheem in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad). Regulars to these mushairas included Jigar Moradabadi & Hafeez Jullundhri among others.
After the death of his beloved wife, Mehroom wrote poems reflecting his disenchantment with the ephemerality of life and the instability of relationships. The most famous of these is Ashk-e-Hasrat (part of his collection entitled Toofan-e-Gham).
Mehroom's first major publication was Ganj-e-Ma'ani which contained a rich variety of 175 nazms as well as many rubais, qasidas, sehras, and nohas. Poets & literary critics like Niaz Fatehpuri, Muhammad Iqbal, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Kaifi Azmi, Josh Malsiani & Ejaz Hussain have admired his poetry.
Read more about this topic: Tilok Chand Mehroom
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A really great poet is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
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—Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944)
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—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)