How one reads a piece of poetry or prose is vital to its understanding and one needs to get trained to convey fully the meanings of literary writings, two iconic literary figures of our age – Zehra Nigah and Zia Mohyeddin – were of the view at a well-attended session of the LLF on ‘Adaygi’ (rendition).Audience were all ears when Zia Mohyeddin recited NM Rashid’s ‘Guman Ka Mumkin’ in his unique style while the only distraction was the voices one could hear at an entrance to the Hall-II of the Alhmra.
Veteran poet Zehra Nigah observed that Zia Mohyeddin’s training as an actor, especially of the stage, helped him a lot in his masterly renditions of Urdu prose and poetry.
“Singers sing from their throat, while an actor has to use his breath while delivering his or her dialogues,” explained Zia.
He candidly recalled his experience as an actor in a local film where he found the weight of the heroine a bit more than what he could ‘digest’ but was, instead, advised by the director to gain some stones as the female lead was quite ‘fit’ for the story.
Returning to the art of rendition, Zia Mohyeddin said: “There are no new words, poets make them sound new.”
He quoted from Faiz to make his point. He said reading out a piece of literature without proper stresses and inflection made it boring and sometimes ‘sleep inducing’.
“A verse should be handled delicately; one should not maul a verse like some qawwals do,” he said.
While asking Zia to render Rashid’s famous poem ‘Hasan Koozagar’, Zehra Nigah said his rendition “opens all the doors to a poem.”
Zia Mohyeddin said Zehra Nigah rarely wrote prose but when she did she wrote it well. He read out a piece — Jigar Sahib – that Zehra wrote on Jigar Muradabadi.
Zehra Nigah summed up the sitting with a verse that aptly described it —
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