Bhopal, May 28 (PTI) Back in the day when Bashir Badr was a student at the Aligarh Muslim University, he failed a viva because the examiner disagreed with his interpretation of a popular couplet — as it turned out, it was Badr’s very own writing.
The legendary Urdu poet died here today at the age of 91, leaving behind a large body of work, poems that have become part of everyday life and memories aplenty. One of those vignettes is Badr’s encounter with an examiner who failed to recognise that the student in front of him was the poet himself.
The young Badr had enrolled for higher studies in Modern Urdu Ghazal and Literature, recalled his son Tayeb Badr.
The professor, Tayeb remembered his father as saying, asked Badr to explain the deeper meaning behind a couplet — “Ab hum milenge toh kayi log bichad jayenge, Intezar aur karo mera agle janam ka (If we meet now, many will be torn apart, Wait a little longer, wait for me until our next birth).” “Abba jee explained the couplet to the examiner during the viva without letting him know that he was the author of the couplet… But to his utter surprise, the examiner completely disagreed with his explanation,” Tayeb told PTI.
Badr failed the exam, but succeeded in becoming one of the most influential and oft quoted Urdu poets in contemporary India.
The couplet was considered revolutionary as Badr had used next life (“agle janam”) to convey unrequited love. This went against conventional Islamic belief that after life there is ‘aakhirat’ (the day of judgment). PTI SKL MIN MIN MIN MIN
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