Ibn-e-Inshaਇਬਨ-ਏ-ਇਨਸ਼ਾ

Ibn-e-Insha (1927-1978) was an Urdu poet, humourist, travel writer and newspaper columnist born in Phillaur, in Jalandhar district of Punjab. His real name was Sher Muhammad Khan. He is remembered for the ghazal Insha Ji Uttho Ab Kooch Karo, for travelogues such as Awara Gard Ki Diary, and for Urdu Ki Aakhri Kitab, a humour classic that made him one of Urdu's most loved writers.

Early life in Phillaur

Sher Muhammad Khan was born on 15 June 1927 in Phillaur, then a town of Phillaur tehsil in Jalandhar district of British India. Phillaur stood on the north bank of the Sutlej and on the Grand Trunk Road, a market town with a Mughal sarai that Maharaja Ranjit Singh had rebuilt as a fort in 1809. His father hailed from Rajasthan. Little is recorded about Insha's school years in Phillaur, but the town, its river and its road stayed with him: the boy from a small Doaba town grew into a writer who spent his life travelling and writing about the places he passed through.

Education and the move to Pakistan

Insha took his B.A. degree from Punjab University in 1946, the year before Partition. After Partition he moved to Pakistan, and in 1953 he completed an M.A. at the University of Karachi. In the late 1940s, while still a young man in Lahore, he lived for a short period with the film poet Sahir Ludhianvi, and he was active in the Progressive Writers Movement. His teachers included Habibullah Ghazenfar Amrohvi and Ghulam Mustafa Khan, scholars who shaped his ear for classical Urdu and for the earthy, spoken language that later marked his own verse.

For his living he worked in government service, with Radio Pakistan, the Ministry of Culture and the National Book Centre of Pakistan. He also served with the United Nations for a time, and that work carried him across the world: his journeys took him to Japan, the Philippines, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, France, Britain and the United States. Almost every journey came back as writing, and travel became the second great subject of his work after poetry itself.

Why is Ibn-e-Insha still read today?

Insha is still read because his writing is simple to enter and hard to forget. His poetry uses plain, spoken words and a diction that recalls the older masters, including Amir Khusro, yet it sounds like ordinary conversation, and his humour never turns bitter. Fellow writer Anwar Maqsood called him his hero and said writers learned writing by reading his books. Generations of young Urdu poets have taken his ghazals and his travel prose as a model, and his best known lines are still sung, quoted and shared across India and Pakistan.

Major works: poetry, humour and travel writing

His poetry collections include Chand Nagar, Is Basti Ke Ik Kooche Mein and Dil-e-Wehshi, along with Billo Ka Basta, a book of rhymes for children. His most famous ghazal, Insha Ji Uttho Ab Kooch Karo, was first popularised by the classical singer Amanat Ali Khan in 1974, in a Radio Pakistan Lahore production with music by Khalil Ahmed. Other poems of his became famous through singers: Kal Chaudhvin Ki Raat Thi was sung by Jagjit Singh and became widely popular in the 1980s, Yeh Baatein Jhooti Baatein Hain was sung by Ghulam Ali, and Sab Maya Hai was sung by Attaullah Khan Esakhelvi at Coke Studio Pakistan in 2017.

His travelogues are Awara Gard Ki Diary, Dunya Gol Hai, Ibn Battuta Kay Taqub Mein (1974), Chaltay Ho To Cheen Ko Chaliye (1960) and Nagri Nagri Phira Musafar. The title Awara Gard Ki Diary means the diary of a wanderer, and it fits: the books mix observation, history and jokes, and they read like letters from a friend who has just come home. In 1960 he also translated a collection of Chinese poems into Urdu, a sign of how far his reading and his travelling ranged.

As a humourist he is often counted among the best Urdu has produced. Urdu Ki Aakhri Kitab (1971), whose title means the last book of Urdu, is a set of short comic essays that readers still quote, and his other humour books include Khumar-e-Gandum, Aap Se Kya Parda and Khat Insha Jee Kay, a collection of his letters. He was also a working columnist: he began writing a column in the daily Imrooz in Karachi in 1960, joined the daily Anjaam in 1965, and moved to the daily Jang in 1966, writing there until his death.

Honours and later life

Insha spent the remainder of his life in Karachi, writing, travelling and working in the cultural institutions he had served for years. In 1978 he was awarded the Pride of Performance Award by the President of Pakistan. He died of Hodgkin's Lymphoma on 11 January 1978 in London, where he had gone for treatment, at the age of 50, and he was buried in Karachi. His son Roomi Insha became a Pakistani filmmaker and died on 16 October 2017.

Legacy

Insha's legacy rests on two things that rarely sit together: poetry that singers still choose to perform, and prose that readers pick up for pleasure. His ghazals live on through the voices of Amanat Ali Khan, Jagjit Singh and Ghulam Ali, his travelogues are still read as an introduction to a world that has changed greatly since he wrote them, and his humour set a standard that later Urdu columnists measured themselves against. The playwright Bano Qudsia said of him that nobody can write or speak like Ibn-e-Insha, and that his absence left a gap in the literary world. For Phillaur, the small Sutlej town where he was born, he remains the most famous son of its streets: the town's own record lists him among its notable people, and his name still ties a Doaba town to the wider world of Urdu letters.