The Doon library and Research Centre organised a reading session of the works of famous Urdu poet Akhter-ul-Iman on Monday. The session began with a brief movie clip from the film Waqt where the poet himself, as a college professor, was reading his poem.
Addressing the gathering on the occasion, DlRC research associate Manoj Panjani said that Iman was the finest exponent of the Azad Nazm form of Urdu poetry. When he started writing critics would ridicule him by saying that he did not know the difference between prose and poetry. Panjani said that in 1956, Maulana Azad, as the president of the Sahitya Akademi, found fault with his name and said that his name did not make any grammatical sense. Somebody who does not know how to write his own name cannot be called a good poet, Azad had said then. In 1962, Iman won the Sahitya Akademy award for his collection Yaadein. His most famous Nazm is Ek ladka which talks about the compromises a person has to make in order to survive in this world. Apart from being a poet, he was also a famous dialogue writer in the Hindi film industry. His dialogues from films like Kanoon, Waqt and Hamraaz were as popular as the songs of these movies. He was also the dialogue writer for Kanoon — the first songless film made in India. He wrote the dialogues of Sunil Dutt’s Yaadein, which had only one character appearing on screen. He was also the winner of the Filmfare award for dialogue writing twice -- for Dharamputra and for Waqt. The line which made Rajkumar a cult figure in the cinema — Jinke ghar shishe ke hon wo dusro pe patthar nahi faika karte, was also written by Iman. He had also visited Dehradun to meet MN Roy at his Mohini Road residence in the 1950s. He used to be present during film shootings also. In that connection, he visited Nainital for the shooting of Gumrah in 1963 and Dakpatthar in Dehradun for the shooting of Aadmi Aur Insaan in 1969 which had a famous dialogue regarding corruption in the society — boliya lag rahi hain, iman bik rahe hain, hamara Samaj ek nilam ghar hai.
DlRC director Dr BK Joshi, advisor Rajen Brijnath, research associate CS Tiwari and young members of the library were among those present on the occasion.