Having born in a family of literary personalities, especially of Urdu and English literature, I had a good exposure of literature since my childhood days. I immensely enjoyed remembering and reciting poems from the Urdu, Hindi, and English books available in the house in abundance. By the time I passed my high school, I had finished reading many famous works in Urdu, Hindi, and English. Consequently, I had developed a style of reciting poems and became very apt in using the right kind of couplets at the right time. This made me popular among my peers, family members and acquaintances. When I entered the first year of my college, I left a good impression of my literary sensibility on my friends and teachers. At this point of time, my popularity enticed me to doctor some famous poems, and I even ascribed many less known poems of others (after some doctoring) to my own pseudonym (which I changed many a times, from 'Raj', to 'Saagar', to 'Saahil' to Jawaid 'Saahir' )!!
This newly developed ability to operate on the poems of others (plus severe admonitions from the elders of my family who wanted me to immediately stop doctoring the poetryof others), encouraged me to write on my own. Thus, started my year long stint (1997-1998) in what is called 'tukbandi' (a rather simple and ordinary kind of poetry writing in which one simply looks for the rhyming words and weaves her/his thoughts around the rhyming scheme) in Urdu poetry. My first such poem was a patriotic one (that I had woven around the music of the then famous song ''Are re are yeh kya hua, maine na ye jaana....'' from SRK's DTPH). I had secretly placed this first poem of mine on the writing-table of my Nanajaan (my maternal grandpa, Prof. Abdul Mannan 'Adil'-- a published a renowned poet of the time) for his suggestions; and kept visiting his room every evening (in his absence) until (after 4-6 days) he had a look on my scribble and wrote a few words of suggestions and a little correction). Thus, I made my grandpa my Ustaad and started placing more and more of my tukbandi style scribbles on his writing-table. Sooner, I had to stop doing so because he did not get much time for looking at my poems (which remained there for weeks and months) due to his falling health. In the August of 1998, my Nanajaan left this world for his heavenly abode, and I lost my Ustaad! His sudden demise shattered my whole existence and the poet within me was woken up! I wrote a very touching, word-wise and mature kind of poem on his demise. This was very much appreciated by the elders of my family as well as the poet friends of the family. Thus I wrote my first original poem. Thereafter, I stopped showing my poems to anybody else (as my real Ustaad was no more there) and thus 'self doubt' and 'self-criticism' became my Ustaads in poetry writing. Now I wrote only when there was an inspiration for writing something, and made my first tryst with original writing.
I have had a long spell of original poetry writing in Urdu (and later in English) for eight long years (since 1999 to 2007), a period in which I wrote more than 150 poems (of all sorts and forms) in Urdu and around 10 poems in English. Many of my poems (in Urdu and English) got published (in local Urdu newspapers, University magazines of Aligarh and Jamia, and many of them I recited in local Mushayaras). This period has also witnessed the rejection of some of my poems (as I had sent them for publication in reputed journals of Urdu whose criteria my poems did not fulfill). I had also ventured at translating some of my favorite poems (from Hindi/Urdu to English and vice versa) during this period.
The year 2008 brought a kind of disenchantment from poetry and I almost ceased writing it as I found little time and inclination to write poems. But my attraction to poetry has not diminished and I still enjoy writing a few lines whenever I feel like doing so. In the year 2009, some of my friends and acquaintances suggested that I should start a blog on my poetry. It took me 2 years to try out their suggestion and this blog- 'Saahiri' (The Spell) was born. The blog's name derives from my takhallus (pen name)--Jawaid "Saahir'' which literally means 'immortal magician' (Jawaid = immortal; Saahir = magician).
I have started this blog with two purposes in mind. First, to provide a collection of some of the beautiful gems of Urdu, English and Hindi poetry to the visitors of this blog; and second, to present some of my scribbles and musings before the connoisseurs of poetry for discovering the worth of my work. I encourage the visitors to post their valuable comments on my own literary works (punched with my pen name Jawaid "Saahir''). They are also encouraged to share their literary works with the visitors of this blog. Happy reading to all!!!
-- Jawaid 'Saahir'
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