Tehzeeb Haafi, aged 26, started writing poetry seriously about 11 years ago. Initially he explored the genre of nazm but then soon started to express himself in ghazals and has remained faithful to that genre. He has 4,409 friends on his Facebook account at the last count. Haafi, whose real name is Tehzeeb-ul-Hasan, writes mainly romantic verses replete with imageries of darya, parinday, bagh and samandar. Currently pursuing his MPhil degree in Urdu from Oriental College in Lahore, his poetry voices the torment of a spurned lover using everyday language:
Main us ko har roz bas yahi ek jhoot sunnay ko phone karta
“Suno yahan koi masla hai tumhari awaz kat rahi hai”
I would call her up every day just to hear that one lie of hers
“Listen, there is some disturbance in the line, your voice is breaking”
“I don’t like to philosophise in my poetry,” says Haafi, who also writes in Saraiki. When Haafi started writing poetry, he took the traditional route. He sent his poems to Urdu digests and prestigious literary magazines, which, if he was lucky, would sometimes publish them. “But the general public’s accessibility is limited to literary magazines,” he points out.
And he felt frustrated in not reaching out to more people. The advent of Facebook became a game-changer for him. He started to post poetry about four years ago and reached out to large number of readers. His devoted fans started to compile some of his best verses and shared them. Some designed his couplets in artful typography eliciting several hundred likes.
Guzar na jaye samaat
Ke sard khanoun se
Yeh bazgasht, jo chipki
Hui hai kanoun se
Khara naheen tha magar
Aisa raigaan bhi na tha
Woh sikka dhoondh ke laaein
Toh kin khazanoun se
(May the hearing of an echo never pass by
from cold chambers
stuck to the ears
It wasn’t genuine
But it also wasn’t quite useless
From which treasures shall we find
Such a coin)
Chuf's Iner 