'Sindh still facing conditions reflected in Ayaz's poetry'.

HYDERABAD -- Playwright and drama writer Noorul Huda Shah has said she felt that 'deprivation' or 'weakness' is there in Shaikh Ayaz even after contributing to a treasure trove of poetry.

She said Ayaz had been confined to a cage of so-called nationalism with his wings clipped, adding that Sindh still experienced those conditions Ayaz had reflected in his poetry then.

She was speaking at the last session of five-day Ayaz Melo, which concluded in Khanabadosh writers' cafe on Wednesday.

Her session's moderator Amar Sindhu asked her to comment on the author-reader relationship especially when reader was unaware of the writer's confrontation within. Shah observed that society always made an idol of a writer although if society or a reader understood the real 'self' of an author, then the society would never disown him/her as this 'self' was more beautiful than the reader's imagination.

She said that writer was a restless soul in a crowd and remained misfit.

She added writer always struggled to write and tore apart many texts. This condition was different from a reader's imagination.

Ms Shah said she had taken influence of Ayaz although her upbringing till 15 years of her age took place in Lahore of One Unit era and then she tried to adjust herself in Karachi amid 'Urdu ka janaza hay period'.

She started reading Sindhi at home through Sindhi newspapers. She said Shaikh Ayaz's poetry was manifestation of her loyalty, love and conviction for his motherland ie 'Sindhri' - a loving word for Sindh - and even today Sindh experienced all those conditions that had been reflected in Ayaz's poetry during his era.

She discussed Ayaz's book of 'prayers' while mentioning that the preface written by Musa Memon was a great injustice to Ayaz when he declared 'Ayaz will now produce Islamic poetry as 'infidelity' in Sindh has come to an end'.

She said Ayaz was a poet who produced a generation that hated 'emperor's court' and knew how to hold one's head high.

But, she added, if Ayaz was excluded from the Sindhi language, it means that an entire portion of poetry had been taken away to deprive literature of it. It means that this language remains deprived of modern Sindhi poetry, she added.

'Going through Prayers, Ayaz's book, I felt he had been kept in a cage with his wings clipped and he is told that since you are a nationalist so you can't write poetry sans our consent,' she said.

She said a big part of creativity had been chopped off to destroy everything...