Sham e Faiz

The Gurmani Centre for Language and Literature, in collaboration with the LUMS Literary Society, organized Sham-e-Faiz as a tribute to Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a central figure in twentieth-century Urdu poetry whose work engages themes of resistance, love, and social justice. The event featured Arshad Mehmood, composer and actor, and Nighat Chaudhry, a classical Kathak practitioner, as panelists reflecting on their engagements with Faiz’s life and work.

Arshad Mehmood focused on his personal and professional association with Faiz. Through his recollections, he outlined aspects of Faiz’s personality that are less visible in formal literary discourse, including his wit and conversational ease. Mehmood also discussed the influence Faiz had on his own artistic development, particularly in relation to composing music for Faiz’s poetry. Some of these compositions were later performed by Nayyara Noor in the television program Sach Gup. His remarks emphasized the structural compatibility between Faiz’s poetic form and musical arrangement, suggesting that the musicality of the verse invites composition rather than merely accompaniment.

Nighat Chaudhry addressed Kathak as both a classical form and a disciplined practice grounded in philosophical and historical traditions. She reflected on her training and the conceptual framework that shapes her performances, particularly the interpretive relationship between text and movement. In her view, dance operates as a mode of reading poetry, translating metaphor and rhythm into gesture and spatial design. This interpretive approach, she noted, enables Faiz’s poetry to be engaged not only as text but as embodied expression.

The program also included audio recordings from the Lutfullah Khan Archives, allowing the audience to hear Faiz reciting his own work. The evening concluded with a Kathak performance by Nighat Chaudhry on Faiz’s poem Hum Dekhen gain. The choreography engaged the poem’s thematic concerns with justice and collective aspiration, rendering its political and ethical vision through rhythm and movement.

Sham-e-Faiz created a space for interdisciplinary engagement with Faiz’s legacy. By bringing together memoir, music, archival record, and dance, the program foregrounded the continuing interpretive possibilities within his work and its capacity to move across artistic forms.