Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Famous urdu poet Majeed Amjad was remembered Wednesday on the occasion of his birth anniversary.

Born on June 29, 1914 in Jhang Majeed Amjad is regarded as a “philosophical poet of depth and sensitivity”. In childhood he studied Arabic and Persian at a local mosque before enrolling in first grade in a government school. After passing Intermediate exam, he moved to Lahore and received his bachelor’s degree in 1934 from Islamia College, Lahore.

On return from Lahore he joined a weekly newspaper named Arooj.He remained as an editor of the newspaper until 1939 and regularly published his own prose and poetry. At the advent of the Second World War, a poem of his against the British Empire was printed on the front page of Arooj and he was forced to leave the newspaper.

In 1944, the government set up a civil supplies department to ration food and clothing.He passed an entrance exam and joined this department and served on with the Food Department until his retirement in 1972. He died on May 11, 1974 in Sahiwal.

Majeed Amjad’s first collection of poetry, Shab-e-Rafta, was published in 1958 for which he wrote a preface in verse. This was published by Naya Idara in Lahore and was the only collection published in his lifetime even though he had written steadily throughout his life.

After his death, the manuscripts of his unpublished poetry were preserved by Javaid Qureshi who was then the deputy commissioner of Sahiwal. In 1976, a second collection of his poetry titled Shab-e-Rafta Ke Baad was published. It was not until 1989 that the Urdu critic Khawaja Muhammad Zakariya edited and published a complete collection of his works called Kuliyat-e-Majeed Amjad.