chhatrii lagaa ke ghar se nikalne lage haiN ham

Nice Ghazal, had never read that. In fact, I just remembered how I had gone to Vaali Aaasi’s shop in Aminabad over 15 years ago to buy Taaliimi Taash ( for those not familiar, the Taalimi Tash are playing cards with Urdu letters printed on the cards to test vocabulary of children).
As the pack was open I asked him if it was complete and he snapped ‘ham gaDDi meN thoRe hii baiThe haiN’( Am I sitting inside the pack?). That was my first mulaaqaat with Waali. I was in my early teens then and knew that he was a well-known poet.
It was not a good impression. I got angry and complained to the elders in my family. Khair, in later years (late 90s) I visited the shop, a very small shop barely six feet wide, on every visit to Lucknow and I often sat with him for hours chatting about poetry and mundane matters. When I was posted in Raipur, he fondly remembered the Naatiya musharias at the famous Banjari Baba Shrine. Kaafi aur bhi yaadeN haiN.
Though he was a poet but the businessman in him would always rise with vengeance when anybody entered the shop of Urdu litterateur Abid Suhail that was situated nearby and had a massive collection of Urdu books and magazines from even Pakistan. Aur bhi kitnii yaadeN haiN. Waali Aasi was amongst the last of Urdu poets who had an impact on the social life of Lucknow and whose presence was soothing for Urdu-lovers especially non-Muslim ones. He groomed so many young poets and sadly the day came after his death that his son contemplated selling biryani in the same shop. Waali’s father Abdul Bari Aasee was a great litterateur but after his death his sons did not have the love for literature. After him, Aminabad and Lucknow are never the same. Even Abid Suhail shifted to Aliganj and shut the shop. Danish Mahal is somehow carrying the tradition.
Adnan