ISLAMABAD: Veteran journalist Hassan Kaleemi, 82, died in an Islamabad hospital early Saturday after fighting renal failure, and complications thereafter, for nine months. He was buried the same afternoon in the New Katarian graveyard near his home.

Though better known for his long journalistic career, Mr Kaleemi was a jovial, multifaceted personality with deep knowledge of Islamic theology and history and of classical Urdu and Persian poetry. His knowledge and frank opinions, which he expressed fearlessly, won him a big circle of friends and admirers. Many of them were there at his funeral, more to celebrate his sparkling memory than mourn him.

After graduating from the Allahabad University, Mr Kaleemi migrated to Pakistan in the mid 1950s to chase his dreams about “the brave new Islamic homeland”. It looked all rosy to the young immigrant and he wrote and recited poetry initially. In the early 1960s he introduced a weekly religious column in the daily Dawn and later started his own Muslim News magazine to pursue his dreams. Financial problems made him abandon the pursuit and settle for a regular job in Rawalpindi. In the early 1970s however he returned to his first love of journalism and became Saudi Press Agency`s correspondent in Pakistan and retired honourably after serving the agency for almost three decades.

But the injustices and political repression that he witnessed and reported in all these years soured all his dreams and he died a disappointed, spiritually broken man.

Even his good humour and devil-may-care attitude could not help him survive his broken dreams. Before his failing kidneys bound him to bed, Kaleemi used to visit his friends, carrying `divans` (poetry collections) of great Persian and Urdu poets Rumi, Hafiz, Saadi, Ghalib, Mir and others. That was not to impress people but to lessen the pain inside him. He felt exhilarated reciting classic poetry.

Once, musing about the Day of Judgment in the company of close friends, he mischievously recited the couplet of a rustic poet of his former homeland, Musa Mian, in Poorbi.

Musa chhanay gi khoob perlay ki bhir maan, Kagaj hira`ay ja`ay jo hamray hisab ki.

Roughly translated it says: Musa, what a pleasure it would be to lose the record of my (mis)deeds in life in the rush of the multitude on the Day of Judgment.
Source: Dawn
Date:2/13/2011