The Urdu Ghazal Podcast, Episode 13 --Jaun Elia

Jaun Elia (1931-2002) was born in Amroha, a town in Uttar Pradesh. He migrated to Pakistan in 1957 with some reluctance, but the agony of migration that forced separation from his roots never left him. Coming from a highly literate family, Jaun gained a good grounding in Eastern and Western philosophy and Islamic and Sufi belief systems at an early age. Although he was born into a Muslim family and had studied at the Deoband School of Islamic Jurisprudence, he kept religion out of his life. Still, he did write some philosophic prose on the mystical nature of existence. His elder brother, Rais Amrohi, was a famous poet who used to write a new Qat’a every day on current affairs for the daily Jung newspaper in Karachi, and his uncle Kamal Amrohi was a talented screenplay writer and Bollywood film director. Jaun Elia gained fame because of the uniqueness of his poetic style, which was essentially postmodern, emphasizing lonesomeness, subversion, and the given. There is an eccentric restlessness and playful abandon in his poetry. Because of his Sufi bent of mind, he had created an Amroha of his own in his thoughts. There is a sense of tragedy in his sensibility that wrecked his life, and he becomes an alcoholic. Jaun was married, but nothing worked for him. Several of his poetic works were published after his death. 

 For more about the Urdu Ghazal Poetry, please refer to:

Gopi Chand Narang, Translation by Surinder Deol. The Urdu Ghazal: A Gift of Composite Culture. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2020.