Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi is considered one of the most prominent humourist and satirist writing in Urdu. Here you can see why as he decimates his colleague besides him while recollecting anecdotes with Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
Ibn-i-Insha, who was himself a great Urdu satirist and humourist, wrote about Yousufi Sahib:
...if ever we could give a name to the literary humour of our time, then the only name that comes to mind is that of Yousufi!
Another scholar, Dr Zaheer Fatehpuri, wrote:
We are living in the 'Yousufi era' of Urdu literary humour...
As Zamir Badayuni says in his artilcle on Yousufi:
Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi is basically a humorist who plays with the language and paints a picture of man, decentralized and imperfect. He combines all the styles, pre-modern, modern and post-modern. Rasheed Ahmed Siddiqui is pre-modern; Pitras is modern and Yusufi is post-modern. Rasheed Ahmed Siddiqui generally writes on cultural trends and style of living such as Tanga and Charpai. The language used by him is narrative and he paints the picture of our society in a very realistic way and without exaggeration. But his keen observation presents minute details with photographic details. He always tries to avoid the language of the masses or the language of the man in the street. Literary language is different from masses’ expressions. He writes in an elevated language full of literary references but he does not peep into the depths and social behaviours of man. But his humorous writings contain literary values.
Modern humour writing begins with Pitrus Bokhari. He writes light essays and uses elevated modernized language. He is a modern humour writer influenced by western literature and not deeply rooted in our culture. His light essays such as Bicycle, Lahore ka Geographia and other essays present his individualized style different from other humorists. However, he is a significant writer who will be regarded as a modernist in the history of Urdu Literature.
Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi is a humorist with unified sensibility. He combines pre-modern, modern and post-modern sensibility in such a way that no other writer can paint the picture of man and society as he has painted it. His objects of humour are man, society and nature. From Charagh Talay to Aab-e-Gum, we have the best humour available in recent times.
The video was recorded in Feb 2011, in Lahore, Pakistan as a part of the centenary celebration of Faiz Ahmed Faiz organized by the Faiz Foundation.
Camera: Satyen K. Bordoloi.
Producer by: Vivek Sundara
