I have inherited the love of literature and poetry from my late father, Dr. Abdul Wadood Jahan, who was a very good writer and a brilliant and spontaneous poet himself.
During my youth, like everyone, I was also affected by the beauty of love and the agony of losing it. This period in my life was filled with mixed flight of emotions: the joys of being loved and the sorows of losing it all, just like that. This experience did hurt me a lot, yet it honed my poetry into a distinctive style of its own and took it into unchartered territories.
During the period between 1998 and 2010, I stayed away from writing, largely because of my educational obligations, and also because poetry had lost its charm for me. Being faced with economic, emotional and personal crises, poetry took a back seat in my "things to do" list.
On Facebook, I found many new fans and some really good friends. Among them, I would like to mention the name of Miss Nazly Afzal Shah, who read my poetry on Facebook and greatly appreciated it. She also designs my poetry and embeleshes it with her remarkable art work. Nazly encouraged me to have my poetry book published, something I had wanted to do for the past 15 years, but was reluctant to do so, She was instrumental in finding me a publisher interested in my work and took care of the entire project single-handedly in my absense from Pakistan. It was an enormous project handled brilliantly by a great friend for a friend!
When I was in grade five, I wrote a short story book titled,"Sansaan Qillah" or,"The Abandoned Forte". I did it purely for fun. But when my father found about this, he really gave me a big boost by getting it published. This really lifted up my spirits by making me the youngest writer to be published in Pakistan at the time. I don't know if that record still exists! Since then, I have always been into writing poetry and prose in both Urdu and English languages.
At the start of 2010, a close friend of mine, Mr. Zahid Ali insistently advised me to publish some of my poetic pieces on my Facebook page for the general public. At first I was hesitant, as I had lost confidence in my writing skills. Then something drammatic happened that turned my whole world upside down. I would rather not go into the details of what it was, but whatever it was, it sparked the old gnawing fire inside me and compelled me to write. My first poem after 12 years, "Aik Khat Ke Jawab Mein" (In Reply to a Letter) was posted on Facebook on July 22, 2010 and proved to be an instant hit among the readers. This started an endless sequel of poem after poem that has not ceased eversince. Every ghazal, every nazm, every qata and every sher proved to be a big hit. The voice of my heart and the pain of my lost love was now being heard. I felt vindicated, as I was finally on the road to repay the long overdue debt to myself and to my emotions. I had kept this burning fire inside of me for a long time and now it was time to unleash it.
A collection of my Urdu poetry, Mana Keh Junoon Zehr Hai, has recently been published in Pakistan and is receiveing much critical acclaim. The book has been much awaited by my readers and I do expect it to be up to their standard. I do, however, expect and look forward to any criticism or suggestions that might help me improve my style of writing.