Syed Muhammad Jafari

Syed Muhammad Jafari (1905–1976) was a humorist and satirist of Lahore, a poet who made laughter do the work of reform. The son of Mohammad Ali, principal of Government College, Lahore, he passed his Munshi Fazil examination at fourteen and his matriculation at seventeen, took a B.Sc. (Honours) in Chemistry from Islamia College, Lahore, and then turned to the arts for an M.A. and M.O.L. in Persian from Oriental College, Lahore. The great humorist Pitras Bukhari was one of his teachers, and he also trained in painting and fine art at the Mayo College of Arts. He served first in the Department of Education and then in the Department of Publicity and Information, retiring in 1966. He wrote nearly nine hundred nazms on political and social subjects, and wove the lines of Ghalib and Iqbal into his own verse. His satire was sharp and unsparing — corruption in public and private life, elections, politics, the promises of the great powers — yet free of rancour and personal malice: the joke was always aimed at the fault, never at the man. His collections include Teer-e-Neem Kash, and his best-known book of humorous verse, Shokhi-e-Tahreer, was published after his death by his sons. He died in 1976. No birthplace is recorded for him; Lahore was the city of his education, his service and his verse.