Mohsin Zaidi: A Journey of Courage, Struggle, and Triumph

Mohsin Zaidi’s story begins in the heart of Uttar Pradesh, in a small town named Bahraich. Mohsin was born on 10 July 1935 to Saiyed Ali Raza Zaidi and Sughra Begum and was brought up in the colourful but difficult colours of pre-independent India. 

Those were the years of hardship, struggle, and an unbroken sense of hope that were painted on life. Mohsin went to the Islamia School in Pratapgarh and the K. P. Hindu High School as a boy—not a common experience for a Muslim child in those days. He had nothing much in the way of money, but he was an insatiable curiosity. 

Books and lessons did not initially set a fire in the heart of young Mohsin; they were the image of his mother’s strength and his father’s eloquence. They would tell stories of their hard lives, and Mohsin, who would lurk behind the veranda most of the time, would listen and learn the lessons that could not be taught in any classroom. 

When he was only 15 years old and still in high school, he wrote his first lines of Urdu poetry, something which enabled him to express the feelings he had kept inside long enough.

The Poet’s Early Struggles: Words as Shields

What is not known by many is that Mohsin was a victim of silent discrimination. Friends would share sweets, but some would purposely leave him out. But verses brought him comfort, and he would speak words of secret ghazals to the night, and words were all his friends when the world was far away. Mohsin was exposed to a wider world as he passed through Maharaj Singh Inter College, Bahraich and then Lucknow University, where he acquired degrees in English, history, and economics. 

It was not long before he got his master’s in economics in 1956 at Allahabad University, but it was his passion for poetry that kept him awake in the middle of the night and the lonely corridors. His pen was his shriek of the wrong, his pen a non-violent upheaval—and every couplet a noose to the invisible.

Climbing Walls: Turning Failure into Fuel

There came a time in Mohsin Zaidi’s life when dreams seemed to slip through his fingers. He had made an application to a high-status position in the Indian Economic Service job that could bring his family out of the doldrums. In his first effort, he was overwhelmed. He told a friend that he cried that night, and he could feel the burden of all the expectations on his shoulders. 

Endurance was not new to Mohsin. He recalled his mother’s words that success was not measured by not failing but by continuing to fail. He again tried, and he succeeded. His path is not the path of privilege; his is the path of insistence, endurance, and silent resistance to his self-doubt.

Love, Loss, and the Power of Empathy

The big poet had lived and loved and lost. Social themes not only inspired Mohsin in poetry but also the losses he had to endure in his personal life. The world only saw the perfected couplets; only his dearest friends saw the nights in which he was in mourning over a relative falling to disease and the days in which he was there to console students who were in the grips of depression. Mohsin was not living a tragedy-free life. 

Once in a very still winter, he had lost a friend dearly beloved to him in an ample dose of an acute ailment. Thereafter, he wrote, Zindagi ke safar mein kaun kis ka hota hai, humsafar bhi kabhi kabhi bewafa ho jaate hain, a couplet which took root in the scars that time could not heal. He transformed suffering into sympathy and made himself the teacher of struggling young writers who, like himself, required only a sympathetic ear to go on.

Writings that Heal and Inspire

His poetry, especially his ghazals, made him popular, but it was his honesty that made him popular in hearts. His poems never hesitated to show the chaos of his times or the agony of a human soul. As India transformed, so did Mohsin’s words, who, from the 1960s to the 1980s, went beyond mere love poems to more elaborate social commentaries, all in a manner as clear as spring water. 

He had the feeling that poetry was not an expression; it was a transformation. In one of his untold stories, a young man approached him and was devastated after a big failure in life. Mohsin would sit with him for hours and softly read him verses that touched on hope and self-confidence. Poetry that night was not only a soothing balm but a life-saving grace because the young man, years later, turned out to be a successful teacher, and he attributes his turnaround to the generosity of Mohsin.

From Shadows to Light: The Legacy That Shines On

As years passed, Mohsin Zaidi served as a bureaucrat in the Indian Economic Service, using his influence to support linguistic minorities and young writers across the country. He could never be satisfied with himself. He used to say repeatedly, “A poet does not live by applause; he lives to awaken a soul out of despair.” 

Mohsin continued to write even after his retirement, patronising and encouraging long after his retirement. His little home at Lucknow was a haven for aspirant poets. When he died on 3 September 2003, his mourners were not only family and friends but thousands of students, poets, and ordinary people, which was evidence that his path, full of heartbreak and hope, had now become an inspiration to others.

Mohsin Zaidi’s life is a testament to the power of words, resilience, and deep empathy. All battles, all stories that are not sung, all poems that describe dreams that never came true and victories that were not shouted about continue to inspire new generations not only beyond the boundaries of Bahraich or Lucknow. In his story, we see not only the path of one poet but the path of all who ever believed, even when the world would not hear.

Also Read: Talib Chakwali: A Life Woven in Words, Loss, and the Search for Meaning

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