Arjan Hasid

Arjan Tanwani (7 January 1930 ― 26 December 2019), popularly known by his pen name Arjan Hasid, was an Indian Sindhi language poet who had authored seven collections of poems and ghazals. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award in Sindhi in 1985 for his collection of ghazals Mero Siji and was conferred with the Sahitya Akademi fellowship in 2013, the highest honour of the Sahitya Akademi.

Biography Arjan Jethanand Tanwani was born in Karachi (now in Pakistan) on 7 January 1930 in a Sindhi family. He participated in the Quit India Movement and was a Secretary of Students's Union at Kandiaro High School. In 1947, he matriculated from Bombay University. After the Partition of India, after brief stay in Bombay (now Mumbai) and Jaipur, his family migrated to Ahmedabad, India where he joined the Post and Telegraph Department. In 1989, he retired from the service as the Postmaster General from Gondal. He worked as an All India Radio artist and was on the Sindhi Advisory Board of Central Sahitya Akademi for a decade. A book, Arjan Hasid: A Study, was published in 1996 based on his life and works. He was Chairman of the Gujarat Sahitya Akademi in 2002. In 2004, he participated in 1st Indo-Pak Writers' conference at New Delhi and visited Sindh, Pakistan as a member of Indo-Pak conference where he attended the "Shah-Sachal-Sami International Seminar" at Karachi and presented a scholarly paper on 18th-century Sindhi poet Sami.

Literary works Tanwani started writing poetry in 1956 and later wrote under the pen name Hasid. Hasid's next collection was published in 2006, Saahee Patje (Relax a While). In 2008, he compiled and edited an anthology Aazadia Khaanpoi Sindhi Ghazal (Anthology of Post Independence Sindhi Ghazals). His 2009 collection, Na le'n Na (No, Not So), is based on the subject of Post-Partition migration. Many of his ghazals are set to tune by various composers. The Pathar Pathar Ka'ndaa Ka'ndaa is considered to have contributed to Naee'n Kavita (New Wave movement in poetry). Critic Param Abichandani noted that Hasid uses "poetry as an anodyne" which is "not a cure, but is certainly alleviating". He also mentioned that Hasid's new ghazals "talk about us and they talk about only this day, the painful, dark today, and not the yesterdays. His poems are pure psychic automation expressing our thoughts, our feelings". and the Lifetime Achievement Award by Akhil Bharat Sindhi Boli Sabha in 2012. In 2013, the Sahitya Akademi fellowship, the highest honour conferred by the Sahitya Akademi, was bestowed upon him.

Personal life Hasid married Parpati in 1947 at Kandiaro. She died in 2016. They had three sons, Luxman, Gangaram and Mohan; and a daughter, Parmeshwar.