by Mir
Burqa
Burqa pehan kar nikli
Degree bhi main ne li
Computers main ne seekha
Doosron se aage
Main ne khud ko paaya
Ammi bhi bahut khush thhi
Abba bhi bahut khush
Haathon mein apne
Main ne
Koh-e Toor uthaya
Zamaane ko raund daloon
Ye dil mein main ne thhana
Ban jaaoongi Sikandar
Kali naqaab ke andar
Har saans ne pukaara
Mauj masti main karne nikli
Theatre mein joonhi pahunchi
Dande ne mujh ko roka
Burqa mana hai ladki
Kaale naqaab mein kaala dhuaan sa uthha
Us waqt
Vahin par
Main ne
Burqa utaar phenka
Burqa
I stepped out in a burqa
And yet graduated from college
Learned computer programming
And found myself
Head and shoulders ahead of my peers
My mother was thrilled
And my father, he was ecstatic
In my hands,
I held Mount Sinai
I could conquer this world
So my heart believed
I would be Alexander in a black veil
Every breath screamed.
One day I stepped out to have fun
And as I entered a cinema hall
Was accosted by a stick
‘Girl, no burqas allowed here!’
From under the black veil arose the black smoke of fury
At that very moment
I
Threw away my burqa.
Ishrat Afreen
Ishrat Afreen (b. 1956) moved from Pakistan to India and then to the USA, and currently teaches at the University of Texas. She has her own official website1, and has been publishing her poems since she was fifteen. Two of her collections have been published, one in the 1980s and one, more recently, in 2005: Dhoop Apne Hisse Ki (My Share of Sunlight). One can watch her perform her poetry in the public domain. Her poems published in Rukhsana Ahmed’s anthology, Beyond Belief: Contemporary Feminist Urdu Poetry (1990), deployed a rawness that consciously gendered the poetic experience.2
Here, I include two poems. The first is one of my favourites for its ‘take-no-prisoners’ attitude and its direct evocativeness. The second poem positions her more in the tradition of the progressive writers, especially Makhdoom, who sought to see beauty in labour and valued women’s labour through traditional invocations of beauty. Afreen takes the metaphors much further, though, positioning them directly against the ephemeral concept of beauty associated with privilege.
1Intesaab
Mera qad
Mere baap se ooncha nikla
Aur meri maa jeet gayi
Dedication
I grew taller than my father.
My mother had won.
2Gulaab aur kapaas
Kheton mein kaam karti hui ladkiyaan
Jeth ki champai dhoop ne
Jin ka sona badan
Surmayi kar diya
Jin ko raaton mein os aur paale kaa bistar mile
Din ko sooraj saron par jale
Ye hare lawn mein
Sang-e marmar ke benchon pe baithi hui
Un haseen mooraton se kahin khoobsoorat
Kahin mukhtalif
Jin ke joode mein joohi ki kaliyan sajee
Jo gulaab aur bele ki khushboo liye
Aur rangon ki hiddat se paagal phiren
Khet mein dhoop chunti hui ladkiyaan bhi
Nai umr ki sabz dehleez par hain magar
Aaina tak nahin dekhteen
Ye gulaab aur dezi ki hiddat se naa-aashna
Khushboo-on ke javan-lams se bekhabar
Phool chunti hain lekin pahanti nahin
In ke malboos mein
Tez sarson ke phoolon ki baas
Un ki aankhon mein roshan kapaas
Roses and cotton
These girls who toil in the fields
Whose golden skin has been dyed dark by the sun
Who sleep on beds of frost and dew at night
And are burned by the sun in the day.
They are much prettier than those statues
Sitting on marble benches
On green lawns
Prettier and more different
Than those whose tresses are adorned with roses and jasmine buds
And who run wild in a sharp profusion of colours.
The girls who pluck sunlight in the farms
Are also at the green threshold of the new era, but
Do not even look at mirrors
They are unfamiliar with the sharpness of rose and juhi
They pluck the flowers, but do not wear them
Their clothes carry the pungent scent
Of mustard flowers instead
And their eyes the brightness of cotton.
Zeeshan Sahil
Zeeshan Sahil (1961–2008) was an accomplished poet whose untimely demise deprived Urdu of a remarkable voice. I include him here as a representative of the ‘caged beasts’—seven remarkable new voices that were introduced to English-speaking readers in a 1999 book titled An Evening of Caged Beasts: Seven Postmodernist Urdu Poets1. His poems on the city of Karachi were remarkable in their use of rhythms of children playing to invoke the city’s resilience and terror, even as it attempted to preserve its own sanity in an era when lawlessness was the order of the day. In his own words:
It is a lie that in Karachi, after the rain, the sprouting grass doesn’t have blades deep green and soft. Or that the trees do not give shade without the help of clouds . . . With us in Karachi live birds who fly from trees through the sound of bullets and bombs; perch on walls; always they gather somewhere to pray. Our books don’t wait inside cupboards for termites. Now our hearts swim these seas where once our eyes searched for golden flowers and our hands tear down the walls that once buried us alive.2
The first short poem I have translated below reflects Sahil’s ability to show (with such economy of language) how categories are the product of human thought. The poem turns around the poetic rhyme of ‘rasta’ (path) and ‘basta’ (the wanderer’s bag), and the idea of forgetful humans, wandering without realizing that they have the moon and the stars in their bags. The second poem beautifully invokes the joy of the quotidian: how a mere bus journey with a friend or the memory of a lover’s modest room can be the basis of joy and reflection, and how memory imposes itself on the consciousness through minor, slight observations.
1Nazm
Zindagi adhoori hai
Lekin us mein har lamha
Khwaab aur mohabbat ki
Aarzoo zaroori hai
Khwaab aur mohabbat hi
Aadmi ke chalne ko raaste banaate hain
Chaand aur sitaaron ko
Aaasmaan se laakar
Zindagi ke raste mein
Aadmi ke baste mein
Rakh ke bhool jaate hain
Poem
Life is incomplete
But in it, every moment
Needs the desire
Brought by dreams and love
For it is dreams and love
That transform human wandering
Into ordered paths
And bring the moon and the stars
From the skies
To the path that life takes
Into the rucksacks that humans carry around
Who having placed them there
Forget about them.
2Tumhaare liye ek nazm
Hamesha
rehne ke liye
Ye duniya kitni na-munasib jagah hai
Aur zindagi har roz
Pehle se ziyaada na qaabil-e bardaasht
Lekin Saiduddin ke saath
Bus mein safar karne waali khushi
Aur tumhaare dressing table par
Jalne waali batti se behta hua mom
Aur aaine par jamne waala dhuaan
Har cheez ki jagah le lete hain
Meri kitaabon mein band phool
Khwaabon ke jangal ban jaate hain
Tum Formica par jami gard pe
Apni ungliyon se bahut se
Raaste banaati ho
Beshumaar khaali raaston waale shahr mein
Raat gehri hone par tumhaari
Door-uftaada maujoodgi
Sitaaron ko ghair-zaroori, chaand ko faaltu
Aur samandar ko izaafi cheez banaa deti hain
Tumhaari yaad, aur apne dil par
Badhte hue dabaao se ghabraa kar
Main dua maangta hoon
Shaayaron se khuda ki musalsal naaraazgi
Ke baavujood meri dua
Hamesha tum se shuroo hoti hai
A poem for you
As a place to stay in continually
This world is so undesirable
And life, every day,
Becomes ever more unbearable.
But some pleasures abound.
The journey on the bus with Saiduddin
And that congealed wax on your dressing table
From the worn-down candle
And the residue of smoke on your mirror
Take the place of all else.
The pressed flowers in my books
Become the deep forests of dreams.
You draw many paths with your fingers
On the dust that settles on the Formica
And when night settles on that city of countless empty paths
Your distant presence makes stars unnecessary, the moon useless
And turns the sea into something redundant.
Your memory and the heaviness in my heart scare me
And I begin to pray.
Despite God’s unceasing anger toward poets
My prayer always begins with you.
Notes
Foreword
1. When I approached Gulzar Saheb to write a foreword, he was kind enough to suggest that he write it as a poem, and I obviously accepted that idea gratefully. I enclose the Urdu version of his introductory paragraph here: ‘Urdu zaban apne aap mein ek riyasat hai. Vo jahaan jaati hai, apni zameen bana leti hai. Hindustan mein paida hui, magar sirf Hindustan ki nahin. Pakistan ki sarkari zaban hai. Lekin sirf Pakistan ki nahin. Oslo (Norway) gayi to vahaan bas gayi. Bartaniya gayi to vahaan bhi apni jagah bala li. Canada gayi to ek aur basti bas gayi. Amreeka gayi to vahaan ki ho gayi. Raza Mir ne god le liya.
‘Sach to ye hai ke agar “god lena” ki jagah aisa koi muhaavra hota to kahte: “labon pe le liya.” Jahaan jaati hai, seene se lag jaati hai. Vo rivayat ho jaati hai. Dastoor ho jaati hai. Urdu ek tehzeeb ki awaaz hai.’
Preface
1. My teachers over time have included such stalwarts as Amar Dehlavi (who published the Amar Publications chapbooks of Urdu poets); K.C. Kanda (whose translations of Urdu ghazals and nazms are veritable labours of love); Nita Awatramani’s Urdu Poetry Archive (www.urdupoetry.com); older bulletin boards like rec.music.indian.misc and alt.language.urdu.poetry (both of which are now Google groups); Victor G. Kiernan’s translations of Faiz and Iqbal—Poems by Faiz (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971) and Poems from Iqbal (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999); Khushwant Singh’s translations of Rajinder Singh Bedi [I Take This Woman (Delhi: Penguin India, 1994)], Iqbal [Shikwa and Jawab-i-Shikwa: Iqbal’s Dialogue with Allah (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997)] and Mirza Hadi Ruswa [The Courtesan of Lucknow: Umrao Jan Ada, translated by Khushwant Singh and M.A. Husaini (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1961)]; Frances W. Pritchett’s awesome website http://www.columbia.edu/~fp7 that includes translations of the Deevan-e Ghalib as well as Mir’s ghazals; C.M. Naim and M.U. Memon’s editorship of the Annual of Urdu Studies (http://urdustudies.com/); Mehr Afshan Farooqi’s two-volume history of Urdu literature—The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature, 2 vols (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008); and numerous others. A recent site that I would recommend highly is www.urdushahkar.org, which is maintained by S.M. Shahed, and which provides accessible translations for a variety (and increasing corpus) of poems, and includes transliteration, Urdu script versions, and audio files with performance and exegesis.
Introduction: The Flutter of Angel Wings
1. Refers to the debt incurred by anyone who eats salt in another’s home.
2. Refers to the debt incurred by anyone who eats salt in another’s home.
3. Na ho jab = if there is no; phir = then; kyon = why; yaqeenan = certainly; milawat = adulteration; shab ko = to the night.
4. In the interests of full disclosure, I am a great partisan of the Progressive Writers’ Association, and believe that the best poetry in Urdu was produced during the progressive phase. I have co-authored with Ali Husain Mir a book on the topic titled Anthems of Resistance: A Celebration of Progressive Urdu Poetry (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2006).
5. I have dealt extensively with this phenomenon elsewhere: ‘“Voh Yar Hai jo Khusbu ki Tarah / Jis ki Zuban Urdu ki Tarah”: The Friendly Association Between Urdu Poetry and Hindi Film Music,’ Annual of Urdu Studies 15 (2000), http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/15/18mir.pdf.
6. See Akbar Hyder, ‘Urdu’s Progressive Wit: Sulaiman Khatib, Sarvar “Danda” and the Subaltern Satirists Who Spoke Up,’ Annual of Urdu Studies 20 (2005), http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/20/07AkbarHyder.pdf.
7. Online portals have proved to be a treasure trove of the work of these poets, and I would urge you to seek out the performances of some of their verses on sites like YouTube.
8. Those wishing to start reading right away on this issue may consider starting with Carla Petievich’s essay ‘Feminine Authorship and Urdu Poetic Tradition: Baharistan-i Naz vs. Tazkira-i Rekhti,’ in A Wilderness of Possibilities: Urdu Studies in Transnational Perspective, edited by Kathryn Hansen and David Lelyveld (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005). Also see Gail Minault’s ‘Other Voices, Other Rooms: The View from the Zenana,’ in Women as Subjects, edited by Nita Kumar (Calcutta: Stree, 1994); and Ruth Vanita’s Gender, Sex, and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India, 1780–1870 (New York: Macmillan, 2012). Minault’s essay—‘Begamati Zuban: Women’s Language and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Delhi,’ in India International Centre Quarterly 11, no. 2 (1984): 155–70—is also instructive. An Urdu article from the 1930s, Nasiruddin Hashmi’s ‘Khavatin-e Dakkan ki Urdu khidmaat,’ Sabras 1, no. 1: 120–24, mentions three thirteenth-century women poets of Hyderabad, named Chanda Bai, Sharfunnisa and Fatima, who may be available in print—I’m on the prowl . . .
9. The four-volume set was produced bilingually and titled Vazahat-e Urdu Kitabiyat (Imrani Uloom) in Urdu, and Annotated Urdu Bibliography (Social Sciences) in English. Both were published by the Educational Publishing House in New Delhi in 2008.
Amir Khusrau
1. My selection unfortunately throws his more serious work in the shadows, but the Khusrau enthusiast may find a lot more joy at ‘Amir Khusrau Website,’ compiled by Yousuf Saeed, http://www.angelfire.com/sd/urdumedia/index.html.
Quli Qutub Shah
1. For more on Quli Qutub Shah, see Narendra Luther’s appreciative essay, ‘A Multi-faceted Prince,’ Narendra Luther Archives, http://narendralutherarchives.blogspot.com/2006/12/multi-faceted-prince.html.
Mirza Sauda
1. This verse has been beautifully performed by singers like Ustad Salamat Ali Khan and Tina Sani. Recordings of both these performances are availa
ble on YouTube.
Khwaja Mir Dard
1. The interested reader who wishes to follow up on Dard will find a lot in Ian Bedford’s paper on the difficulties of translating from Dard’s eighteenth-century Urdu idiom into English, which includes a competent translation of twelve of his best-known ghazals: ‘Approaching Khvaja Mir Dard,’ Annual of Urdu Studies 22 (2007), http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/22/04IanBedford.pdf; or in Homayra Ziad’s essay, ‘The Nature and Art of Discourse in the Religious Writings of Khvaja Mir Dard,’ Annual of Urdu Studies 20 (2005), http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/20/10Ziad.pdf. Both commentators seem to agree that Dard’s spiritual (Sufi) leanings influenced his poetry greatly.
Mir Taqi Mir
1. While one could dedicate several books to Mir’s work, the true enthusiast is directed to the page maintained most painstakingly by F.W. Pritchett, ‘A Garden of Kashmir,’ Columbia University, http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00garden/index.html; as well as to C.M. Naim’s translation of Mir’s autobiography, which is itself a marvel of literary merit and an extraordinary exposition of a chequered life—C.M. Naim, Zikr-i Mir: The Autobiography of the Eighteenth Century Mughal Poet: Mir Muhammad Taqi ‘Mir’ (1723–1810) (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), excerpts from which are published in ‘Mir on His Patrons,’ Annual of Urdu Studies 14 (1999), http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/14/08naimcMiron.pdf, along with Naim’s analysis in ‘Mir and His Patrons,’ Annual of Urdu Studies 14 (1999), http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/14/07naimcMirand.pdf.
2. For example, this verse shows his love for a young man: ‘Mir kya saade hain, beemar hue jis ke sabab, Usi attar ke bete se dawaa lete hain’ (‘Mir is so simple-minded, he seeks medicine from the very apothecary’s son, who has caused him to fall ill’).