Poetry has kept me company throughout my life. Apart from solace, it has given me great joy. There was a time I could recite English poetry for hours, all by rote. Then, Urdu poetry took over and I memorized large chunks of Ghalib, Iqbal, Hafeez, Faiz and Ahmad Faraz, and the English poets faded from my memory. I would start with a few lines and not be able to recall those that followed. I felt guilty, which is why I now keep my favourite anthologies of English poetry—and I have many of them—close at hand. I also have the King James Bible by my bedside, the Granth Sahib and various translations, including my own, of Urdu poetry. I like to dip into these every now and then. There is great wisdom in the poetry I love and read. I recite my favourite lines whenever I get a chance. I have always loved the music and rhythm that poetry offers. There are poems for every mood and emotion. Here are some of my favourite lines of verse, starting with the Urdu poets:
Mirza Ghalib
(1796–1869)
I.
Naqsh fariyadee hai kis kee shoukhee-e-tehreer ka
Kaaghazee hai pairahan har paikar-e-tasveer ka
A picture speaks for itself, what learned exposition does it need?
The paper on which it is painted is only its outer garment: it tells its own tale indeed.
II.
Go haath ko jumbish naheen aankhon mein to dam hai
Rehney do abhee saaghar-o-meena merey aagey
Though I can no longer stretch my hands I still have life’s sparkle in my eyes.
Let the jug of wine and cup remain before me where they lie.
III.
Ishq sey tabeeyat ney zeest ka mazaa paaya
Dard kee davaa payee dard-e-la-davaa paaya
Love gave me the lust for living—to ease my pain it gave me something for sure;
It gave me such pain that nothing can cure.
IV.
Mehrbaan hokey bulaalo mujhey chaaho jis vaqt
Main gayaa vaqt naheen hoon ki phir aa bhee na sakoon
Have mercy and send for me any time you so desire;
Time gone is forever gone it’s true—I am not time, I can always return to you.
Faiz Ahmad Faiz
(1911–1984)
I.
Raat yoon dil mein teree khoyee hue yaad aaee
Jaisey veeraney mein chupkey sey bahaar aa jaaye
Jaisey sahraaon mein hauley sey chaley baad-e-naseem
Jaisey beemaar ko bevajah qaraar aa jaaye
Last night the lost memory of you stole into my mind
Stealthily as spring steals into a wilderness
As on desert wastes a gentle breeze begins to blow
As in one sick beyond hope, hope begins to grow.
II.
Mujh sey pehlee see mohabbat meree mehboob na maang
Main ney samjha thha ki too hai to darakhshaan hai hayaat
Tera gham hai to gham-e-dehr ka jhagra kya hai
Teree soorat sey hai aalam mei bahaaron ko sabaat
Too jo mil jaaye to taqdeer nagoon ho jaaye
Yoon na thha mainey faqat chaahaa thha yoon ho jaaye
Aur bhee dukh hain zamaaney mein muhabbat key siva
Raahatein aur bhee hain wasl kee raahat key sivaa
Anginat sadiyon key taareek baheemaanaa tilism
Resham-o-atlas-o-kamkhwaab key bunvaaye huey
Jaa-ba-jaa biktey huey koocha-o-baazaar mein jism
Beloved, do not ask me for the love I had before
Then I had thought life was worth living because of you
If I was in pain, I did not care what others went through
Your face gave the world assurance of springs to come.
Besides your eyes, to me the world meant nothing
And I would triumph over everyone if I won you.
It was not meant to be, I only wished it so
There are sorrows other than love’s sorrow
There are joys other than the joy of union with the beloved.
Countless centuries have witnessed tragedies
Interwoven in fabrics of silk in bazaars and in the market place
Smothered in dust and soaked in blood and gore.
Apart from Urdu poetry, here are some more favourites that I turn to often, from a variety of sources—English poems, verses from the Sikh scriptures, and from the Old Testament’s Book of Job and Psalms of David:
‘The Revelation’, Coventry Patmore
An idle poet, here and there,
Looks round him; but, for all the rest,
The world, unfathomably fair,
Is duller than a witling’s jest.
Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;
They lift their heavy lids, and look;
And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,
They read with joy, then shut the book.
And give some thanks, and some blaspheme,
And most forget; but, either way,
That and the child’s unheeded dream
Is all the light of all their day.
From ‘Desiderata’, Max Ehrmann
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
From the ‘Japji’ (The Morning Prayer), Adi Granth, Nanak
There is one God.
He is the supreme truth.
He, the creator,
Is without fear and without hate.
He, the omnipresent,
Pervades the universe.
He is not born,
Nor does He die to be born again.
From ‘Vaisakh’, Bara Maha, Nanak
Nanak says: ‘Where seek you the Lord? Whom do you await?
You have not far to go to find Him.
He is within you, you are His mansion.
If your body and soul yearn for the Lord,
The Lord shall love you and Vaisakh shall be beautiful.’
From the Adi Granth, Nanak
There are five prayers
Each with a time and a name of its own.
First, truthfulness.
Second, to take only what is your due.
Third, goodwill towards all.
Fourth, pure intentions;
And praise of God, the fifth.
Let good acts be your creed: persevere with them;
Then proclaim you are a Muslim.
O Nanak, the more false the man
The more evil his power.
Job, 1:21
Naked came I from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return tither;
The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Psalms, 23 (A Psalm of David)
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
From ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, John Keats
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem beco
me a sod.
From ‘The World Is Too Much With Us’, William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
From ‘Oft in the Stilly Night’, Thomas Moore
Oft, in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears
Of boyhood’s years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimm’d and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Dealing with Death
There is a passage in the Mahabharat which says that the greatest miracle of life is that while we know that death is inevitable, no one really believes that he too will die one day. We humans have always been obsessed with death and dying. I tried to come to terms with it early on but found myself, as the Dhammapada says, like a fish thrown on dry land, thrashing about trying to free itself from the power of death.
I once asked the Dalai Lama how one should face death and he advised meditation. The one time I met Acharya Rajneesh in Bombay, I spoke to him about my fears and asked him how best to cope with them. He told me the only way to overcome the fear of death was to expose myself to the dying and the dead. I had been doing this on my own for many years. I rarely attended weddings but made it a point to go to funerals. I would sit by dead relatives and often went to the cremation ground at Nigambodh Ghat to watch pyres being lit and corpses go up in flames. It acted as a catharsis: it cleansed me of pettiness and vanity, and helped me take life’s setbacks in my stride. I would take stock of my life, be thankful for what I had. I would return home at peace with myself. However, it did not help me overcome the fear of death. On the contrary, I often had trouble sleeping, and had nightmares set off by what I had seen.
I think the reason I used to dread death and fear it so much was because I had no idea where I’d be afterwards. My inability to accept the existence of God negates the possibility of a life after death and the concept of rebirth. The Bhagavad Gita assures us: ‘For certain is death for the born, and certain is birth for the dead; therefore, over the inevitable thou shouldst not grieve.’ I accept the first part, for I know it to be true; I have no evidence of the second part. There is no proof of an afterlife. So it’s the dissolving into nothingness that I feared. Tom Stoppard summed up what I felt when he wrote: ‘[Death] is the absence of presence, nothing more … the endless time of never coming back … a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes not sound.’ And Paul Valery, when he said: ‘Death speaks to us with a deep voice but has nothing to say.’ I took comfort in these lines by Tennyson:
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea …
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness or farewell,
When I embark …
As far as I’m concerned, death is the final full stop. Beyond it there is nothing. It’s a void that no one has been able to penetrate. It has no tomorrows. ‘What is the world to a man when his wife is a widow?’ goes an Irish saying.
The process of dying begins the moment we are born. Death is the only thing in life we can be certain of. It is inevitable. Why, then, are we so scared of it? Would it help if we knew when we are going to die? I don’t think so. I don’t think we’d be able to handle it. It would make us even more depressed. We’d waste the little time we have worrying about the end.
I realized early on that I have only one life to live and, not knowing when it will come to an end, decided to get as much out of it as I could. I have lived life to the full. I have travelled the world, indulged my senses, basked in the beauty of nature and enjoyed all it has had to offer. I have sampled the best food and drink, listened to good music and made love to beautiful women. I have always made the most of the time that I have been given.
These days, I think of death more than ever before but I have stopped worrying or brooding about it. I think of those I have lost; past sweethearts whose memories steal back into my mind; loved ones I shall see no more. I wonder where they are. Will I see them again? What next? I don’t have the answers. To quote Omar Khayyam:
Into this Universe, and Why not knowing
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing …
and
There was a Door to which I found no Key:
There was a Veil through which I could not see:
Some little Talk awhile of Me and Thee
There seemed—and then no more of Thee and Me.
All my contemporaries—whether here, in England or in Pakistan—they’re all gone. I don’t know when my time will come but I don’t fear death anymore. What I dread is the day I go blind or am incapacitated because of old age—that’s what I fear. I’d rather die than live like that. I’m a burden enough on my daughter Mala and don’t want to be more of a burden on her.
All that I hope for is that when death comes to me it comes quickly, without much pain, like slipping away in sound sleep. Till then I’ll keep working and living each day as it comes. I’m still writing and am able to keep up with my reading. The problem is I can’t keep still. I have to keep busy. These lines of Iqbal come to mind:
Baagh-e-bahisht sey mujhey hukm-e safar diya thha kyon?
Kaar-e-Jahaan daraaz hai, ab mera intezaar kar
(Why did you order me out of the garden of paradise?
I have a lot left to do; now you wait for me.)
So I often tell Bade Mian, as I refer to him, that he’s got to wait for me as I still have work to finish.
I actually believe in the Jain philosophy that death ought to be celebrated. I had even written my own obituary in 1943 when I was in my twenties. It later appeared in a collection of short stories, titled Posthumous. In the piece I imagined the Tribune announcing news of my death on its front page with a small photograph. The headline would read: ‘Sardar Khushwant Singh Dead’. And then in somewhat smaller print: ‘We regret to announce the sudden death of Sardar Khushwant Singh at 6 p.m. last evening. He leaves behind a young widow, two infant children and a large number of friends and admirers … Amongst those who called at the late sardar’s residence were the PA to the chief justice, several ministers, and judges of the High Court.’
I had to cope with death when I lost my wife. Being an agnostic I could not find solace in religious rituals. Being a loner essentially, I discouraged friends and relatives from coming to condole with me. I spent the first night alone sitting in my chair in the dark. At times I broke down but soon recovered my composure. A couple of days later I resumed my usual routine, working from dawn to dusk. That took my mind off the stark reality of having to live alone in an empty home for the rest of my days. When friends persisted in calling and upset my equilibrium, I went off to Goa to be by myself.
I used to be keen on a burial because with a burial you give back to the earth what you have taken. Now I would like it to be the electric crematorium. I had asked the management of the Bahai faith if I could be buried in their enclosure. Initially they agreed but then they came up with all kinds of conditions and rules. I had wanted to be buried in one corner with a peepal tree next to my grave. After agreeing to this, the management later said that that wouldn’t be possible—that that my grave would be in the middle of a row and not in a corner. I wasn’t okay with that—even though I know that once you are dead it makes no difference. But I was keen to be buried in a corner. They also told me that they would chant some prayers, which again I couldn’t agree with because I don’t believe in religion or in religious rituals of any kind.
And since I have no faith in G
od, or in the Day of Judgement, or in the theory of reincarnation, I have to come to terms with the complete full stop. I have been criticized for not sparing even the dead, for being critical of people who have died, but then death does not sanctify a person, and if I find the person had been corrupt, I write about it and talk about it even after he’s gone.
When my time comes, I don’t want to make an ass of myself. I don’t want to be a burden to anyone. I don’t want to cry for help or ask God to forgive me for my sins. I’d like to go like my father did. He died a few minutes after he’d had his evening Scotch. I’d like to have one last drink before heading out.
Above all, I want to go like a man without any regrets or grievances against anyone. Allama Iqbal expressed it so beautifully in a couplet:
Nishaan-e-mard-e Momin ba too goyam?
Choon marg aayad, tabassum bar lab-e-ost
(You ask me for the signs of a man of faith?
When death comes to him, he has a smile on his lips.)
Twelve Tips to Live Long and Be Happy
I believe genes play a very important role in determining one’s lifespan. Children of long-living parents are likely to have long lives. However, there are ways in which one can live life to the full, and spend the time that we have been given in a healthy and fruitful manner.
Try and play a game—whether it’s tennis or squash, badminton or golf, a round is good for you. Or exercise regularly: an hour of brisk walking, swimming or running is as good.
Khushwantnama Page 6