A Thousand Yearnings

by Ralph Russell

Come on, let us too make the trip to see the Mount of Tur.*

  kya farz hai ki sab ko mile ek sa javaab?

  aao na hum bhi ser karen koh e toor ki

  In this verse the saki—the handsome young cup-bearer—is a metaphor for one who conveys God’s message, which inspires him as wine inspires the drinker; and he suggests that he may acquire the wine of insight in unorthdox ways:

  If you dislike me, saki, pour the wine in my cupped hand

  I may not have the cup? So be it. Let me have the wine.

  pila de ok se saaqi jo hum se nafrat hai

  piyaala gar nahin deta na de sharaab to de

  The search for meaning is never-ending. He wants to observe everything steadily, good and bad alike:

  Ghalib, it is the rose’s beauty teaches us to gaze.

  No matter what the scene, no one should ever close his eyes.

  bakhshe hai jalva e gul zauq e tamaasha, Ghalib,

  chashm ko chaahiye har rang mein vaa hojaana

  —and learn to see in the smallest phenomena the implication of larger things:

  Unless the sea within the drop, the whole within the part

  Appear, you play like children; you still lack the seeing eye.

  qatre mein dajla dikhaai na de aur juzv mein kul

  khel ladkon ka hua, deeda e beena na hua

  Though no one can control the course of events, all that happens is to be welcomed, for it adds to his experience and understanding:

  The steed of life runs on. None knows where it will stay its course

  The reins were never in our hands or the stirrups on our feet.

  rau mein hai rakhsh e umar, kahaan dekhiye thame

  ne haath baag par hai na paa hai rikaab mein

  He wants to play an active part in life, not simply waiting for experience to come, but creating our own:

  The staring mirror’s brightness is discoloured in the end

  The standing water grows its own green surface in the end.

  safa e hairat e aaina hai saamaan e zang aakhir

  taghair aab e barja maanda ka, paata hai rang aakhir

  He believes in extracting from life every enjoyment it can bring:

  What if I cannot move my hands? My eyesight is still sound

  So let the goblet and the flask stand there before my eyes.

  go haath ko junbish nahin aankhon mein to dam hai

  rehne do abhi saaghar o meena mere aage

  If beauty is transient you should dwell not on the transience but the beauty; and if something is a source of joy, feel that joy, even where it is not you but others who experience it:

  Spring is soon fled? What of it? It is spring.

  Sing of its breezes, of its greenery.

  The fair are cruel? What of it? They are fair.

  Sing of their grace, their swaying symmetry.

  nahin bahaar ko fursat, na ho, bahaar toh hai

  taraavat e chaman o khoobi e hava kahiye

  nahin nigaar ko ulfat, na ho, nigaar to hai

  ravaani e ravish o masti e ada kahiye

  If he incurs misfortune in doing so, that is because the irresistible urging of his heart drives him on regardless of the consequences:

  I grapple with that fragment of ill fate that is my untamed heart,

  The enemy of ease, the friend of reckless wandering.

  main aur ik aafat ka tukda vo dil e vahshi ki hai

  aafiyat ka dushman aur aavaaragi ka aashna

  We pass our lives in journeying in constant restlessness

  And tell our years not by the sun’s course but the lightning’s flash.

  raftaar e umr qat e rah e iztiraab hai

  is saal ke hisaab ko barq aaftaab hai

  All too often it is grief and sorrow that falls to his lot, but he must welcome this too:

  Though you play only strains of grief, my heart, yet I must treasure them

  The music of this lute of life will all be stilled one day.

  naghmaha e gham ko bhi, e dil, ghaneemat jaaniye

  be-sada ho jaaega ye saaz e hasti ek din

  My heart, this pain and sorrow too is precious, for the time will come

  You will not heave the midnight sigh, nor shed your tears as morning dawns.

  dila, ye dard o alam bhi to mughtanim hai, ki aakhir

  na girya e sahri hai na aah e neemshabi hai

  Home is not home unless it holds the turmoil of strong feeling

  If there are cries of grief, not songs of joy, then be it so.

  ek hangaame pe mauquf hai ghar ki raunaq

  nauha e gham hi sahi, naghma e shaadi na sahi.

  He longs for things he cannot have:

  Desires in thousands—and at each I die and then revive anew

  And many longings were fulfilled—many, but even so too few.

  hazaaron khvaahishein aisi ki har khvaahish pe dam nikle

  bahut nikle mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle

  But he mocks those, including himself at times, who think that they have a right to good fortune:

  We cry to fate,‘Restore to us the life of ease that once was ours!’

  We think our looted wealth a debt the robber owes to us.

  falak se hum ko aish e rafta ka kya kya taqaaza hai!

  mata e burda ko samjhe huey hain qarz e rahzan par

  Sometimes it is better not to voice one’s grief:

  Would that I had not voiced my grief but how was I to know, my friend

  That this would only make more keen the pain within my heart?

  na karta kaash naala! mujh ko kya maaloom tha, humdum

  ki hoga baa’is e afzaa’ish e dard e daroon vo bhi?

  There are times when he feels despair:

  What is the autumn? What the season men call spring? Throughout the year

  We live on, caged, lamenting still that once we had the power to fly.

  khizaan kya? fasl e gul kehte hain kisko? koi mausam ho

  vuhi hum hain, qafas hai, aur maatam baal o par ka hai

  And he sometimes feels that it is his own nature that will inevitably bring him loss:

  I feel no joy though clouds should mass a hundred times above my fields

  To me it means that lightning seeks thus early to find out my crop.

  khushi kya khet par mere agar sau baar abr aave?

  samajhta hoon ki dhoondhe hai abhi se barq khirman ko

  Ghalib, no matter how I toil my labour bears no fruit.

  Lightning will strike my granaries if locusts spare my fields.

  Ghalib, kuchh apni sa’i se lahna nahin mujhe

  khirman jale agar na malakh khaae kisht ko

  But he will not give up:

  I have not ceased to struggle; I am like the captive bird

  Who in the cage still gathers straws with which to build his nest.

  misaal ye meri koshish ki hai ki murgh e aseer

  kare qafas mein faraaham khas aashiyaan ke liye

  To long for something is enough in itself:

  I too gaze on the wonders that my longing can perform

  It matters nothing to me whether I attain my wish.

  hoon main bhi tamaashaai e nairang e tamanna

  matlab nahin kuchh isse ki matlab hi bar aave

  The great thing is to struggle, even when you know you will not win:

  Back! Thronging hosts of black despair, lest you reduce to dust as well

  The one joy left to me—the joy that unavailing struggle brings.

  bas hujoom e naa-umeedi! khaak mein mil jaayegi

  ye jo ik lazzat hamaari sa’i e be-haasil mein hai

  Grief nourishes us lovers in the bosom of adversity

  Our lamp shines through the tempest like the coral through the stormy sea.

  gham aaghosh e bala mein parvarish deta hai aashiq ko

  charaagh e raushan apna qulzum e sarsar ka marjaan hai

  He holds on to the knowledge that it is love which gives meaning to life, even though to love is to court one’s own destruction:


  I pledge myself entire to love—and love of life possesses me.

  I worship lightning—and lament the lightning’s handiwork.

  saraapa rahn e ishq o naaguzir e ulfat e hasti

  ibaadat barq ki karta hoon aur afsos haasil ka

  We who are free grieve only for a moment

  And use the lightning’s flash to light our homes.

  gham nahin hota hai aazaadon ko besh az yak nafas

  barq se karte hain raushan sham e maatam-khaana hum

  * See p. 132.

  * For the story of the Mount of Tur, see p. 194.

  Images and Allusions

  I hope that these translations have conveyed something of the poetic quality of the original. They cannot of course convey it all, for the vocabulary of the ghazal is full of words that have multiple connotations. A few examples will illustrate this.

  Mir writes:

  Your long black tresses come to mind and glistening teardrops dim my sight.

  And all is dark; the rains have come; the fireflies glimmer in the night.

  teri zulf e siyah ki yaad mein aansu jhamakte hain

  andheri raat hai, barsaat hai, jugnu chamakte hain

  In India, the season of the rains, when the clouds cover the sky and the nights are really dark, has the same romantic connotations as spring does in Europe. But the second line not only evokes the atmosphere with a few vivid strokes, it also suggests the elements which make up the first line, for the ‘long black tresses’ of the beloved are regularly compared with the long black night, and tears with rain, while the ‘glistening’ tears and the ‘glimmering’ fireflies (the two Urdu words used are equally close) also suggest each other. Every one of these connotations is relevant and contributes to the vivid intensity of the picture.

  The conventional ghazal images can say a great deal more than is at once evident. In this verse of Mir’s:

  I asked how long the rose would bloom.

  The rosebud heard my words and smiled.

  kaha maine kitna hai gul ka sabaat?

  kali ne ye sunkar tabassum kiya

  The word ‘smiled’ conveys several meanings. The rosebud smiles at the foolish hopes that lie behind so naive a question. But ‘to smile’ is also a regular metaphor for the blooming of a flower—and the moment the bud blooms, it loses its existence as a bud. The rose itself will fade and pass out of existence as quickly and irrevocably.

  Another apparently simple couplet is:

  You’ll find Mir lying in the shade of someone’s wall:

  What have such idle fellows got to do with love?

  kaha maine kitna hai gul ka sabaat?

  kali ne ye sunkar tabassum kiya

  The first line is an effective example of the idiom of the ghazal. At first reading it conveys plainly enough the immediate impression that his worldly-wise critics receive when they see him—that here is an idle fellow who does not care where he lies so long as it is in the shade. But Urdu speakers familiar with the ghazal would know at once that the ‘someone’ is his mistress, and that far from being an idler, the devoted lover is watching and waiting constantly in her lane or outside her house. The word ‘shade’, too has many implications in addition to the obvious meaning. The cool shade is a pleasant concept in English, but it is even more so in a country where the intensity of the heat becomes almost unbearable in some seasons of the year, and in Urdu a wide range of metaphorical use reflects this fact. For example, when a child’s father dies, leaving him helpless and unprotected, it is said that he has been deprived of the ‘shadow’ of his father, in which he could rest, protected from the heat and dust of life. In this verse it suggests two things: first, an ironic situation in which what appears to others to be a life of ease and comfort passed in the cool shade is in fact the life of the lover, with all its inevitable and never-ending suffering; but secondly, it also suggests a proud acceptance of all the pleasant connotations of shade as indeed applying to the life of the true lover, for with all its suffering,it is his unbreakable constancy in love which provides the whole meaning and content of his life and brings him a profound spiritual happiness.

  Ghalib has a couplet:

  You, and the coiling tresses of your hair—

  I, and my endless, dark imaginings.

  tu aur aaraa’ish e kham e kaakul

  main aur andeshaaha e door o daraaz

  At the level of the poet’s love for his mistress, the couplet shows him admiring her beauty and at the same time anxious in case this self-adornment is intended to please not him, but some unknown rival for her love. The comparison between her long black hair and his ‘endless, dark imaginings’ is clear. And ‘coiling’ suggests perplexity and anguish. But this image of the beautiful woman whom he loves may stand for anything else to which he dedicates himself with equal wholeheartedness—to his Divine Beloved, whose ways are inscrutable and who may have unimagined tribulations in store for him, or his high ideals in life, commitment to which may bring heavy penalties. All these things would suggest themselves to an Urdu reader to whom the ghazal tradition has been familiar since childhood.

  Sometimes the poet will use one of the standard symbols in an unusual way. The ‘saki’ (cup-bearer) is a beautiful youth who pours the wine for you, wine which in an allegorical sense, is the intoxicating message of divine love; so he is generally a figure from whom something good is expected. But in one verse of Ghalib this is not his role. He is the symbol of fate, from which Ghalib expects nothing but evil. Fate is determined by the revolution of the seven skies, and Ghalib pictures these as seven upturned cups. It is the saki who has turned them, and so emptied them of every drop of wine they had once contained. So Ghalib says:

  How should the saki of the skies pour you the wine of happiness?

  He sits there with his—one, two, four—his seven cups upturned.

  mai e ishrat ki khvaahish saaqi e gardoon se kya keejiye?

  liye baitha hai ik do chaar jaam e vaazhgoon vo bhi

  Legendary figures serve the same purpose, but allusions familiar to Urdu speakers would need explanation to make them intelligible to an English reader. One such allusion is to the story of Jamshed, a legendary king of Iran, who was said to have a marvellous cup. When he looked in it, he could see all that was happening throughout the world. Mir refers to this to reflect on the transience of life—not even the powerful or the miraculous will last:

  The great Jamshed who made the wine cup, where is he today?

  Where are the revellers whom wine and music used to thrill?

  His cup is gone—save that the tulip still preserves its shape.

  Only the poppy’s shoulder now supports its wine bowl still.

  A fragment of the tavern keeper’s skull closes the vat

  The willows sway where slender youths once came to drink their fill.

  jamshed jis ne vaz kiya jaam, kya hua?

  ve suhbaten kahaan gayin? kidhar ve naavnosh?

  juz laala us ke jaam se paate nahin nishaan

  hai koknaar us ki jagah ab subu badosh

  jhoome hai bed jaaye javaanaan e mai-gusaar

  baala e kham hai khisht e sar e peer e naifarosh

  Ghalib says, anyway, why bother with such things? Keep to simple values:

  I will go and get another from the shop if it should break

  No goblet of Jamshed for me! This cup of clay is good!

  aur baazaar se le aayenge agar toot gaya

  saaghar e jam se mera jaam e sifaal achcha hai

  However close a translation gets to the original, there may be layers of meaning it cannot convey. One of Mir’s most powerful couplets is this:

  You must have heard what happened to Mansur—

  Here, if you speak the truth, they crucify you.

  mansoor ki haqeeqat tum ne suni hi hogi

  haq jo kahe hai, us ko yahaan daar khainchte hain

  Even if you know nothing else about Mansur, the verse itself tells you that he was someone who spoke the truth to a hostile world
and paid the penalty for it. In Mir’s original, haqq is the word which I have translated as ‘the truth’, but this is only one of several meanings the word can have. The Urdu reader would know this, and know who Mansur was. In the ghazal he is the examplar of a devoted lover of God, whose ecstatic cry anal haqq—‘I am God’—expressed a sense of complete oneness with his Divine Beloved;but to the orthodox it was horrendous blasphemy, punishable by death.

  A whole stock of other symbols, not represented in the selections in this book, serves a similar purpose, and makes possible a conciseness and richness of expression which is one of the hallmarks of a good ghazal.

  Eleven Ghazals of Ghalib

  I invite you now to read a few ghazals. They are not complete: from each I have selected couplets that Urdu speakers are most likely to be familiar with, and which don’t need much explanation. The essential thing to remember is that each couplet stands on its own in terms of meaning, and needs to be appreciated on its own. In the first three ghazals I have attempted to give some of the unifying effects of the rhyme scheme, while in others, the beat of the metre is intended to convey something of the same effect. Sometimes, as in the Urdu, the rhyming phrase is several words long, (as ‘Like this’ in ghazal II, or ‘before my eyes’ in ghazal III) and the repetition of this phrase has the effect of creating a sense of association with the otherwise quite separate couplets.

  I

  The fair are cruel? What of it? They are fair

  Sing of their grace, their swaying symmetry.

  nahin nigaar ko ulfat na ho, nigaar to hai

  ravaani e ravish o masti e ada kahiye

  Spring is soon fled? What of it? It is spring.

  Sing of its breezes, of its greenery.

  nahin bahaar ko fursat, na ho, bahaar to hai

  taraavat e chaman o khoobi e hava kahiye

  Your ship has reached the shore. Why cry to God

  Against your captain’s cruel tyranny?

  safeena jab ki kinaare pe aa laga, Ghalib

  khuda se kya sitam o jaur e naa-khuda kahiye

  II

  You stand away, and purse your lips, and show their rosebud form

  I said ‘How do you kiss?’ Come, kiss my lips and say,‘Like this!’

  ghuncha e naa-shagufta ko door se mat dikha ki yun

  bose ko poochhta hoon main, munh se mujhe bata ki yun

  How does she steal your heart? Why ask? She does not speak a word—