A Thousand Yearnings

by Ralph Russell

  Of these three couplets the first is by Shefta, a contemporary of Ghalib, the second by Shad, a twentieth-century poet, and the third by Qaim, a contemporary of Mir. Other pieces in this book give examples of how naturally Urdu speakers use ghazal couplets to comment on their everyday lives.

  Throughout the history of Urdu literature there have been major figures who owe their fame solely to the fact that they were ghazal poets. Even those modern poets who write mainly in other forms all write ghazals too; and some of the best-known songs in the immensely popular Indian films are ghazals.

  The ghazal’s lasting popularity is not difficult to understand. It celebrates those who have the courage in the face of all difficulties to stand by their love, be it a human lover, or devotion to God, or to the ideals to which they dedicate themselves. As long as people who do that are honoured, as one hopes they always will be, the ghazal is not likely to lose its appeal.

  THE LIVES OF POETS

  The Lives of Poets

  By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Urdu was beginning to be more commonly used for prose writing. A major role in producing this change was a modernizing movement called the ‘New Light’, which I will introduce you to in the following section. But it so happens that some of the best prose writing of this period is about the lives of poets and poetic culture of the preceding age—the period in which Ghalib lived—so it seems appropriate to read these first.

  The outstanding example of writing about the classical poets is by Muhammad Husain Azad (1830–1910), in a book called Ab i Hayat. (This means ‘The Water of Life’,* but Urdu titles rarely give any indication of what the book is about. Urdu readers might know the story and understand that Azad is claiming immortality for his work.) It gives a historical account of Urdu poetry in which the liveliest parts are descriptions of the individual poets. Ab-i-Hayat is his best and most famous work but he also wrote educational books for schools and a voluminous study of the life and times of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (1556–1605).

  The first piece in this section is an extract about Nasikh (1771–1838), a contemporary and friend of Ghalib. In it Azad not only traces his development as a poet, but is also at pains to give a picture of him as a man. We also get a sense of what it was like to be a poet at this time. The ability to compose poetry was regarded as one of the normal accomplishments of an educated man, but anyone who aimed to make his mark as a poet was expected to serve an apprenticeship under an ustad—a masterpoet—submitting his verses to him for correction until such time as his ustad considered that he no longer needed instruction. Only a minority made poetry a full-time occupation, and unless they were wealthy they would need to find a patron. To support poets and scholars was considered the proper function of those who were in a position to do so. Once a poet had achieved eminence the position of poet and patron was reversed: it was not the aspiring poet who sought the patron but the aspiring patron who sought the poet. Often the patron of a great poet would hope to achieve poetic fame himself, and would appoint the poet as his ustad. Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor before the British put an end to the Mughal Empire after the great revolt of 1857, was both the patron and the shagird (apprentice in poetry) of Ghalib.

  The next piece is by Abdul Halim Sharar (1860–1926). He is mainly known as a historical novelist, but his best work, from which this extract is taken, is a vivid and comprehensive treatment of life in old Lucknow, the capital of the princely state of Oudh* (or Awadh) and a centre of cultural life that rivalled Delhi. It is the story of a famous singer, which illustrates that it was not only poets who enjoyed the patronage of the great, and the independence which their great reputation ensured them. Men of learning and accomplished artistes held the same position.

  The extract from the writing of Farhatullah Beg (1883–1947) gives a brilliantly imagined account of the last mushaira held in Delhi under the patronage of the Mughal Emperor before the uprising of 1857. The mushaira—described in the section on Love Poetry†—was a gathering at which a number of poets would recite their verse. All the poets who feature in this one were historical figures, and part of the appeal of his account lies in the knowledge which the reader has—and which the participating poets did not have—that their world was about to end abruptly in disaster.*

  Of all the nineteenth-century poets, Ghalib was the one whom later generations found most memorable. It was his personality as well as his poetry which made so strong an impact—a personality vividly revealed in a book by his younger colleague, Altaf Husain Hali (1837–1914).Yadgar i Ghalib (A Memoir of Ghalib) was published in 1897. Most of it consists of selections from, and commentary on, Ghalib’s Urdu and Persian prose and verse, but the first part portrays his life and character.

  Finally, there are a few extracts from Ghalib’s own letters. The publication of his Urdu letters was itself a landmark in the history of Urdu prose. There is some irony in this, for he prided himself (justifiably) on his command of classical Persian, and for most of his life he had strongly maintained the opinion that, not only for prose, but for poetry too, Persian was still the only proper medium. When in 1858, an admirer of his suggested publishing a collection of his Urdu letters he emphatically forbade him to do so:

  As for your wish to publish the Urdu letters,that...is unnecessary. Only a few of them were written with proper thought and care, and apart from these few the rest are just what came on the spur of the moment. Their publication would diminish my stature as a writer.

  But ten to eleven years later he had changed his view of the matter, and not only approved of publication but himself helped in collecting letters from the friends to whom he had written. The bulk of them date from after 1857, and it was the circumstances of that terrible time that made them what they are—an intimate, vivid and frank picture of himself. A first volume was published in 1869, the year of his death. The seal of approval thus conferred on natural prose by a great poet must have done a lot to bring about general acceptance of Urdu as a literary medium.

  * For the story of the Water of Life see p. 132.

  * The eastern half of what is now Uttar Pradesh.

  †See p. 148.

  * On the impact of 1857, see p. 290.

  Nasikh: Portrait of a Poet

  MUHAMMAD HUSAIN AZAD

  Nasikh told one of his friends, ‘In those days Mir was still living. My love of poetry was such that I could not restrain my ardour, and one day I went secretly to him and showed him several ghazals. He would not look at them.’ (One would like to know what Mir said to him; it is not likely that Nasikh will have told anybody!) ‘I went away disappointed. But I said to myself, “Well, Mir Sahib is only a man, not an angel. I’ll correct my verses myself.” So I would compose verses and put them aside. After some days I would look at them again, make any improvements I felt necessary and again put them aside. After a while I would again look at them at my leisure and revise them. In short, I went on writing. But I never recited anything [at a mushaira] until I was fully satisfied with it.’

  He goes on to say that he would attend mushairas, but so long as the established poets of the day were alive he would only listen, and never recite. ‘When the field was clear I began to recite.’

  Like anyone with a classical education he knew the numerical value assigned to each letter of the alphabet, and used this in daily life. For instance when he said ‘Ya Ghafur!’ (Ghafur being one of the names of Allah—the forgiving one) the numerical value of the letters added up to 1297. So:

  ...From his earliest years he loved physical exercise. He would do 1297 press-ups daily, that being the numerical value of Ya Ghafur. He did this exercise regularly, and without fail, and on occasion would increase the number of press-ups. His physique was well-suited to all this. He was tall, and broad in the chest. He kept his head shaved, and would sit there wearing nothing but a loincloth, like a lion about to spring. Even in the winter he wore only a shirt of fine cloth, or at the most one made of chintz.r />
  He took only one meal every twenty-four hours, but he would then make up for all the meal times he had missed, and eat five kilos of the finest food. When a particular fruit was in season, on any day when he felt like eating it, he would not take a regular meal. For example, when mangoes were in season he would one day have several basketsful brought to him, have some troughs filled with water, put the mangoes in them, and not stop eating until he had emptied all of them. When he ate corn on the cob, as he often did, he would finish up with the cobs piled in heaps around him. He dined in this way on fruit, each in its season, only two or three times in the season,and two or three friends would join him in this.

  He usually dined alone. Everyone knew when his mealtime was. When the time for the zuhr prayer drew near everyone would leave him. [A friend of his told me:] ‘Once or twice I had occasion to eat with him. That day he had had food sent for from the bazaar. There were four or five bowls of qurma and kababs. In one bowl was the meat of some bird. There were turnips, beetroot and two kinds of lentils—and all this for him alone. But he finished it all. It was a rule with him to finish off one bowl at a time. The servant would take away the empty bowl and set another down in front of him. It was out of the question for him to put two kinds of food in his mouth at once. He used to say that if you mixed things you spoilt their taste. Then he would eat pulao (or some other rice dish). Then lentils, and after every four or five mouthfuls, chutney, or pickle or whatever... He used to say,“I’m an old man, but I eat better than you youngsters...” But he was a huge man, and strong with it, and when you looked at him you would feel that four or five kilos of food were nothing to him.’

  ...The late Agha Kalb e Husain Khan often used to invite him to his house, where he would detain him as his guest for months together. One day he had his cook prepare some special dishes for him. This took a little longer than usual. Nasikh saw some servants bringing their food and called them across.‘Who is this food for?’ he asked. They said,‘It’s for us.’ He said,‘Bring it here,’ had four or five of them set down their food before him, ate it all, wiped the bowls, gave them back to them and told them, ‘When my food comes you can eat that.’

  His routine was to begin his exercises three hours before dawn and go on with them until the morning...Then he would bathe and have cane chairs set out in the spotlessly clean courtyard; or, when he sat inside, the room would be furnished with carpets and adorned with other things. During the morning his friends and pupils in poetry would come to visit him. At midday they would all leave, and he would close the doors and sit down to eat. This was heavy work, and he would then take up this heavy load and take a rest. Visitors would begin arriving again at asar. * At maghrib they would all leave. He would close the doors, send the servants away, and lock the door from the inside. On the flat roof he had a room to which he could retire. He would go there, sleep a while, and then begin to compose poetry. The world would be sleeping, and dead silence prevailed. And he, instead of sleeping, would write the poetry into which he poured his heart’s blood. When his pupils brought him their verses to correct his servants would put them in a coarse cloth bag and put it down beside him. [During the night] he would correct them. Then, when the last watch of the night began, he would put the papers away and begin his exercises again.

  He was a stickler for etiquette. He would sit with his back against a bolster. His pupils, most of whom were the sons of well-to-do and noble families, would come and sit respectfully at the edge of the carpet, not daring to breathe a word. He would be thinking, and writing something. Then he would put down the paper he had been writing on and give a grunt. One of them would begin to recite his ghazal. Wherever all that was needed was a change of words, or of the word-order, he would make the necessary correction. Or he would say,‘That’s nothing. Cut it out,’ or ‘The first (or the second) line of the couplet isn’t good. Change it.’ Or, ‘That’s a good rhyme, but it isn’t appropriate here. Try harder.’ When the first one had finished, the second would read out his verse. Nobody dared to speak.

  He was a very courteous man, but was often so lost in his own thoughts that people who did not know him thought him indifferent or arrogant. [One visitor, an accomplished poet of Urdu, tells how he once visited him.] ‘He was sitting on a stool with a few of his friends around him seated on cane chairs. I went and stood before him and paid my respects to him. He said in a voice even deeper than his huge body would have led one to expect, “Well, sir? What brings you here?” I said,“There is a couplet of a classical Persian poet which I do not understand.” He said, “I am not a Persian poet,” and at once turned to talk to someone else. I was sorry I had come, and reproached myself for having done so.’

  One day someone came to call on him. He was sitting with some of his friends in the small courtyard. His visitor was carrying a stick, and it so happened that there was a little mound of earth just in front of where he was standing. As people commonly do, he began to demolish this with the end of his stick. Nasikh called a servant, and when the man came said to him,‘Fill a basket with earth and put it down in front of this gentleman. Then he can amuse himself to his heart’s content.’

  On one occasion a friend had given Nasikh a present of three glass spoons. Spoons like this were a novelty in those days and were really very beautiful. Nasikh had placed them on a niche at his side. A young nobleman who had come to visit him noticed them and asked him, ‘Where did you buy these spoons, sir, and how much did they cost?’ Nasikh told him how he had come by them. His visitor picked up a spoon and said how much he admired it. Then as he went on talking he kept tapping the floor with it until he tapped too hard and it broke in two. Nasikh took another spoon, handed it to him and said,‘Now play with this one.’

  One day he was being pestered by a visitor who sat there showing no sign of leaving. Nasikh called a servant and told him to bring him the box in which he kept his documents. When he did so Nasikh took out the deeds of his house, laid them before his visitor, and said to the servant,‘Now bring some men to move the furniture out.’ His visitor looked at him aghast, and the servant too was dumbfounded. Nasikh said, ‘What are you staring at? He’s taken possession of the house. I don’t want him to miss out on the furniture.’

  Nasikh never entered anyone’s service. He had resources of his own, and the generosity of his admirers enabled him to live in affluence. On the first occasion of his coming to Allahabad, Raja Chandu Lal [a would-be patron] sent him twelve thousand rupees and invited him to come to him. Nasikh wrote to him, ‘I have a patron who is a Sayyid,* and I cannot leave him. When I leave here I shall go to Lucknow.’ The Raja wrote again, and sent him fifteen thousand rupees, urging him to come. ‘If you come,’ he wrote, ‘I shall have you made Poet Laureate. You will not be required to attend regularly at court; you may come to see me whenever you please.’ He declined the offer, and deposited the money with Agha Kalb e Husain Khan and drew on it when he needed it. And this was not his only resource. Nawab Motamid ud Daula, [an important noble at the court of the king of Oudh] and his son were always visiting him, and gifts and tributes would reach him from all sides. He ate well on the proceeds and enabled others to do so too, entertaining Sayyids and funding pilgrims to Mecca and visitors to shrines. He lived an independent life, visiting and staying as a guest wherever he pleased, and his hosts considered it an honour to have him.

  Ghazi ud Din Haider, the King of Oudh, formally acknowledged that he ruled as the vassal of the Mughal Emperor. Though the British acknowledged the Emperor, they encouraged Ghazi ud Din Haidar to assume the title of King, thus virtually declaring independence. It seems that Nasikh disapproved of their doing so:

  On one occasion when Nasikh was at the height of his fame Ghazi ud Din Haidar said to his minister, ‘If Shaikh Nasikh will attend my court and recite an ode in my praise I will confer on him the title of Poet Laureate.’ When the minister, who was Nasikh’s respectful pupil, conveyed this message to him he was much put out, and said, ‘Mirza Sulaiman Shikoh
[the representative of the Mughal Emperor in Lucknow] can bestow that title when he is king. Or the British Government can. What do I want with his title?’ Whereupon the king banished him from Lucknow... But when Ghazi ud Din Haidar died he came back.

  Nasikh died in his own home and was buried there. People say that he was sixty-four or sixty-five when he died, but [my informant says that] he must have been nearly 100.

  * Asar and maghrib: The two prayers said respectively in mid-afternoon and just after sunset.

  * Sayyids claim to be descended from the Prophet’s daughter Fatima and are revered accordingly.

  The King and the Singer

  ABDUL HALIM SHARAR

  In the days when Ghazi ud Din Haidar was King of Oudh [1814– 1827] there lived in Lucknow, in Gola Ganj, a superb singer named Haidari Khan. Because of his awkward, independent nature people called him Crazy Haidari Khan. Ghazi ud Din Haidar very much wanted to hear him sing, but so far had not been able to.

  One afternoon he went out, carried in his palanquin, to take the air by the riverside. As they passed under the Rumi Gate someone saw Haidari Khan passing by. They told the king,‘Light of the World, that is Haidari Khan.’ Ghazi ud Din Haidar was very pleased and ordered him to be brought to him. The King said, ‘Well, Haidari Khan, won’t you ever let me hear you sing?’ He replied, ‘Certainly I will but I don’t know where you live.’ The King burst out laughing and said,‘All right, come with me. I’ll take you there myself.’ ‘Very well,’ he said, and went along with him. They had almost reached Chattar Manzil [the King’s palace] when Haidari Khan flew off the handle and said,‘I’m coming with you, but I won’t sing unless you give me puris and cream to eat.’The King promised he would. They reached the palace and the King sat down and began to listen to his singing. In no time at all he was so overwhelmed by it that he was lost in ecstasy. At this Haidari Khan stopped singing. The King asked him to continue, but instead he said, ‘This tobacco you have in your hookah seems very, very good. What shop do you get it from?’The King too was a man of unpredictable temperament and his eccentric behaviour was well known. He was put out by this question, but his companions told him,‘Light of the World, you know that he’s crazy. He still doesn’t know who he’s talking to.’