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Shahryar’s Ghazals: Of Dreams, Desire and Despair
Jo chaahti hai duniya woh mujhse nahin hoga
Samhjauta koi khwaab ke badle nahin hoga
(I cannot do what the world wants me to
I cannot make a compromise in exchange for my dream)
The Marriage of Tradition and Modernity
Ya tere ilawa bhi kisi shay ki talab hai
Ya apni muhabbat pe bharosa nahin hum ko
(Is it that I hanker for anything apart from you
Or, is it that I do not trust my love for you)
SHAHRYAR’S GREATEST contribution to modern Urdu literature is the ease with which he brought together the traditional and the contemporary idiom. Well versed in the rigours of the ghazal and the exactitude demanded by the Urdu sher due to its compactness and brevity, he devised new ways of expressing new concerns – almost like a master vintner pouring new wine in old bottles. In the process, he infused the Urdu ghazal with a new rang (colour) and ahang (melody). Sample the following sher with its near-perfect proportion in the time-honoured metre, yet its startlingly new lehja (tone). Shahryar’s use of new terms, new that is to the Urdu poet, is best exemplified through words such as latpat in the sher below:
Khoon mein latpat ho gaye saaye bhi ashjaar ke
Kitne gahre waar thay khushboo ki talwar ke
(Even the shadows of the trees were smeared in blood
So deep were the slashes caused by the sword of fragrance)
Or,
Yeh ajab hai ke ik khwaab se rishta hai humara
Din dhalte hi dil doobne lagta hai humara
(Strange is this connection I have with a dream
My heart begins to sink as the day begins to end)
A word about the Urdu ghazal before we launch into Shahryar’s use and appropriation of it. An Arabic word meaning an ‘amatory ode’ or ‘talking to women’, its primary subject has all along been romantic love. Coming to Urdu in a virtually unbroken tradition from Arabic through Persian, the ghazal flowered dramatically in eighteenth-century India in the hands of poets such as Mir Taqi Mir and Sauda Mohammad Rafi. Covering a vast expanse from Delhi to the Deccan, Urdu poets made the ghazal a thing of rare and exquisite beauty, glittering like burnished gold and capable of saying the most profound things in the fewest possible words. Some of the greatest exponents of the ghazal – poets such as Hatim, Sauda, Mir, Ghalib, Daagh, Zauq and, in more recent times, Hasrat Jaipuri and Jigar Moradabadi or Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Ahmad Faraz – have each in their own way pulled Urdu poetry out of the thrall of romanticism. While retaining the classical idiom and syntax of the three distinct genres, namely the ghazal, masnavi and qasidah, they have made Urdu poetry speak of newer concerns.
While every age has produced its ‘modernists’– those who have introduced new concepts and ideas and manipulated the time-honoured constraints of the ghazal with greater ingenuity and dexterity – the structure of the ghazal has remained constant and immutable. The two lines, each called a misra, which together constitute a sher, have been considered enough in themselves to complete a thought that may or not be picked up or echoed in subsequent verses of the same ghazal. The first sher is called a matla, and the last sher is called a maqta (which more often than not contains the pen name or takhallus of the poet); there must be a minimum of five sher in a ghazal. Then there’s the radeef and qafiya, two prerequisites for the poetic composition to be deemed a ghazal. The qafiya is the rhyming pattern of words that must directly precede the ghazal’s radeef, usually following a rhyme scheme of aa, ba, ca, da, and so on. In the following ghazal by Shahryar, which we will take up again later in this chapter, the radeef is hai and the following pattern of words is the qafiya: kahin kuchh kam, zameen kuchh kam, yaqeen kuchh kam
Zindagi jaisi tawaaqo thi nahin kuchh kam hai
Har gharhi hota hai ehsaas kahin kuchh kam hai
Ghar ki taameer tasawwur hi mein ho sakti hai
Apne naqshe ke mutabiq yeh zameen kuchh kam hai
Bichhrhe logon se mulaqat kabhi phir hogi
Dil mein ummeed to kaafi hai yaqeen kuchh kam hai
The fixed prosody and structure of the ghazal demands great exactitude from the poet; at the same time, contrary though it may sound, this very fixedness allows a lazy poet to get away merely with stringing together the right words in the correct sequence and managing to make an impact both visually (through word images) or aurally (through the intrinsic musicality of the chosen word combinations). Often when you read a sher carefully or get past the tilismic enchantment of the words, you find the sher to be a chimera, amounting to nothing more than stardust. While a nazm absolutely must say something to justify its existence, a ghazal can get away with just sounding great but meaning very little, or at best presenting no startling new idea or thought. While a nazm is read, a ghazal is always recited, precisely because of its inherent musicality. In fact, many a ghazal-go, a practitioner of the ghazal, has earned his/her reputation by virtue of their tarannum, or stylized recitation. It is noteworthy that Shahryar never ever recited his ghazals in tarannum in the mushairas where he was a much sought-after poet; and he never ever used a takhallus in the maqta of his ghazal.1
The structural fixedness of the ghazal has caused many to question what precisely it is. Is the ghazal no more than a prosodic structure, the judicious, or rather felicitous, use of a single metre and rhyme in all the couplets (sher) that comprise a ghazal? Is the ghazal no more than a string of randomly strung pearls?2 Or, for that matter, why just pearls?
Ralph Russell, the pre-eminent Urdu scholar whose life’s mission was to make Urdu literature accessible to English readers, that is, to those who are sufficiently interested in the language and literature but are either daunted by reading about it in Urdu or simply unable to do so due to the constraints of the script, has tried to make the ghazal comprehensible. In a long essay entitled ‘Understanding the Urdu Ghazal’ he writes about how, from his first ‘encounter’ with the ghazal as a student, he has been convinced that ‘to understand and appreciate the ghazal is the most difficult task that confronts the modern Western student of Urdu literature; and as my own understanding increased, I have become equally convinced that this is a task which, once accomplished, brings the greatest reward … in the typical ghazal, including some of the very best ones, not every couplet is a pearl, or, indeed, a precious or semi-precious stone of any kind. It is not a string of pearls, but a string on which are threaded, in apparently haphazard order, pearls, rubies, pretty pebbles, and cheap beads of plain coloured glass, uniform in size and shape but not in anything else.’3
Zehra Nigah, the veteran Urdu poet from Pakistan, put it differently when she told me, almost nonchalantly, that even the finest poets will have a few ‘bharti ke sher’ that serve as no more than padding, and the ghazal by its very nature is seldom a thing of constant beauty.4
Another question that has vexed many a lover of Urdu poetry is: must the ghazal convey one mood or be written entirely in one tone? Hali, who was the first of the modernists, believed there was no need. Others such as Hasrat Mohani and Firaq Gorakhpuri maintained that it should. Modern poets have increasingly done away with the need to maintain a tone and tenor throughout every sher of a ghazal for, strictly speaking, a sher must be complete and meaningful in itself; there is no requirement for a preceding or following sher in a ghazal to pick the mood and see it through; only the radeef–qafiya are required to be consistent, not the subject, for the ghazal – unlike the nazm – is supposed to be free of a topic or title. As Baidar Bakht notes:
People like Josh, Akhtarul Iman and Fehmida Riyaz were/are ‘against’ the genre of ghazal because there is no unity in its verses. In most of Shahryar’s ghazals, there is a continuity of thought. So, one can say that his ghazals are like nazms. However, it should be noted that a line or a stanza of a nazm can hardly stand on its own. A verse of a ghazal – even those by Shahryar – is capable of presenting a complete thought.5
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bsp; Others too have commented on this movement in Shahryar’s ghazal – a ripple-like quality, as though a chain of thought moves seamlessly from one verse to the next. That Shahryar is better known for his ghazals rather than his nazms is, according to Gulzar, precisely because a sher in his ghazal doesn’t stop at being an example, a sample at best; it moves on and on to the next and then the next sher in the ghazal. There is a tasalsul, a continuum.6 As you proceed from one verse to the next there is a seamless quality that is very much like a nazm’s fluidity. For instance:
Ek hi dhun hai ke is raat ko dhalta dekhoon
Apni in aankhon se suraj ko nikalta dekhoon
Aye junoon tujh se taqaza hai yahi dil ka mere
Shahr-ummeed ke naqshe ko badalta dekhoon
Chahe tareeki mukhalif ho hawa dushman ho
Mishal-e dard ko har haal mein jalta dekhoon
(I only long for this night to come to an end
And to see the sun rise with my own eyes
The only demand my heart makes of you, O passion
That I may see the contours of this city of hope change
Even if darkness is the opponent and wind the enemy
Let the torch of pain remain lit under every circumstance)
Here’s an entire ghazal by Shahryar, one that presents a perfect example of maintaining a mood and moment in its entirety:
Zindagi jaisi tawaaqo thi nahin kuchh kam hai
Har gharhi hota hai ehsaas kahin kuchh kam hai
Ghar ki taameer tasavvur hi mein ho sakti hai
Apne naqshe ke mutabiq yeh zameen kuchh kam hai
Bichhrhe logon se mulaqat kabhi phir hogi
Dil mein ummeed to kaafi hai yaqeen kuchh kam hai
Ab jidhar dekhiye lagta hai ki is duniya mein
Kahin kuchh cheez zyada hai kahin kuchh kam hai
Aaj bhi hai teri doori hi udaasi ka sabab
Yeh alag baat ki pahli si nahin kuchh kam hai
(Life is not as we had imagined but somewhat less
Every moment I realize something is a bit less
A home can be built only in one’s imagination
According to my map, this land is a bit less
One day we will meet those who have parted
There’s hope aplenty in my heart though belief is a bit less
Now wherever you look in this world you feel
Something is in excess and something a bit less
Even today distance from you is the reason for sadness
It’s another matter that it isn’t like before but a bit less)
Even a modern ghazal poet such as Shahryar is profoundly aware of the long and proud tradition of the form. And so, when there is a departure or an outright rejection, as for instance a rejection of traditional metre, it does not mean a laxity on the part of the poet; in fact, extreme care goes into the improvisation and subsequent evolution of new sound as is evident in this sher that best exemplifies a modern sensibility poured into a time-honoured genre:
Guzra tha raat bhi koi dariya labon ke paas se
Kitni ajeeb pyaas hai kam to huyi bujhi nahin
(A river ran past my lips once again last night
What a strange thirst this is that lessened but wasn’t quenched)
Munibur Rahman, the Urdu writer and poet who was also Shahryar’s close friend, wrote in Ism-e Azam:
His poetry is a collection of small everyday experiences, experiences that though simple and familiar, nevertheless contain a deep philosophical truth within them. Their dream-like quality incites the reader to curiosity, and it seems as though the ambience of the setting sun has transformed everything and we who are watching the spectacle of the sun going down are talking to ourselves.7
Early in Shahryar’s career, Munib sahab put his finger to the nub of the peculiar feeling evoked by Shahryar; there is, indeed, a sense of someone talking to himself in much of Shahryar’s poetry and we as readers become a part of that process. From the first collection itself, Shahryar was also articulating a host of issues and finding ‘common cause’ with his readers: despondency over the social and political state of affairs in the two decades following Independence, the sense of dislocation that came as a natural corollary to urban life, bitterness over broken dreams and failed promises and yet an unfailing optimism that soared above the small sorrows and despairs and caused him to look at the future with hope. Given below are some scattered examples from the ghazals in Ism-e Azam:
Shahr phir shahr hai yahan ji to bahal jaata hai
Shahr se bhaag ke sahra ko na jaa, maan bhi jaa
(The city is after all a city, it can distract the heart
Don’t leave the city for the wilderness, listen to me)
*
Laakh khurshid sar-e-baam agar hain to rahein
Hum koi mom nahin ke pighal jaayenge
(Let a thousand suns skim the top of my terrace
I am not made of wax that I will melt)
*
Tujh se bichhrhe hain to ab kis se milati hai humein
Zindagi dekhiye kya rang dikhati hai humein
(Separated from you, who will we meet
Let us see what else life has to offer)
The early applause for Ism-e Azam caused many to look at Shahryar with special attention. Subsequent collections proved that the spark shown by the young poet was not the sort to be doused either by early adulation or the drudgery of daily life. The second collection, Saatwan Dar, appeared soon after, in 1969, followed by Hijr ke Mausam in 1978, Khwaab ka Dar Band Hai in 1985, Neend ki Kirchein in 1995 and Shaam Hone Wali Hai in 2004. Each collection served to buttress an already formidable reputation. Apart from the novelty of idiom and imagery, readers and critics alike were charmed by the confluence of tradition and modernity in his ghazals. He used the essence of classicism to light the lamp of the avant-garde and the forward looking. And as the debate between progressivism and modernism raged and divided the world of Urdu letters into two warring camps, it was this combination of seeming contraries that made Shahryar’s poetry defy easy categorization under labels of ‘tarraqui pasand’ and/or ‘jadeed parast’. And it is this, also, that makes Shahryar stand the test of time.
Noting how little in Shahryar’s poetic idiom is borrowed, veteran critic Khaliq Anjum, writing the foreword to Hijr ke Mausam, pointed out how the creative process is distilled in the poet’s mind through the filters of real events and real people. While he is influenced by the world around him, he remains consistent and constant, and that is why, according to Anjum, there is no confusion or equivocation in Shahryar’s poetry. Great art, he goes on to say, should be free of the confines of worldly or domestic matters (zamaan aur makaan ki qaid); at the same time, it can’t be disengaged from either. Much of Ghalib or Mir seems to apply to us and our world today; whereas over 150 years ago, when these verses were first written, they must have been influenced by their world. In Shahryar too, Anjum quite rightly points out, there is a great deal that is similarly free from the confines of zamaan aur makaan.
Shahryar has left behind vignettes of the actual process of crafting a ghazal. He has talked about how he has written (while sitting or lying down), when (at different times of the day and night), and where (on his bed or chair). If he managed to get the first four sher of a ghazal in place at the first shot, he knew he was on a home run; if not, a ghazal could take days, weeks, sometimes even months to complete. He would seldom make editorial changes or cut-and-paste and overwrite a ghazal; he might alter the sequence of a sher or he might substitute words that cause friction. Seldom, also, would he write a solo sher and leave it at that; he was impatient about completing a ghazal if ever he wrote a sher that he liked. He has also spoken of being his own most scrupulous critic and of not publishing something that he himself was not satisfied with.8
I asked several people, especially unabashed admirers of Shahryar, to point out flaws after a close critical reading of his poetry. The answers were illuminating.
Here is what Baidar Bakht had
to say: ‘If I force myself to find a flaw in Shahryar’s poetry, it would be the repetition of the same theme of thirst over and over. In his poetry, you can find scores of verses saying words to the same effect.’ As examples, he cites:
Shikwa mujhe darya ki ravaani se nahin hai
Rishta hi meri pyaas ka paani se nahin hai
(I have no complaint with the flow of the river
My thirst bears no relation to water)
Or
Umr-safar mein kab socha tha morh yeh aayega
Darya paas kharha hoon garche pyaasa nahin hoon main
(Who would have thought life would bring one
to this pass
Standing beside the river I am not thirsty at all)
Baidar Bakht elaborates: ‘Consider the expression umr-safar. Instead of saying umr ka safar, he has compounded the words. There are many examples of such unusual joining of words in his poetry.’9
Take the following sher:
Aise hijr ke mausam kab kab aatein hain
Tere alawa yaad humein sab aatein hain 10
(When do such seasons of separation arrive
Except for you, I remember everyone)
Javed Akhtar is almost offended by the use of ‘kab kab’, which he thinks is grammatically wrong and ungainly. On the other hand, Syed Muhammad Ashraf, while not a poet but nevertheless a litterateur and writer of some eminence, sees the same sher as a perfect example of Shahryar’s mastery over his craft. He cites it to illustrate how Shahryar’s poetry travels from the listener or reader’s ear to his heart, where it reveals itself fully. Ashraf goes on to cite this verse as an example of how a listener may derive pleasure once from listening to it, but a reader will read it again and again and derive pleasure from it on each reading despite the seeming simplicity of its arrangement and the choice of everyday ordinary words. There is no tarkeeb or izaafat, no extraordinary or unusual word or phrase; yet it shows an intermingling of emotions with thoughts to produce a memorable poetic experience. It compels the reader to think: which are those seasons when the lover does not remember the beloved? Had Shahryar said ‘Aise hijr ke mausam jab jab aate hain’, it would have changed the tone; the poet would have sounded as though he was making a close-ended announcement.
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