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Shahryar’s Nazms: Of Time, Topicality and Tautness
Sada
Jo ik jahan ko jaga rahi thi neend se
Sukuut ke saleeb ko salaam kar ke so gayi
Magar kisi ne is khabar ko ghaur se padhha nahin
The Call
(The one awakening a world from slumber
Went to sleep after greeting the cross of silence
But no one read this news with any attention)
The Ghazal v. the Nazm
Waqt ke Sehra Mein
Dhoop mein tanhai ki jismon ko jhulsaatey raho
Dooriyon ki sakht chattanon se takrate raho
Aur dilon mein khwahishon ki aag bhadkatey raho
Waqt ke sehra mein yunhi thokrein khaatey raho
In the Desert of Time
(Singe your bodies in the harsh glare of loneliness
Keep striking against the unyielding boulders
of distances
And keep stoking the bonfire of desires in your heart
Keep stumbling like this in the desert of time)
WHILE SHAHRYAR’S fame rests on his ghazals, he has also written a great many nazms – a genre of Urdu poetry characterized by continuity of thought and theme rather than rhyme or prosody. Asked which genre he personally favoured of the two, his answer was typically individualistic:
Contrary to popular perception, I find writing the nazm far more difficult than the ghazal. The ghazal has been around for a very long time; we are familiar with its constraints and we have learnt to speak within its confines. The nazm, with its newness and its boundless freedom, is more challenging. A poet must be more exact, more precise, more sure of himself while writing the nazm. It does not have the safety net of the ghazal’s rhyme pattern to fall back on. At the same time, it is more difficult to say something new in the ghazal. Therein lies its challenge.1
Shahryar’s nazms are more personal, more direct, than his ghazals. He is able to show more of himself in them. His penchant for bringing the everyday idiom into poetic vocabulary is also more evident in the nazms, possibly because the form allows their usage and Shahryar exploited this possibility in the most advantageous manner. He, in fact, seized this space and utilized it to the fullest and can be credited with crafting a new lexicon. Shahryar’s nazms are remarkable not merely for the range of issues they raise but also as significant experiments with language and content.
Writing the introduction to Ism-e Azam, Waheed Akhtar, litterateur, critic and professor of philosophy at Aligarh, hailed Shahryar as an important young voice. Despite the abundance of dark images and talk of sorrows and angst, he believed Shahryar’s was a ‘healthy’ voice and ‘healthy’ mind, for he spoke of fighting one’s demons, not of giving in. Stressing why Shahryar’s poetry should be read with care and attention, he wrote:
So far modern poetry and modern poets have not been viewed in a sympathetic light. But if we were to take off the spectacles of bias, and view these attempts to look at the new experiments and search for new meanings and expressions in the form of the nazm not as biddat (innovation), we might be able to find much that will add to our existing knowledge. Shahryar’s nazms are a fine example of the sort of short poetry that is being experimented with over the past eight to ten years. The best thing about Shahryar’s nazms is that they are neither puzzles nor riddles, neither jokes nor limericks, but such pieces of his heart that reveal the literary taste and temperament of our time and age as well as the heart’s blood of today’s Everyman.2
Talking about the difference between the ghazal and the nazm from his own viewpoint, a difference that we must understand and appreciate fully, this is what Shahryar himself has to say:
What I cannot say in the ghazal, I try and say in the nazm, and what I cannot say in the nazm, I say in the ghazal. And I don’t feel the slightest contradiction between the two. And sometimes I create a ghazal-like feeling in my nazms, and I do not consider it a flaw.3
Younger than the ghazal by several centuries, the ghazal and the nazm are not adversaries. Urging the poet to discard the artificial (masnoohi), turn-of-the-century poets and critics like Altaf Hussain Hali (1837–1914) and Muhammad Hussain Azad (1830–1910) – who formed a bridge between the old and the new, the traditionalists and the moderns – drew the readers’ attention to Western poetry and encouraged experimentation in both form and content. Hali was especially harsh on the Urdu ghazal, going so far as to declare that either its edifice (imarat) must undergo repair and renovation (tarmeem) or it must go!4 On 9 May1874, speaking at the Anjuman-e Punjab in Lahore, Azad stressed the need for naturalism and realism in poetry, concerns that were picked up and articulated by the poets who rose to prominence in the early decades of the twenty-first century. After the pioneering efforts of Hali, Sir Muhammad Iqbal, Josh Malihabadi and an entire generation of progressive poets from Sahir Ludhianvi to Kaifi Azmi took the nazm to new heights, making it speak of newer, sharper, more political concerns. Technology also had a role to play in the popularization of the nazm. With the coming of the printing press and the widespread availability of books and magazines, poetry could be read, and not just heard at poetic symposiums and literary gatherings; the ghazal, which is meant to be recited, remained popular but with the proliferation of literary journals, a space was created for the nazm through the medium of print.5 And so a ghazal came to be understood as a feast for the ears; a nazm serves the eye.
Different from each other, yes, the ghazal and the nazm are by no means antithetical. However, liberated from the constraints of prosody, the nazm allows the poet to go where the ghazal does not, or cannot. Discarding the usual analogy of the ghazal affording an experience akin to listening to the radio and the nazm to reading a book, N.M. Rashid, poet, modernist critic and champion of the nayi shairi (new poetry) movement, offered his comparison of the two:
I rather think the difference between the ghazal and the nazm can best be described as the difference between the novel and the short story in their respective sweep and reach. They may be different, but they are both necessary. A writer who finds the expanse (wus’at) of the novel as spacious ‘as he wishes it to be’ (ba-qadr-e shauq) must certainly write a novel. Likewise, a short story writer must make use of the short story if he doesn’t consider this genre to be too narrow – ‘as narrow as a strait’ (zarf-e tangna). It is not for us to tell a writer to employ a specific genre … And yet no one has questioned the use of writing a novel now that the short story has come into vogue.6
A poet who is better known for his nazms than his ghazals, Gulzar asks us to read Shahryar’s ghazals more carefully and look at the nazms hidden behind them. Upon being asked to recite his poetry, Sharyar invariably recited a sher from one of his ghazals or an entire ghazal. And yet, as far as Gulzar is concerned, Shahryar’s lehja is that of the writer of a nazm. And that is possibly because Shahryar has more to say than can be contained in a two-line couplet. So, he continues his thought into the next. And if you pause at the end of a sher, then move to the next one, you find a nazm opening up before you.7 By way of example, Gulzar quotes the following ghazal and challenges you to decide whether this is a ghazal or a nazm despite the obvious syntactical and structural differences between these two distinct genres:
Tumhare shahr mein kuchh bhi huwa nahin hai kya?
Ki tumne cheekhon ko sachmuch suna nahin hai kya?
(Has nothing happened in this city of yours?
Have you really not heard the screams?)
And when you open the nazm behind this sher, you hear another sher:
Tamaam khalq-e khuda us jagah ruki kyun hai?
Yahan se aage ka raasta nahin hai kya?
(Why has everyone stopped at this place?
Is there no way forward from here?)
If you were to pause here for a bit, it moves and takes you along:
Lahu-luhan sabhi kar rahein hain suraj ko
Kisi ko khauf yahan raat ka nahin hai kya?
(Everyone is busy wounding t
he sun
Is no one here afraid of the night?)
Shahryar’s nazms are usually extremely short; in fact, he hasn’t written any nazm that is longer than a page. Gulzar seems to think that as Shahryar’s stature grew as a poet, his nazms kept becoming shorter and shorter, often no more than five or seven or nine lines in all, sometimes no more than three!8 ‘Honthon se Nahin Likhi’ (‘Not Written by Lips’), ‘Chupke se Idhar Aa Jao’ (‘Come Quietly Here’), ‘Hindustani Danishwaron ke Naam (‘In the Name of Indian Intelligentsia’), ‘Hawas Siwa Koi Nahin’(‘No One Save Lust’) – all these short poems have the effect of a long-drawn breath. Here is one that is all of four lines long, yet says exactly, and unequivocally, what the poet wants to say despite its brevity and compactness:
Hindustani Danishwaron ke Naam
Unhein zinda rahne ki thi hawas
Jo dikhhai dete thay hum-nafas
Kabhi roshni ke hisar mein
Kabhi chyuntiyon ki qataar mein
In the Name of the Indian Intelligentsia
(Those who were consumed by the greed to live
Those who appeared to be friends and companions
Sometimes in the circle of light
Sometimes in the trail of ants)
And sample this one:
Is umr ke safar ka
Kitna taweel rasta tai maine kar liya hai
Aur ab bhi taaza dum hoon
Bilkul nahin thaka hoon
Hairat ki baat kya hai?
(In this journey of life
I have travelled a great distance
Yet I feel refreshed
And not one bit tired
Why is that so strange?)
The haiku-like compactness of this early poem from Ism-e Azam holds the promise of a brevity that became Shahryar’s hallmark in later years:
Neend ka Sailaab
Yeh makaan
Yeh khwahishon aur aarzuon ke makaan
Dil ke us ujdey nagar mein
Aaj phir jinko sulagti dhoop mein taameer hai humne kiya
Raat ke hone talak dheh jaayeingey
Neend ke sailaab mein beh jaayeingey
The Torrent of Sleep
(These houses
These houses of hopes and desires
In the wasted city of my heart
I have raised them
Once again in the kindling light of the sun
They will cave in by nightfall
Swept away in the torrent of sleep)
And is perfected by the time we reach ‘Khwaab ka Dar Band Hai’:
Kahan Ho Tum
Huroof titliyon ke rang bann gaye
Khamoshiyon ko tool dengey, faasle badhaingey
Hum ek doosre se aur duur hotey jaayengey
Kahan ho tum?
Tumhari har dua qubool ho gayi
Where Are You
(Syllables take the colours of butterflies
We shall fuel silences, lengthen distances
We shall grow further apart
Where are you?
Your every prayer has been answered)
And also:
Dushman Duniya
Main hawaon ke bhanwar mein
Zind-o saalim khada hoon
Be-yaqeen makhlooq mujhko kostin hai
Maarne ko mujhko hila aur bahana dhoondtin hai
Aur jab main khudkushi karne ka karta hoon irada
Be-yaqeen makhlooq mujhko roktin hain
Inimical World
(I stand alive and tenacious
In the whirlpool of winds
The disbelievers curse me
They look for ruses and excuses to kill me
And when I decide to take my own life
The disbelievers stop me)
While writing a short nazm might appear easy, it poses a peculiar danger: it can either become devoid of any meaning whatsoever with nothing to show for itself save a spectacular image or an unusual turn of phrase, or it can become so flat in its brevity that it leaves no impression on the reader whatsoever. Shahryar does not seem to be attempting radical experiments in form and structure while writing his nazms; if anything, the same naturalness and ease that are the hallmark of his ghazals distinguish his nazms from his contemporaries. Just as he does not appear to be in thrall of the metres and cadences of traditional poetry, in the nazm too his focus seems to be not so much on producing something dazzling and new but to say what he wants in the way that he wants to. There are no verbal acrobatics, no play upon words and syntax; instead, there is an unpretentiousness, an unaffectedness and an artlessness. What does recur here, as in the rest of the oeuvre, is the same set of words and images: night, sleep, day, desert, dream, sleeplessness, silences, distances and so on.
Commenting on Shahryar’s felicity with extremely short nazms, Baidar Bakht notes:
Shahryar worked very hard to polish his poetry, so that he could express himself in as few words as possible; this attitude made him write highly successful short poems. I believe that his short poems are his biggest contribution to Urdu literature. I hasten to add that Akhtarul Iman was the pioneer of short poems, but these poems written on the fly could not become great poems. The short poems of Shahryar (and Munir Niyazi), on the other hand, were masterpieces.9
Let me offer examples of similarly short poems by some of Shahryar’s contemporaries whose influence is discernible in his poetry, especially in the nazms. First, Munir Niyazi (1923–2006):
Woh meri ankhon par jhuk kar kahti hai ‘main hoon’
Us ka saans mere honthon ko chhu kar kahta hai
‘main hoon’
Sooni diwaron ki khamoshi sargoshi mein kahti hai
‘main hoon’
‘Hum ghayal hain’ sab kahtey hain
Main bhi kahta hoon ‘main hoon’
(She bends over my eyes and says, ‘I am’
Her breath touches my lips and says, ‘I am’
The silence of desolate walls whispers, ‘I am’
‘We are wounded,’ everyone says
I too say, ‘I am’)
Then there is Shaz Tamkanat (1933–85), the poet from Hyderabad known for using simple words who, like Shahryar, taught Urdu and, like him, was deeply influenced by Khalilur Rehman Azmi for whom he wrote a nazm, whose last two lines are given below:
Main dafn hota chala hoon har ek dost ke saath
Ki shahr shahr hain bikhre huye mazaar mere
(I keep getting buried with every friend
My graves are scattered across cities)
And this by Akhtarul Iman (1915–95):
Dayaar-e-ghair mein koi jahan na apna ho
Shadeed karb ki ghadiyan guzaar chukne par
Kuchh ittefaq ho aisa ki ek shaam kahin
Kisi ek aisi jagah se ho yunhi mera guzar
Jahan hujum-e-gurezan mein tum nazar aa jaao
Aur ek ek ko hairat se dekhta rah jaaey!
(In this land of strangers where no one is one’s own
Having passed moments of extreme anguish
If it were to so happen that one evening somewhere
I were to pass by some place accidentally
And spot you in a fleeting crowd
And look at each other with surprise!)
While elaborating on a singular quality in Shahryar’s nazms, namely, brevity, Bakht compares Shahryar with Akhtarul Iman, whom he has translated and studied extensively, thus:
Brevity and the use of the metaphors of night and thirst strike me as the hallmarks of Shahryar’s poetry. He was not afraid to coin new expressions … Shahryar admired hugely the poetry of Akhtarul Iman and Faiz. In my presence, he told Akhtarul Iman that he had learned to write about life from his poems. Since Shahryar was somewhat drunk that day, there is no reason to believe that he was just flattering Akhtarul Iman. However, there is no similarity between his poetry and that of Akhtarul Iman or even Faiz. Unlike the former, Shahryar never used coarse words in his poetry. Akhtarul Iman never wrote a ghazal. Shahryar, on the other hand, wrote many ghazals.
Shahryar shows a great flair in the use of titles for his nazms: ‘Mera to Iraada Tha’ (‘I Had Planned’), ‘Chupke Se Idhar Aa Jaao’ (‘Come Softly Here’), ‘Jism ki Kashti Mein Aa’ (‘Come in the Boat of the Body’), ‘Chaukore Zameen Gole Hui’ (‘The Square Earth becomes Round’), ‘Shab-e Bedari ki Himayat Mein’ (‘In the Defence of Sleepless Nights’), ‘Raat ke Samandar ke Us Taraf’ (‘On the Other Side of the Sea of Night’), ‘Phir Safar Be-simt Be-manzil Huwa’ (‘Once Again, the Journey Becomes Without End Without Destination’), ‘Kiran Do Kiran Dhoop’ (A Beam or Two of Sunlight’), and so on.
Poetry Like Wet Sand
Ajeeb Kaam
Reit ko nichorh kar paani ko nikaalna
Bahut ajeeb kaam hai
Badey hi inhimaak se yeh kaam kar raha hoon main
A Strange Task
(To squeeze sand and take out water
Is a very strange task indeed
I have been doing this with great concentration)
The jadeed Urdu nazm shows greater influence of Western poets, such as T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender and others, than the ghazal. After 1857, poets such as Hali, who is among the earliest exponents of modern Urdu poetry, were influenced by Victorian poets such as Robert Browning. Well before the nazm came into its own, a new kind of mushaira had begun to be organized, under the active patronage of colonial mentors such as Colonel William Rice Moreland Holroyd (1835–1913) in Lahore, for instance, who expressly encouraged native poets to be weaned away from their preoccupations with courtly love and turn their attention towards facts and events.10 Under his influence, Hali and Azad began to exhort Urdu poets to look for a ‘radically new vision of the nature and goal of poetry’.
Apart from eloquent pleas for bringing in new form and content, the colonial patrons and the newly Westernized Urdu stylists began to urge poets to turn away from the decadent and decaying fabric of feudalism and look towards new vistas of thought and intellect. The Aligarh Movement, led by its visionary founder Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, had all along, through his influential journal Tehzeeb-ul Akhlaq, been talking about nechar (nature) and natural poetry along the lines of Milton and Shakespeare. Sir Syed’s advice was: ‘Bring your work even closer to nature. The extent to which a work comes close to nature is the extent to which it gives pleasure.’11
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