Shahryar

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Shahryar Page 11

by Rakhshanda Jalil


  Khauf jinpe taari hai

  Unmein eik main bhi hoon

  Unmein eik main bhi hoon

  I, Too, Am One of Them

  With the coming of autumn

  If nothing else

  Those who sit beneath

  These dense trees

  Will get up

  Those who have forgotten

  The long distances of unknown journeys

  Will remember once again

  The pleasures of journeys will stop them

  From remembering that

  Till the coming of autumn

  These very trees that gave them shelter

  Protected them from the harsh sun

  I, too, am one of those who dread

  The coming of autumn

  I, too, am one of them

  Chupke Se Idhar Aa Jao

  Darwaza-e jaan se ho kar

  Chupke se idhar aa jao

  Is barf bhari bori ko

  Peechhe ki taraf sarkao

  Har ghao pe bose chhidhko

  Har zakhm ko tum sahlao

  Mai taaron taki is shab ko

  Taqseem karoon yun sab ko

  Jageer ho jaisey meri

  Yeh arz na tum thukrao

  Chupke se idhar aa jao

  Come Softly Here

  Through the doorway of life

  Come softly here

  Gently nudge away

  This sack of ice

  Shower kisses on every wound

  Soothe every ache

  And I shall give away

  This star-studded night

  As though

  It’s my fiefdom

  Don’t reject my plea

  Come softly here

  Taaza Khabar

  Darindon ki larhai ki

  Koi taaza khabar jungal se aayi hai

  Ke mere shahr ke logon ke honthon ne

  Purani hijraton ki dastan chherhi

  Zameen ko chhorh kar unki nigahein aasman ki simt jaati hain

  Hawa sar khole paiham bain karti hai

  Mere kaanon ne aankhon ne

  Mujhe la kar kahan chhorha

  Koi taaza khabar jungal se aayi hai

  The Latest News

  The latest news

  Of duelling beasts

  Has just come from the jungle

  The people of my city

  Have once again

  Spun the story of old migrations

  Their eyes leave the ground

  And lift towards the skies

  Head uncovered, the wind laments

  Ceaselessly

  Where have my eyes, my ears

  Left me, stranded

  The latest news

  Has come from the jungle

  Bebasi ka Aitraaf

  Jab darindey jungalon se shahr ki jaanib chaley thay

  Raat thi

  Aur raat bhi kaali bahut thi

  Jugnuon ki fauj unki rahbar thi

  Saari duniya bekhabar thi

  Sabz faslon se unhein bhi dushmani thi

  Sabz faslon ki nigahbani pe lekin koi aamaada nahin tha

  Hum nihaththe thay, akeley thay

  Humarey paas bas aankhein thi

  Aur aankhein khalaon mein lakeerein kheenchne ke shaghal mein masruuf thin

  An Admission of Helplessness

  When the beasts left the jungles for the city

  It was night

  And a particularly dark one at that

  An army of fireflies had shown them the way

  While the rest of the world was unaware

  They, too, hated the green crops

  But no one was willing to watch over the green crops

  We were unarmed, and alone

  All we had were our eyes

  Eyes that were busy drawing lines in a void

  Maut

  Abhi nahin abhi zanjeer-e khwaab barham hai

  Abhi nahin abhi daaman ke chaak ka gham hai

  Abhi nahin abhi dar baaz hai ummeedon ka

  Abhi nahin abhi seene ka daagh jalta hai

  Abhi nahin abhi palkon pe khoon machalta hai

  Abhi nahin abhi kambakht dil dhadakta hai

  Death

  Not yet, the chain of dreams is still snarled

  Not yet, the torn fabric of my being still causes sorrow

  Not yet, the doorway of hopes is still ajar

  Not yet, the scars on my breast still smart

  Not yet, the blood on my eyelashes is still wet

  Not yet, this wretched heart still beats

  Bibliography

  INTERVIEWS

  Baidar Bakht (over email from Canada)

  Faiyyaz Rifat, Lucknow

  Gopi Chand Narang, Delhi

  Gulzar, Mumbai

  Hilal Fareed, London, UK

  Javed Akhtar, Mumbai/Delhi

  Mehjabeen Jalil, Delhi

  Mohammad Sajjad, Aligarh

  Munibur Rehman (over email from the US)

  Muzaffar Ali, Delhi

  S.A. Siddiqui, Delhi/Aligarh

  Sadiqur Rehman Kidwai, Delhi

  Sarwar-ul Huda, Delhi

  Syed Muhammad Ashraf, Kolkata

  Vijay Kumar Bajaj, Aligarh

  Zehra Nigah, Karachi/Delhi

  BOOKS

  Urdu

  Huda, Sarwar-ul (ed.), Shahryar, New Delhi, Maktaba Jamia, 2010

  Shahryar, Ism-e Azam, Aligarh, Indian Book House, 1965

  , Satwan Dar, Allahabad, Shabkhun Kitab Ghar, 1969

  , Hijr ke Mausam, New Delhi, Anjuman-e- Tarraqui-e Urdu, 1978

  , Khwaab Ka Dar Band Hai, Aligarh, Educational Book House, 1985

  , Neend ki Kirchein, Aligarh, Educational Book House, 1995

  , Shaam Hone Wali Hai, Aligarh, India Book House, 2004

  , Haasil-e-Sair-e Jahan (Kulliyat), India Book House, Aligarh, 2001

  , Kulliyat, Lahore, Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2008

  , Sooraj ko Nikalta Dekhoon (Kulliyat-e-Shahryar), Aligarh, Educational Book House, 2013

  Hindi

  Gulzar (ed.), Shahryar Suno: Chuninda Nazmein aur Ghazlein, New Delhi, Bhartiya Jnanpith, 2011

  Kamleshwar (ed.), Aaj ke Prasidh Shair Shahryar: Ghazlein, Nazmein, Sher aur Jivani, New Delhi, Rajpal, 2007

  Kumar, Prem, Baaton Mulaqaton Mein Shahryar, New Delhi, Vani Prakashan, 2013

  , Shaoor ki Dahleez, New Delhi, S.S. Publications, 2009

  Kumar, Suresh, Milta Rahunga Khwaab Mein: Shahryar ki Ghazlein aur Nazmein, New Delhi, Diamond Books

  Shahryar, Qafile Yaadon Ke, New Delhi, 1986

  English

  Bakht, Baidar and Marie-Anne Erki (Selected and Translated by), Selected Poetry of Shahryar, New Delhi, Sahitya Akademi, 2010

  Jalil, Rakhshanda, (tr.), Through the Closed Doorway: A Collection of Nazms by Shahryar, New Delhi, Rupa & Co., 2004

  Rosenstein, Ludmila, New Poetry in Hindi, Delhi, Permanent Black, 2003

  Shahryar, The Light of Dusk: Selected Poems of Shahryar, New Delhi, Sahitya Akademi, 2003

  , Influence of Western Criticism on Urdu Criticism, Aligarh

  JOURNALS/MAGAZINES

  Alfaaz, Aligarh, different issues

  Dabral, Manglesh, http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2722/stories/20101105272209400.htm

  Faruqi, Mehr Afshan, ‘Farewell, Shahryar’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLVII No. 21, May 26, 2012.

  , http://www.outlookindia.com/article/Farewell-Shahryar/279957.

  Hamari Zubaan, Anjuman-e Tarraqui-e Urdu (Hind), Aligarh, different issues

  Hasan, Mushirul, ‘Aligarh Muslim University: Recalling Radical Days’, India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. XXIX, Issues 3&4, 2003

  Jalil, Rakhshanda, India International Centre Quarterly, New Delhi

  , ‘Poems’, Annual of Urdu Studies, Vol. 17, Wisconsin-Madison, 2002

  , ‘Poems’, The Little Magazine, 3:5-6, New Delhi, 2003

  Khair-o-Khabar, Aligarh, different issues

  Sher-o-Hikmat (Poetry and Philosophy), co-edited by Shahry
ar and Mughni Tabassum, Hyderabad, different issues

  Notes

  1 From ‘Kunwar sahab’ to ‘Shahryar’

  1The Lalkhani are a Muslim Rajput community found in parts of north India. They are a subdivision of the Bargujar clan of Rajputs. The community is found mainly in the districts of Aligarh and Bulandshahar as well as Dataganj and Gunnaur tehsils of Badaun district in Uttar Pradesh. The term Lalkhani does not apply to all Muslim Bargujars, but like other Muslim Rajputs they retain certain practices from their Hindu past and exemplify a multicultural pluralistic way of life.

  2 From Prem Kumar, Shaoor ki Dahleez, New Delhi, S.S. Publications, 2009, p. 172. (All translations throughout this book are mine unless specified otherwise.)

  3 Ibid., p. 36.

  4 Anil Maheshwari, Aligarh Muslim University: Perfect Past and Precarious Present, New Delhi, UBSPD, 2001, pp. 19-20. He mentions Dr Piara Singh Gill, a renowned physicist who was brought in as head of the department of physics; as well as P. Venkateshwarlu, an expert in spectroscopy and microwaves; and A.N. Mitra, a theoretical physicist.

  5 Mushirul Hasan, ‘Aligarh Muslim University: Recalling Radical Days’, India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. XXIX, Issues 3 & 4, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 47-59.

  6 Anil Maheshwari, op. cit., p. 23.

  7 Hasan, op. cit. Hasan has listed several names in different fields such as Hadi Hasan of the department of Persian who had studied in London; Moonis Raza in the department of geography; Anwar Ansari of the department of psychology; A.B.M. Habibullah, Khaliq Ahmed Nizami, Muhibbul Hasan, Noorul Hasan and Irfan Habib in the department of history; Mukhtar Ahmed Ali in the department of English; Abdul Alim, Munibur Rehman and Maqbul Ahmed in the departments of Arabic and Islamic studies (notably, these men were liberals with a pronounced leaning towards the left, rather than the ‘Islamists’ or ‘fundamentalists’ one normally finds in these departments nowadays).

  8 For details of the career of Ale Ahmad Suroor, see Rakhshanda Jalil, ‘In Memorium: When Comes Such Another? Ale Ahmad Suroor’, Annual of Urdu Studies, Vol. 18, 2003, pp. 626-629. Suroor was professor and head of the department of Urdu at AMU from 1958 to 1974. His name will appear repeatedly in this narrative, given Shahryar’s close association with him and his extended family.

  9 Gopi Chand Narang has called this period ‘the last flicker of the golden age of Urdu literature after the Partition’ in an interview with the author.

  10 For details of his experiences in Aligarh, see Ralph Russell, Losses, Gains, New Delhi, Three Essays, 2010.

  11 Aligarh had, over the years, produced many known communists as well as socialists, the most notable being the firebrand Hasrat Mohani who had addressed the first congress of the Communist Party of India in 1925 and used the slogan ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ at a labour rally in Calcutta in December 1928. He was followed by Sardar Jafri, Sibte Hasan, Ansar Harvani, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and large numbers who eventually joined the Progressive Writers’ Movement, followed by Nurul Hasan, Moonis Raza and in more recent times Irfan Habib, Raza Imam, etc.

  12 In the introduction to his poetry collection entitled Dhundhki Roshni, New Delhi, Sahitya Akademi, 2003, Shahryar has written that he began to write poetry with seriousness and regularity from 1957 onwards, and ‘from Kunwar Akhlaq Muhammad Khan became Shahryar’ (emphasis mine).

  13 According to Shahryar’s friend, Siddiq Ahmad Siddiqi, Shahryar recited in a mushaira for the first time at an event organized by their mutual friend Raza Imam, a student of English and an active member of the Communist Party of India (CPI) who went on to retire as a professor of English at AMU; this was Shahryar’s first formal introduction as a poet in Aligarh.

  14 Gopi Chand Narang narrates that Khalilur Rahman Azmi sent him the MA examination papers and told him that ‘one of his favourite disciples’ was also appearing for the exam. At the time, he hadn’t met Shahryar or read any of his poetry. Their first meeting took place shortly after, when he visited Aligarh and heard Shahryar recite his poetry on a moonlit terrace at the home of a common friend. Thereafter, he read Shahryar’s kalaam on several occasions when it was published in Hamari Zubaan. Also, because Narang was close to both Suroor and Azmi, during his trips to Aligarh he had several occasions to meet the young Shahryar with whom he became firm friends, a friendship that lasted over the years till Shahryar’s death.

  15 The bare facts were narrated to me by Siddiq Ahmed Siddiqi but repeated with many embellishments by

  several people in Aligarh as a bit of an apocryphal tale: of a student taking his ustad to court!

  16 Kitab, Lucknow, 14 November 1965.

  17 Kamleshwar, ‘Ibadat Guzaar Baghi’, in Shahryar, edited by Sarwarul Huda, New Delhi, Maktaba Jamia, 2010, p. 44.

  18 Gopi Chand Narang, interview.

  19 This was corroborated by Shahid Mahdi who was Shahryar’s near contemporary at Aligarh and close friend in later years. Five issues of Ghalib appeared. Faiyyaz Rifat, the fiction writer and poet, told me that he was also on the editorial board of these two student magazines.

  20 Mughni Tabassum was an eminent poet, critic and scholar from Hyderabad. He was a professor in the department of Urdu at Osmania University. Sher-o-Hikmat (Poetry and Philosophy) came out intermittently in three phases.

  21 Fikr-o-Nazar is a quarterly research and literary journal of the Aligarh Muslim University; Shahryar became its editor in 1987.

  22 ‘Maqsood, who died in the US several years ago, always addressed Shahryar as “Kunwar Saheb”. As far as I can remember, Shahryar was active in NSF, which was patronized by many intellectuals of AMU including Zakir Husain.’ Baidar Bakht, interview.

  23 Baidar Bakht, interview. Bakht goes on to clarify that he never met Shahryar personally during his stay in Aligarh from 1956 to 1962. His first contact with Shahryar came about when the Sahitya Akademi asked him to translate the award-winning collection Khwaab ka Dar Band Hai. ‘When he heard about my translations, he wrote to me in 1984,’ Bakht recalled and sent me via email a scanned copy of the letter in Shahryar’s handwriting. ‘I first met Shahryar in 1986 or 1987 in Mumbai at the home of Akhtarul Iman. When he was somewhat tipsy, Akhtarul Iman asked me to take him (home) in a taxi. We became friends thereafter.’

  24 Foreword in Shahryar: Dhundh ki Roshni, New Delhi, Sahitya Akademi, 2003.

  25 In Sarwarul Huda (ed.), Shahryar, op cit., p. 74.

  26 Baidar Bakht, Laghzish-e Raftaar-e Khaama.

  27 Gopi Chand Narang, interview.

  28 In 1842, Ghalib went to meet the principal of the much-respected Delhi College for a teaching position in Persian, a position he had assumed was his for the taking; however, since the principal did not come out to greet him at the entrance of the college, Ghalib went away in a huff, thinking he had not been given the respect that was his due.

  29 Ashraf is a Sahitya Akademi award-winning novelist and short-story writer, posted as commissioner, income tax, in Kolkata; he sent me detailed answers to the questions I posed via email and WhatsApp. His answers to my questions were subsequently published in the journal Tehzeeb-ul Akhlaq, Aligarh, December 2015, pp. 28-37.

  30 Mushirul Hasan, op cit., p. 49. Hasan goes on to observe, ‘I don’t recall any of our Muslim teachers making us aware of our Muslim or Islamic identity. We read what our counterparts in Delhi, Allahabad and Banaras did.’

  31 Kamleshwar agrees that it isn’t as though Shahryar doesn’t have anything to say about politics or about the world and its ways; it is just that he says it in his own way. Kamleshwar, op. cit., p. 47.

  32 Narang, interview. However, it isn’t quite right to say that Shahryar wrote no prose whatsoever. See Chapter 2 for details of Shahryar’s prose writings, which, compared to his poetic oeuvre, was indeed slender but certainly not non-existent.

  33 Shahryar was fond of narrating an anecdote regarding Faiz Ahmad Faiz who, too, was a less-than-engaging reciter of his own poetry at public gatherings and mushairas. When someone went up to Faiz and complained that while his poetry was always
excellent, his manner of reciting it was less so, Faiz is said to have remarked, ‘Sab kaam hum hi karein?’ (Must I do everything?) implying, therefore, that he was a poet and not a performer. I have myself heard Shahryar narrate this with a twinkle in his eye.

  34 S.R. Kidwai, ‘Manzil Benaam Bulati Hai Mujhe’ (‘Nameless destinations call out to me’), in Shahryar, (ed.) Sarwarul Huda, op. cit., pp. 198-199.

  35 N.M. Rashid (1910–75) is credited with introducing a new streak of modernism in Urdu poetry. His influence as a symbolist was profound among Urdu writers of the late 1950s and 1960s. Rashid was a curious case of being a progressive yet not being part of either the Progressive Writers’ Movement or the formally constituted Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA). He believed that literature must necessarily have a social content but he refused to clothe his concern for the world in an ideological garb. Averse to the ‘personality cult’ of the leftists, he wrote a critique of Stalin in a poem called ‘Hama Oost’ (‘Pantheism’).

  36 In an interview with me, Gopi Chand Narang cites the beginning of the end of the progressive movement to the fourth conference of the All India Progressive Writers’ Association held from 27 to 29 May 1949 in Bhiwandi, an industrial hub outside Bombay with a large population of migrant workers from eastern UP. A new manifesto was adopted at the Bhiwandi Conference and a more sharply political role was carved out for the creative writers here. For many, like Narang, this was a watershed event in the history of the PWM and the fracturing of the PWA as a cohesive entity can be traced from here onwards. For details, see my study Liking Progress, Loving Change: A Literary History of the Progressive Writers’ Movement in Urdu, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2014.

  37 Interview recorded at the home of S.R. Faruqi in Allahabad on 31 August 1996, with Asim Shahnawaz Shibli, Ahmad Mahfooz, Asrar Gandhi and S.R. Faruqi.

  38 Among the grandchildren, Sahir, Danish, Arshiya and Insha were born in his lifetime, while Humayun’s sons Rayan and Faris were born after Shahryar passed away.

  39 Shahryar’s baarat (wedding party) that travelled from Aligarh to Najma’s home in Malihabad has been described as a historic and exceedingly literary baraat, including as it did the who’s who of the world of letters.

 

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