Ghalib

by Raza Mir

  Ghalib, Life After Death

  Thanks to his wonderful poetry and his prodigious output, Ghalib was never lost to history. His poems continue to be sung and performed and have offered literary and poetic signposts for generations of poets. He was fortunate enough to have been admired in his lifetime, and biographies followed soon after his death. Altaf Husain Hali, his junior contemporary, wrote his biography, Yadgaar-e Ghalib, in 1897 and opened a veritable floodgate. Hali’s biography immortalized Ghalib with many an anecdote, and he continued to be written about by scholars and aficionados. Muhammad Husain Azad’s earlier Aab-e Hayat (1880), considered the definitive volume of literary criticism of its time, had already included a long exegesis on Ghalib.

  Ghalib has been analysed often, by poets, scholars and critics, each seeking to find special entry points into his life and work. Not only are there several books on him, but there are books about books on Ghalib, producing a meta-bibliographic spectrum. His work continues to offer us inside views of the ethos of his time, his metaphysics and his milieu. Works of Ghalib that were hitherto unknown have been recovered as late as the mid-twentieth century, such as when an older divaan titled Gul-e Raana (Scarlet Rose), comprising many Urdu and Farsi poems and compiled when Ghalib was in his twenties, was discovered by the scholar Malik Ram and eventually published in 1970.

  Ghalib has been translated into several languages. To sample some, we find Ghaliber Kobita, a Bengali translation by Shakti Chattopadhyay and Ain Rasheed, or a Telugu translation titled Ghalib Kavita Kaumudi by Ramchander Deekonda. Outside the subcontinent, there are works in Russian by Natalia Prigarina, in Norwegian by Knut Kristiansen, in Dutch by Nachoem Wijnberg and hosts of others. The American poet Adrienne Rich had a section titled ‘Ghazals: Homage to Ghalib’ in her book of poetry titled Leaflets. Celal Soydan translated Ghalib’s works into Turkish, perhaps completing a reverse gift from Urdu to the language from which it has borrowed quite a bit of vocabulary. All these translations were published in the past fifty years, indicating that Ghalib’s global footprint has only been enhanced with time.

  Ghalib, Performed

  Ghalib’s work has transcended media and entered seamlessly into the world of performance. There has rarely been a singer of note in the subcontinent who has not performed Ghalib’s works, and ghazals of Ghalib have been turned into innumerable albums in the music industry. Be it Jagjit Singh or Nayyara Noor, Lata Mangeshkar or Ghulam Ali, many stalwart singers in South Asia have tried their hand at singing his work, thereby popularizing it amongst the current generation. Music groups such as Rhythm Invincible India from India and Junoon from Pakistan have performed Ghalib’s work as rock songs. Type ‘Ghalib’ into the search box on YouTube, and it throws up a veritable plethora of performance art, underscoring the ubiquity and variety of performances of his work.

  Ghalib has also been the subject of many a dramatic performance, such as Khwaja Moinuddin’s iconic 1956 play, Mirza Ghalib Bunder Road Par (Ghalib on Bunder Road, referring to a road in modern Karachi associated with artists), which was a big hit in Pakistan. S.M. Mehdi wrote Ghalib Kaun Hai (Who is Ghalib) in 1968, and the play remains in print and performance to this day. The Marathi play Mi Ghalib by Om Bhutkar was written and performed several times in the twenty-first century.

  The emergence of Ghalib as a subject of movies and television scripts began with the release of Sohrab Modi’s hit Mirza Ghalib in 1954, based on a screenplay by Sa’adat Hasan Manto. Sampooran Singh Gulzar’s serial Mirza Ghalib, released in 1988 on Doordarshan, reintroduced Ghalib to a new generation and arguably remains one of the most influential representations of the bard in popular culture. Gulzar’s serial has been endlessly circulated, on television and on a variety of media, and its soundtrack remains immensely popular amongst the youth of today. Gulzar must be credited as one of those who has invoked Ghalib repeatedly in his work. We remember the 1975 film Mausam (Season), where Ghalib’s sher, jee dhoondta hai phir wahi fursat ke raat din (the heart searches for those days and nights of leisure), formed a mukhda of a song. Likewise, ishq par zor nahiN hai ye vo aatish Ghalib, jo lagaaye na lage aur bujhaaye na bane (love is uncompelled, Ghalib; it is a fire that is slow to ignite, but impossible to put out) forms a haunting refrain in the title song of the 1998 film Dil Se (From the Heart).

  Ghalib, the Viral Internet Star

  Googling ‘Ghalib’ throws up many hits. There are numerous Internet sites devoted to him, and sites on Urdu poetry feature him prominently. I refer to some of the more serious sites in my bibliographic essay in Appendix 2. Many fans of Ghalib provide occasional verses of his ghazals for periodic consumption. #Ghalib is a popular hashtag on Instagram. Be it Twitter or Snapchat, Facebook or WhatsApp, Ghalib’s couplets circulate relentlessly on social media.

  A humorous sidelight is the circulation of terrible poetry on social media that is attributed to Ghalib. Consider for example this verse I received on WhatsApp recently, purportedly written by Ghalib: Umr bhar yehi bhool karta raha; dhool chehre par thi aur aaina saaf karta raha (I kept making the same mistakes all my life; I had dust on my forehead and kept cleaning the mirror). The absence of any continuity of bahr, radeef and qaafiya should alert anyone that this cannot belong to the master. But it did garner its share of waah waahs in the forum where it was circulated; Ghalib’s name has that cachet—it even legitimizes bad poetry!

  Indeed, when newer forms of communication emerge, Ghalib will be represented, in keeping with his concept of himself as being way ahead of his time. In his own words:

  HooN garmi-e nishaat-e tasavvur se naghma-sanj

  Main andaleeb-e gulshan-e na-aafareeda hooN

  Behold, I sing in the passionate joy of imagination

  For I’m the nightingale of the yet uncreated garden.

  PART II

  1

  The Ghazal Introduced

  Ghalib wrote in many genres. The masnawi (epic poem), the qaseeda (a panegyric, or a poem extolling an individual or event), the salaam (an elegy to commemorate a tragedy) and prose are part of his oeuvre. His letters have been considered amongst the finest forms of accessible Urdu prose. However, it is safe to say that he is best known for his ghazals, and we will use this chapter to discuss the ghazal in general.

  The ghazal form of poetry emerged out of Arabia in the eighth and ninth centuries CE. It is not to say that the form did not exist before that period, but it was usually subsumed under a longer poem, such as a qaseeda. The qaseeda would have several moments (akin to chapters in a book), and one of them, typically a part of its opening known as the nasib (prelude), was composed using the format we now associate with the ghazal. The nasib was often used to extol the beloved in romanticized language and became one of the most popular elements of the qaseeda.

  During the period of the Omayyads, poets began to construct stand-alone ghazals. From the very beginning, the ghazal was associated with a romanticism that would prove to be its calling card, and in many ways, its fatal flaw, as later generations of people began to tire of its limiting range. However, the ghazal was eventually exported across geographies and languages and adopted with gusto by Persian poets. The more skilled of the Persians, such as Saadi (Abu-Mohammad Muslih al-Din bin Abdullah Shirazi, 1210–91) and Hafez (Khwaja Shams-ud Din Moḥammad Hafez-e Shiraz, 1315–90), took the ghazal to dizzying heights. They transposed social and mystical themes into the romantic thematic, to the point that their collections of ghazals became revered as quasi-religious tracts.

  One interesting way in which the ghazal became a part of the cultural practices in Iran was the Faal-e Hafez (Divination of Hafez). The practice went that if someone found it difficult to reach a decision about a complex problem, they would meditate on the question and open a book of Hafez’s ghazals. The ghazal that the book would open to would provide a direction that would help the person make a decision.

  From Farsi, the ghazal migrated to Urdu quite seamlessly. Amir Khusrau (1253–1325), a poet whose lifespan straddled those of Saadi and Ha
fez, wrote a number of ghazals in Rekhta/Hindavi, a proto-Urdu dialect, and from then on, the ghazal became the hegemonic form of poetic expression in Urdu. Despite protestations from the ‘cognoscenti’ that it was an inferior mode of poetry, the ghazal remained popular through the centuries, boasting proponents such as Quli Qutub Shah (d. 1612), Wali Dakkani (1667–1707), Mirza Sauda (1713–81), Khwaja Mir Dard (1721–85), Mir Taqi Mir (1723–1810), Insha Allah Khan Insha (1756–1817), Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775–1862) and Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq (1789–1854), and in the hands of a master like Ghalib, developed a rapier-like intensity. Its hegemony was finally put to rest only in the mid-twentieth century when the progressive poets of the subcontinent fleshed out the realist and anti-capitalist sentiments of the times into a movement that brought the nazm (poetry unconfined by specific protocols of form) tradition into a position of prominence. Modern and post-modern poets went in multiple ways with the nazm, breaking free of the imposed shackles of rhyme and metre and inventing newer metaphors to tackle a variety of contemporary themes. In that regard, these poetic formations reflected similar trends in most other languages. But with the passing of time, the ghazal has continued to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century. Contemporary mushairas in Urdu often come alive when ghazals are recited, and people across socio-economic classes are known to use ash’aar from popular ghazals to make a point or to emphasize one. It is safe to say that the ghazal is such an integral part of Urdu that it will live on as an important poetic form as long as the language is spoken.

  What Is a Ghazal? Form

  Debates about what constitutes a ghazal have often tended to devolve into mere discussions about its structure and form. We must traverse this path as well, however briefly, but follow it up with some discussion about its aesthetics and content as well.

  The ghazal constitutes a relatively formal structure, with a string of ash’aar1 common in metre, that is, the first and second lines have the same number of syllables. The number of syllables in a ghazal and the way they are stressed is known as bahr. Every second line of a couplet in a ghazal shares a rhythmic continuity with every other second line through two artefacts, known as the qaafiya and the radeef. To explain these in concrete terms, let us take an example of three ash’aar of one of Ghalib’s ghazals. The lines go thus:

  NuktacheeN hai gham-e dil usko sunaaye na bane

  Kya bane baat jahaaN baat banaaye na bane

  Keh sake kaun ke ye jalvagari kis ki hai

  Parda chhora hai vo us ne ke uthaaye na bane

  Ishq par zor nahiN hai ye vo aatish Ghalib

  Jo lagaaye na lage aur bujhaaye na bane

  Heartache now judges me, but speaking out is impossible

  A situation where peace is brought about is impossible

  Whose tableau is this? He is hidden in such a curtain

  Lifting it, even for the most devout is impossible

  Love is unbound Ghalib, for it’s such an intense fire

  To light it is difficult but to put out is impossible

  The rhyme in this ghazal derives primarily from the qaafiya, which in this case comes from the rhyming of sunaaye, banaaye, uthaaye and bujhaaye. It is here that the creativity of the poet is tested the most. The radeef in this ghazal is ‘na bane’, which is a base on which the ghazal stands. In this case, every second line of every couplet ends with the words ‘na bane’ (the radeef), and that phrase is preceded by a word that rhymes with sunaaye (the qaafiya). Ghazals typically contain between five and twenty couplets, which are not necessarily connected to each other in a narrative continuity.

  Two more elements of the ghazal to keep in mind are the matla and the maqta. The matla is a sher in the ghazal, usually the first couplet, where both lines rhyme. The first sher in the above ghazal is a matla. A ghazal may have more than one matla. The maqta is that sher of a ghazal, which contains the poet’s name as a signature (the signature is known as the takhallus). The third sher I have quoted above is the maqta. Often, a poet may have more than one takhallus. Ghalib had two: Ghalib, and occasionally Asad. For example:

  Main ne MajnuN pe ladakpan meiN Asad

  Sang uthaya tha ke sar yaad aaya

  In my childhood, Asad

  I raised a stone to strike Majnu dead

  But then,

  I remembered my own head

  Typically, the maqta is the last sher of the ghazal. But poets may choose to tweak the format and place the maqta elsewhere.

  What Is a Ghazal? Content

  Having discussed the form of the ghazal, let us briefly discuss it as an aesthetic tradition rather than a poetic form derived solely from its structure. The ghazal has at its core a preponderance of amorous, romantic and erotic imagery. Therefore, there is a tendency amongst critics to classify a number of poems that follow its form as non-ghazals. For example, Ghalib’s elegy on the death of his adopted son, Arif: laazim tha ke dekho mera rasta koi din aur (appropriate it would be, had you waited for me some more), may be considered by some as a non-ghazal because it is a lament that is devoid of romantic themes. Likewise, Ghalib’s Maafinaama (Apology) translated earlier, a poem that essentially carried on a conversation, is not considered a ghazal despite a near perfect adherence to its form, for similar reasons. However, the division of poems into ghazals and non-ghazals is arbitrary and subject to contestation.

  Over time, a variety of themes and motifs have begun to be associated with the ghazal genre, including the zaalim (tyrant) beloved and the bismil (suffering) lover, the beloved as a flame (shama) and the protagonist lover as the moth (parwaana) destined to die a fiery death, the beloved as a murderer (qaatil), a stone (sanam) and so on. A number of bahrs were dreamed up by the masters and imitated by their students, leading to an isomorphism that sedimented into a canonical tradition that brooked no innovation. In addition, the pedagogical tradition of islaah (apprenticeship) meant that each novice poet took his or her work to a master, who steered them towards a convergence of themes. An unimaginative poet could conceivably read several ghazals of earlier poets, and mashing up older ideas and radeef–qaafiya pairs, could generate a ghazal. Indeed, many ghazals are highly derivative, and perhaps the preponderance of bad ghazals has contributed to a poor opinion of the genre. Shaayar nahiN hai vo jo ghazalkhwaaN hai aaj kal, they are not poets who write ghazals, went one contemptuous refrain.

  Inevitably, broadsides against the ghazal began to be fired. The first salvo came from the early modernists. Literary critics such as Mohammad Husain Azad (the writer of Aab-e Hayaat, The Water of Life, an influential book of literary criticism that was first published in 1880) and Altaf Husain Hali, as well as social reformers such as Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (the founder of Aligarh Muslim University) and others had begun to deride the ‘decadent’ content of classical ghazals, arguing that Urdu poetry, in the tradition of the English poets of the romantic era (Wordsworth, Coleridge and others), needed to focus on more ‘natural’ motifs rather than the amorous. They recommended the contemplation of loftier thoughts such as the nature of virtue, and other forms of love such as the love of the nation. More significantly, they critiqued the ghazal as a marker of a moribund era, one that had let people down and encouraged poets and their readers to wallow in empty nostalgia.

  These reactions must be seen in hindsight as responses to modernity, industrialization, disillusionment with feudal aristocracy, and perhaps above all, a defensive reaction to the defeat of the mutineers at the hands of the British. Be that as it may, the ghazal has had to endure its share of criticism. Much of these critiques were, however, the stuff of caricature. Unbeknownst to these critics, the ghazal had already incorporated several of these suggestions, such as the need to go beyond romance. One only needed to know where to look.

  The Afterlife of the Ghazal

  The twentieth century inaugurated an era of social activism in the subcontinent, much of it expressed in the freedom movement, and the adoption of socialist goals as governing principles of society. The reverberations of these movements ex
pressed themselves in the poetic arena, and the nazm became more prominent. Also, as people began to engage in socially relevant forms of literary expression, they articulated their frustration with older forms of literature, including poetry. For example, the Progressive Writers’ Association, an influential group of leftist South Asian literary figures who were led by Urdu writers, wrote a manifesto in 1936 in which they criticized ‘literature [that] was produced particularly during the past two centuries, one of the most unfortunate periods of our history, a period of disintegrating feudalism and of acute misery and degradation for the Indian people as a whole.’ They wanted ‘to rescue literature and other arts from the priestly, academic and decadent classes in whose hands they have degenerated so long . . .’ The implicit critique of the ghazal tradition in this approach is easy to spot.

  However, socialist critique was not necessarily incompatible with the aesthetic form and accepted metaphors of the ghazal. Progressive poets incorporated themes such as freedom, equality, rebellion and revolution into a linguistic tradition that deployed metaphors and rhyme schemes that adhered to the ghazal form. They introduced these themes into their poems while keeping them within the structural boundaries of the ghazal. Often, this was accomplished by producing a set of binaries between the purity of love (ishq, pyaar) and the corruption of the world, represented by tyranny, wealth, the throne, or even god (zulm, zar/daulat, takht, khudaai). The struggle between the subaltern lovers and the dominant social order was invoked by the poet as a symbol of other battles between those who were driven by passion and those who valued money and power. Sahir’s defiant words resound in a song from the 1963 film Taj Mahal: