by Raza Mir
Takht kya cheez hai, aur laal-o javaahar hai kya
Pyaar vaale to khudaai bhi luta dete haiN
What price this throne, what value these jewels?
True lovers will even spurn god’s kingdom
While the themes pursued by Urdu poets of the progressive tradition were defiantly anti-romantic, they often exhibited a similarity in their use of language and metaphors to the classical poets. Consider these two ash’aar by Sahir:
TarabzaaroN pe kya guzri sanamkhaanoN pe kya guzri
Dil-e zinda teri marhoom armaanoN pe kya guzri
What came of music houses and temples, my throbbing heart?
What happened to your desires, as they were torn apart?
or
Aqaa’id vahm hai mazhab khayaal-e khaam hai saaqi
Azal se zahn-e insaaN basta-e auhaam hai saaqi
O cupbearer, religion and faith are but superstitions
Blind customs have for aeons imprisoned imaginations
The first is the matla of a poem where Sahir laments the partition of the subcontinent, while the second, also a matla, inaugurates a spirited poem against religion and an explicit defence of atheism. Sahir would perhaps have been offended if he had been considered a ghazal poet, and indeed, in defiance of the ghazal tradition, he did not adopt a takhallus and never wrote a maqta. But it is safe to say that both in their form and structure, the above two verses exhibit similarities with ash’aar from a ghazal.
One could offer examples galore from the progressive tradition to show how the poetic tools utilized by these artists are hardly distinguishable from those that abound in the classical form of ghazal poetry. Perhaps the point is made emphatically in a maqta of a poem by Majrooh:
Meri nigaah meiN hai arz-e Moscow Majrooh
Vo sar-zameeN ke sitaare jise salaam kareN
My mind O Majrooh, is fixed on Moscow
The land before which even stars must bow
The progressive poets ironically enriched the ghazal tradition despite their derision of it, recalling Ghalib’s mastery of Urdu poetry despite his considering it inferior. Likewise, be they modernists such as Miraji and N.M. Rashed or contemporary exponents of free verse such as Javed Akhtar and Gulzar, poets have continually tried their hand at the ghazal. And somewhere along the line, they have always been in awe of Ghalib. To quote the great socialist poet Ali Sardar Jafri:
Aaye hum Ghalib-o Iqbal ke naghmaat ke baad
Muzhaf-e ishq-o junooN, huq ke madaaraat ke baad
After the songs of Ghalib and Iqbal did we arrive
To keep the traditions of love, passion and truth alive.
2
Anatomy of a Ghazal by Ghalib
Like Saint Peter securing the gates of heaven, or perhaps like Cerberus the hound guarding the gates of Hades, Ghalib’s first ghazal in his divaan stands sentinel over his oeuvre, daring only the bravest to enter. Its first sher itself is a marvel of multiple meanings, ambiguous references and warnings to unprepared readers that this is not ‘business as usual’ in ghazal-land. Perhaps it is a caution for the timid not to venture further should they not be able to handle this style of poetry; or is it an invitation, a promise that more hidden gems lie in store? The references in different ash’aar recall history, legend and mythology, and the symmetries of the poem are exquisite.
Ghalib is reputed to have written this ghazal when he was a mere teenager. Many commentaries (sharaah) about this ghazal written by a variety of critics across time and space impute different meanings to the verses therein, of which there are a mere five. But five verses are enough to let the serious aesthete know they are in the presence of incomparable mastery. In this short chapter, I wish to explore this ghazal in detail, so as to provide a template by which this poetic tradition can be better understood.
Let us begin by recalling the entire ghazal and providing a somewhat literal translation.
Naqsh faryaadi hai kis ki shokhi-e tehreer ka
Kaghazi hai pairahan har paikar-e tasveer ka
Kaav kaav-e sakht-jaani haai tanhaai na poochh
Subha karna shaam ka laana hai ju-e-sheer ka
Jazba-e be-ikhtiyaar-e shauq dekha chaahiye
Seena-e shamsheer se baahar hai dum shamsheer ka
Aagahi daam-e shunidaaN jis qadar chaahe bichhaaye
Muddu’aa anqa hai apni aalam-e tehreer ka
Bus-ke hooN Ghalib aseeri meiN bhi aatish zer-e pa
Muu-e aatish-deeda hai halqa meri zanjeer ka
Whose creativity does creation complain about?
Every picture appears wearing paper robes
Digging through the tough life is such loneliness
Turning night to morning is like drawing out a river of milk
The passion of love is truly a sight to behold
The edge of the sword has broken out of the scabbard
Awareness casts its mindful snares, precision is preferred
But my writings seek the quality of the ephemeral bird
Ghalib, even in servitude my feet are afire
Each link on my chain is afire like a singed hair
If you as a reader are confounded by these verses, it may gratify you to know you are not alone; they mystified Ghalib’s peers as well. The verses do not lend themselves to easy interpretation, but definitely reward those who stay with the layered meanings they contain. Much like other ghazals, the different couplets herein are not necessarily related to each other. However, this is not to say they are totally scattered. Rather, the ghazal is held together not merely by its adherence to form, but also by a fidelity to an ambience that provides coherence, just as a raga in Indian classical music might hold a musical composition together.
Let us begin with the matla.
Naqsh faryaadi hai kis ki shokhi-e tehreer ka
Kaghazi hai pairahan har paikar-e tasveer ka
It bears repeating that the matla announces the ghazal’s bahr, radeef and qaafiya. The bahr in this ghazal consists of fourteen syllables, some short and some long, that when recited orally, produce a rhythm and cadence that lend themselves to performance, be it declamatory (taht-ul lafz) or in musical tone (tarannum). The radeef is the word ‘ka’. So we know that every second line in every subsequent sher will end with the word ‘ka’. The first qaafiya is the word ‘tehreer’, so we know that the penultimate word in each second line will have to rhyme with tehreer. To the matla falls the additional burden of having both lines rhyme thus.
The meaning of this famous verse actually hinges on a few metaphors. The wearing of paper robes refers to an ancient Persian custom where complainants to the king dressed in paper to signify their unhappiness. The word ‘naqsh’ refers to a creation, which in this version is an aggrieved party (faryadi). Imagine a painting being upset with the painter, or a statue being dismayed by the sculptor who created it. The reference here is most likely to humans being upset with god. Perhaps Ghalib is upset with god for the imperfection in his creation (the human); perhaps he is lauding humanity for its ability to critique god. In the end, Ghalib’s verse goes back to the determinism versus free will debate that characterized modernity. Perhaps humans, in their efforts at self-actualization, come up against the hard boundaries of fate and structure and complain to god. Several of Ghalib’s other ash’aar have given voice to this complaint of humans. In another sher (na tha kuch to khuda tha . . . translated elsewhere in this volume), he asks the same question in another way: ‘When there was nothing, there was god, had there been nothing, there would be god. I was doomed by my existence, what if I had not been?’
Kaav kaav-e sakht-jaani hai tanhaai na poochh
Subha karna shaam ka laana hai ju-e-sheer ka
The second verse of the ghazal recalls the famous legend of Shirin–Farhad, popular all across Iran and the subcontinent. The story was mentioned in Firdausi’s tenth-century opus Shahnameh and narrated as a stand-alone story by the twelfth-century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi, and is one of the paradigmatic stories of unrealized love.
The theme here is one of excavation. As the legend goes, a poor sculptor named Farhad fell in love with Shirin, an Armenian princess of incomparable beauty. His rival in love was the Sasanian king Khosrau. Khosrau began to hate Farhad and exiled him to Mount Behistun, giving him the impossible task of carving a path out of the Pillarless Mountain (koh-e be-sutoon). He told Farhad that Shirin could be his if he could get milk through the mountain for Shirin to bathe in. Farhad set about his task with the zeal of a mad lover and almost accomplished it till he was treacherously betrayed.
Ghalib compares his own life with the labour of Farhad. For him, moving from day to day (subha karna shaam ka, turning evening to morning) is as difficult as Farhad’s labour. The metaphor is used in multiple ways, evoking digging through life (kaav kaav-e). The parable of Sisyphus is another metaphor that may occur to the reader acquainted with multiple mythical traditions, but ultimately it speaks of how life is hard, perhaps for the same subject as the one in the matla.
Jazba-e be-ikhtiyaar-e shauq dekha chahiye
Seena-e shamsheer se baahar hai dum shamsheer ka
The third verse begins to offer a glimmer of opposition to the forces against which the poet finds himself arrayed. After all, what animated Farhad was his passion, over which he himself had no control (jazba-e be-ikhtiyaar), which was fuelled in turn by his own longing (shauq).
The passion of the lover is indeed a sight to behold, and Ghalib further elaborates on it through the second line. The edge of the sword is of course what is felt first by the martyr, and Ghalib is implying that even before it strikes, the lover can feel it, with passion. The word ‘dam’ means the edge of the sword, but it also means ‘breath’, and Ghalib’s wordplay shows us a sight of a breathing sword. The true lover does not fear death and even welcomes it.1
Interestingly, this sher was quoted by Bhagat Singh in his notebook as he awaited his fate in a British jail in 1931.
Aagahee daam-e shunidaN jis qadar chaahe bichhaaye
Muddu’aa anqa hai apni aalam-e tehreer ka
The fourth sher can be read as a manifesto of sorts by Ghalib. The subject here is defiant that he does not seek apprehensible meaning in his poetry but would rather settle for the ephemeral world of feelings. He shuns the finality of cognition, opting instead for the ambiguous world of sensemaking. The anqa is a mythical bird of Islamic mythology, which has been referred to by many a Sufi mystic, and may loosely correspond to the phoenix. It is a bird without a material body and therefore impossible to capture.
In my understanding here, the person who seeks a singular perception in poetry is cast in the role of a hunter. The hunter sets snares of understanding (daam-e shuneedaaN) to entrap writing (tehreer), but Ghalib is not fooled. For him, his desire (muddu’aa) is to foil the hunter by imbuing his works with the characteristics of a mythical bird.
It is also important to note that Ghalib often casts himself in the role of an outsider and for him, the purveyors of meaning (maani) are often in search of praise (sataaish) or reward (sila). His ash’aar also represent treasure troves of meaning to him (ganjina-e maani) but are more like magical spells (tilism). These ideas are explored in other ash’aar, which have been translated later in this book.
The final sher is the maqta, where Ghalib signs his name (takhallus) into the verse. It is worth remembering that Ghalib assumed the pen name ‘Ghalib’ around the time he wrote this poem; it could well have been the first ghazal where he used this nom de plume. ‘Ghalib’ means overpowering, and one imagines he used the name self-consciously, incorporating its meaning into the verse.
Bus-ke hooN Ghalib aseeri meiN bhi aatish zer-e paa
Muu-e aatish-deeda hai halqa meri zanjeer ka
Here, Ghalib fantasizes himself imprisoned (aseer), but still restless, in fact so restless that there is a fire under his feet (aatish zer-e paa). Free will, which stands in for restlessness, chafes against the determinism of fate that incarceration represents.
The second line provides a vivid example of how Ghalib fleshes out the intrigue that his first line creates. It is important to remember that the ghazal is a performative poem, and the first line is often meant to produce suspense or a conundrum or something unexplained, which is resolved with a flourish in the second. So the poet is Ghalib (overpowering), aseer (incarcerated) and aatish zer-e paa (raring to go). How so? Ghalib explains that every link of his chain (zanjeer ka halqa) is muu-e aatish deeda (like a singed hair). Perhaps the fire under Ghalib’s feet is melting the chains, such that while he is being burnt, he is also in the process of setting himself free. Fire causes pain but also melts chains, just as the ability to face up to pain releases the poet from bondage, till he becomes truly ‘Ghalib’.
This ghazal is notoriously abstruse, and my interpretations are subject to contestation by those who may find a different set of meanings in the same words. But that is precisely the beauty of a poem. Its words are fixed but invite a hermeneutic fluidity where interpretation can be layered upon interpretation in an endless daisy-chain of understanding. A good poem demands nothing less.
One thing to note here is that this ghazal is relatively free of ash’aar that extol amorous love. It is interesting that the first ghazal in Ghalib’s divaan challenges one of the fundamental assumptions made about the ghazal (or perhaps clarifies a major misconception about it). A ghazal is not a slave to amatory sentiment; it can and often does break free of the shackles.
Likewise, Ghalib fortifies his verses with philosophical insights that incorporate modernity and Sufi spiritualism. He engages with the divine in debate and accusation, speaks of the need to be outside the boundaries of meaning, and visualizes a world where free will can transcend fate. To imagine this poem written by a nineteen-year-old is to wonder what might happen if the poet’s potential were truly achieved. Luckily, we do not have to wonder. Despite a life of deprivation lived in an era of upheaval, Ghalib did manage to achieve his potential to the extent that he delights us even in the present and will provide similar delights to future generations as well.
3
Ash’aar
Surma-e muft-nazar hooN, meri qeemat ye hai
Ke rahe chashm-e khareedaar pe ehsaaN mera
I am the kohl that adorns the eye
My only price is your grateful sigh
~
Vo aaye ghar meiN hamaare, khuda ki qudrat hai
Kabhi hum un ko, kabhi apne ghar ko dekhte haiN
He visits my house! It is truly god’s grace
I gaze at my humble home, and then his face!1
[Alternative:
She enters my abode as my honoured guest
I gaze in wonderment, thus my home is blest!]
~
Kaun hota hai hareef-e mai-e mard-afgan-e ishq
Hai mukarrar lab-e saaqi meiN sala mere baad
Who dare drink this hemlock of love?
Anyone?
The question lingers on the wine bearer’s lips
After I’ve gone
~
Ji dhoondta hai phir vahi fursat ke raat din
Baithe raheN tasavvur-e jaanaaN kiye hue
The mind harks back to those days and nights of leisure
That were spent lost in thoughts of my love, with pleasure
~
Dekho mujhe jo deeda-e ibrat-nigaah ho
Meri suno jo gosh-e naseehat-niyosh hai
Look my sad way if you wish to avoid ways to fail
Hear my story if you need a cautionary tale
~
Aur baazaar se le aaye agar toot gaya
Saaghar-e Jam se mera jaam-e sifaal achchha hai
Bring another from the store should this one break
My earthen cup is better than Jamshed’s bowl2
[Alternative, Haiku style:
My earthen cup breaks
Buy another, lo it’s whole
Try that, Jamshed’s bowl!]
~
Be-dar-o deevaar sa ek ghar banaaya chaahiye
Koi hamsaaya na ho aur paasbaaN koi na ho
In a house sans door nor wall, then let us dwell
No intrusive neighbour and no sentinel
~
Is saadgi pe kaun na mar jaaye ai khuda
Ladte haiN aur haath meiN talvaar bhi nahiN
Such innocence is worth dying for, my word
That my love went to battle without a sword!
~
Khulta kisi pe kyoN mere dil ka moaamla
SheroN ke intikhaab ne rusva kiya mujhe
Who could have plumbed my mind for its deepest secrets?
But my choice of couplets has left me shamefaced
[Alternative:
My deepest thoughts now lay arrayed
I was alas by my poems betrayed]
~
Na sataish ki tamanna na sile ki parvaah
Gar nahiN haiN mere ash’aar meiN maani na sahi
I crave no praise, nor my work for reward I submit
If my verses are seen to lack meaning, so be it!
~
Mujh ko dayaar-e ghair meiN maara vatan se duur
Rakh li mere khuda ne meri bekasi ki sharm
I was killed in strange climes, in lands far away
My kind lord spared that shame at home today