Ghalib
Page 12
Mujhe kyoN na aave saaqi nazar aaftaab ulta
Ke pada hai aaj khum mein qadah-e sharaab ulta
Chale the haram ko rah meiN hue ik sanam se aashiq
Na hua sawaab haasil ye liya azaab ulta
Ajab ulte mulk ke haiN aji aap bhi ke tum se
Kabhi baat ki jo seedhi to mila jawaab ulta
Ye shab-e guzishta dekha wo qafa se kuch haiN goya
KahiN Haq kare ke hove ye hamaara khwaab ulta
Abhi jhad laga de baarish koi mast bhar ke naara
Jo zameeN pe phenk maare qadah-e sharaab ulta
Hue vaade par jo jhoote to nahiN mile haiN tevar
E-lo aur bhi tamaasha ye suno hijaab ulta
Ghazal aur qaafiyoN meiN na kahe so kyonkar Insha
Ke hawa ne khud ba khud aa waraq-e kitaab ulta
My dear cupbearer, I do see the sun topsy-turvy
For in the wine jar, my glass has fallen topsy-turvy
On the way to the mosque, I fell in love with an idol
Curses instead of blessings, came undone topsy-turvy
What strange land have you come from, I wonder, for when I ask
Straight questions, with crooked answers you run topsy-turvy
My memory of last night was your displeasure with me
May god decree my dreamy web was spun topsy-turvy
Should I throw down my goblet with an exultant holler
We will find that the monsoon has begun topsy-turvy
Her promise she did not keep and now does not meet my gaze
What nonsense! I am aggrieved, also shunned, topsy-turvy
The winds have turned the pages on poetic tradition
Perhaps ‘Insha’ with new rhymes should now run topsy-turvy
Anees: I have made the perhaps contentious claim earlier that Mir Babar Ali Anees (1803–74) may be one of the best Urdu poets that ever lived. To those who have studied his work, however, this may not be as controversial an assertion. First of all, his output was prodigious. A brief calculation suggests that Anees wrote over 200 lines of poetry for every day of his life. This is even more interesting because Anees restricted the subject matter of his poetry to a narrow slice of Islamic history, essentially describing the events of Karbala, where the grandson of the Prophet, Imam Husain, faced off against the Umayyad king Yazeed’s army and was martyred on the tenth of Muharram, 61 AH (680 CE). Anees popularized the marsiya tradition of poetry, which was an elegy, but also an epic poem. The format essentially consisted of six-line verses, where the first four lines rhyme, as do the next two, in a bahr that is followed throughout the poem. A typical marsiya contains between 100 and 150 six-line stanzas. Consider this stanza: Husain jab ke chale baad-e dopahar ran ko
Na tha koi ke jo thaame rakaab-e tausan ko
Sakina jhaad rahi thi aba ke daaman ko
Husain chup ke khade the jhukaaye gardan ko
Na aasra thha koi shaah-e karbalaai ko
Faqat savaar kiya tha bahan ne bhai ko
That fateful afternoon, ready to fight, stood brave Husain
No one to help him mount his horse, loneliness fed his pain
Little Sakina brushed his robe, her sadness to contain
Husain simply stood with head bowed, and quietude did reign
Karbala’s hero was alone, no friends left to pay heed
His brave sister then stepped up, to help him mount his steed
Dabeer: Mirza Salaamat Ali Dabeer (1804–75) was Anees’s contemporary, and the two had a healthy rivalry. Each one had a series of acolytes, named ‘Aneesiye’ and ‘Dabeeriye’, who debated one another on the relative superiority of their masters. From those encounters, narrated in gleeful detail by Azad in his book Aab-e Hayaat, we discern that Dabeer was known as a better craftsman, with a greater command of Arabic, while Anees was better known for his simpler, direct rhythms. Overall, Anees was more popular, and has been better regarded since, but this is a matter of slight differences. To underscore his command over the language, Dabeer composed a benuqta marsiya, a perfectly rhyming elegy of over 700 lines that did not use a single letter with a dot. The English equivalent would perhaps be to write without using around eight consonants and two vowels! Interestingly, he had to choose a different takhallus, for the word ‘dabeer’ includes a letter (b) that has a dot. Dabeer’s choice of takhallus was ‘Atarid’, which means mercury.
To showcase Dabeer’s work, I have translated a verse from a marsiya he composed on the chehlum (fortieth day after death) of Imam Husain. The story goes that a year after the death of Husain and his companions, his family returned to Karbala on his chehlum after a protracted imprisonment and visited the graves of their loved ones for the first time. Their lamentations at that moment are recorded in this marsiya, which transports the listeners to the desert plain of Karbala through its evocative verses.
Misl-e charaagh gor-e ghareebaN pe dil jalaaye
PhooloN ke badle qabroN pe lakht-e jigar chadhaaye
PyaaroN ki bood-o baash ke saamaaN jo yaad aaye
Be-saakhta pukaare kaleje pakad ke haaye
Hai hai vo parda-daar hamaare kidhar gaye
Be-parda ho ke aal-e Nabi dar-ba-dar gaye
At the burial ground they had no lamps, so burned their hearts instead
On the graves, lacking fresh flowers, pieces of their souls they spread
As they recalled those who they’d brought to life, but now were dead
Uncontrollable was their grief, such piteous tears were shed
‘Alas where are those gallant ones who kept our honour true?
We were dishonoured and publicly displayed after you’
Zafar: Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775–1862) the king has made a few appearances in this book; I wish to confine this brief introduction to Bahadur Shah Zafar the poet. Zafar was believed to have come from a lineage of poets, his father and grandfathers also having composed many a ghazal. That is of course another way of saying he came from a lineage of kings. Monarchs had a way of hiring well-known poets and then magically emerging in public with high-quality poetic output of their own. But by all accounts, Zafar seems to have been a true-blue poet himself, considering the enthusiasm with which he participated in mushairas and put forward his own work for evaluation. Moreover, he continued to write well after he was dethroned and incarcerated, including this poignant summary of the fate of his beloved city. Na ghar hai, na dar hai, bacha ek Zafar hai
Faqat haal-e Dilli sunaane ki qaatir
No house nor portal, we stay and we suffer
The sad tale of Delhi, narrated by Zafar
Some of his best work was written in Rangoon, where he spent his exile. One such ghazal is translated below and gives eloquent voice to his distress, reflecting his realization that he would not even be buried in his beloved Delhi.
Lagta nahiN hai jee mera ujde dayaar meiN
Kis ki bani hai aalam-e na-paayedaar meiN
Keh do in hasratoN se kahiN aur jaa baseN
Itni jagah kahaaN hai dil-e daagh-daar meiN
Umr-e daraaz maang ke laaye the chaar din
Do arzoo meiN kat gaye do intezaar meiN
Kitna hai bad-naseeb ‘Zafar’ dafn ke liye
Do gaz zameen bhi na mili koo-e yaar meiN
In this deserted ruined space, uneasiness is great
To find peace in this transient world was not to be my fate
Tell my yearnings and desires to go and live elsewhere
My heart alas, is full of wounds, hardly the best estate
Asked I for a wholesome life, but was granted four mere days
Two I spent pining and yearning, two I lingered in wait
How unfortunate was Zafar that in death he was denied
Two yards of earth for his grave in the lane of his soulmate
Zauq: Ibrahim Khan Zauq (1789–1854) was Zafar’s tutor, his poet laureate and his favourite, and therefore, Ghalib’s bête noire. Ghalib considered Zauq his inferior and was especially incensed that Zauq got to close out mushairas. They co
mpeted in style, with poetic repartee, but truth be told, Ghalib had the better of the exchanges. Mozart always outdoes Salieri. His contretemps with Ghalib apart, Zauq was a remarkable person. He overcame very modest beginnings and a near-fatal bout with smallpox to become a self-taught poet. He made his way to the Mughal court as a lower poet and caught the fancy of a prince named Mirza Sirajuddin Muhammad. The prince appointed the nineteen-year-old Zauq as his tutor for a small salary. Luckily for Zauq, the prince would ascend the Mughal throne and assume the title of Bahadur Shah Zafar. Thus, he became the poet laureate, a position he held till his death. Ghalib may have had his insults, but he never had Zauq’s position as long as the latter lived.
Unfortunately, much of the large corpus of Zauq’s work was lost in the conflagration of 1857. Enough survives, however, to give us a flavour of the master. Consider a few verses of one of his more famous ghazals.
Laayi hayaat aaye qaza le chali chale
Apni khushi na aaye na apni khushi chale
Ho umr-e Khizr bhi to kahenge ba waqt-e marg
Ham kya rahe yahaaN? Abhi aaye abhi chale
Jaate hava-e shauq meiN haiN is chaman se ‘Zauq’
Apni bala se baad-e saba ab kahiN chale
Life summoned me, I ascended; death guided my descent
Neither of my will did I come, nor of my will I went
Were we to be granted the age of Khizr,1 we would still
Say, ‘Why leave now? I’ve just come! My passing, I resent!’
Zauq flows away into the void from this verdant garden
I hardly care what flowers bloom post my mortal event
Momin: Momin Khan (1800–51) and Ghalib were contemporaries in Delhi’s poetry scene for over three decades, and like Mir before him, Momin was fortunate enough to be bestowed with Ghalib’s praise. In an extraordinary paean, Ghalib reportedly declared that he would trade his entire divaan for a single sher by his contemporary, one that went, tum mere paas hote ho goya; jab koi doosra nahiN hota (it is as if you are close to me; when there is nobody else around). Hyperbole apart, this is a measure of great respect. Momin’s verses have become the stuff of Urdu metaphor. For example, on the difficulty of changing one’s attitude: umr saari to kati ishq-e butaaN meiN, Momin, aakhri waqt meiN kya khaak musalmaaN honge (I have spent my life loving idols, Momin; on my deathbed, I am loath to accept Islam). A hakeem by profession, Momin was also a student of geomancy (astrological mathematics), music and chess.
Three verses from one of Momin’s best-known ghazals should suffice to know that we are in the company of a master:
Vo jo hum meiN tum meiN qaraar tha tumhe yaad ho ke na yaad ho
Vahi yaani vaada nibaah ka tumhe yaad ho ke na yaad ho
Vo naye gile vo shikaayateN vo maze ki hikaayateN
Vo har ek baat pe roothna tumhe yaad ho ke na yaad ho
Jise aap ginte the aashnaa jise aap kehte the baavafaa
Main vahi hooN Momin-e mubtala tumhe yaad ho ke na yaad ho
That easy familiarity between us, you may perhaps remember
Those days we made those promises, you may perhaps remember
Your reproach at matters minor, those gripes that made you a whiner
At every moment, your feigned distress, you may perhaps remember
The one you found forever trustworthy, the one you counted a friend
I remain that Momin, I do profess, you may perhaps remember
Dagh: Dagh Dehlvi (1831–1905) was a junior contemporary of Ghalib’s, and after the crisis of 1857, made his way to Hyderabad. He wrote many of his famous ghazals after he moved south, and his grave near the Yousufain Dargah is still a site of pilgrimage for Hyderabadis. His couplets also have been incorporated into day-to-day usage, such as the first line of his popular sher: hazrat-e Dagh jahaaN baith gaye, baith gaye; aur honge teri mehfil se ubharne vaale (where Sir Dagh sits, he stays seated; there may be others who choose to exit your presence). It is often invoked by urdudaans of a certain age when they sit down. Three verses from a ghazal by Dagh show him to be a master of economy who was as much at ease with the short bahr as Momin was with the long:
Sabaq aisa padha diya tu ne
Dil se sab kuch bhula diya tu ne
Laakh dene ka ek dena hai
Dil-e be-muddua diya tu ne
‘Dagh’ ko kaun dene waala thha?
Jo diya ai Khuda diya tu ne
Indeed, such a lesson you have taught
All previous knowledge my heart forgot
A gift like a million, you’ve given
Gave me a heart that no longer sought
Who else will give with such great élan?
Who else but god? That’s what Dagh thought.
Appendix 2
A Ghalibian Bibliography
This is a book for lay readers, and I have consciously attempted to avoid too many of the trappings of an academic volume, such as references. However, I have consulted many books in the course of writing this one and offer this bibliographic note with two objectives in mind. First, I wish to acknowledge the debt of those sources that I have consulted and those authors whose wisdom I have relied upon to make this narrative informative. The second is to offer a roadmap to those who might find Ghalib interesting enough to pursue further reading.
The rest of this appendix has five parts. In the first I point towards Ghalib’s works in the original. In the second, I highlight a few books that offer translations of Ghalib into English. This list is by no means exhaustive and may even have several egregious omissions; as someone who reads Urdu, I have not consulted as much of Ghalib’s work in translation as others may have. The third section identifies and briefly discusses books and articles about Ghalib in Urdu. I have done my best to annotate some of these books for a non-Urdu-speaking audience. The fourth section introduces the reader to books and articles about Ghalib in English. The fifth section discusses some key Internet resources on Ghalib and on Urdu poetry/South Asian literature in general. This final section is perhaps the best starting point for lay readers to venture further into the world of Ghalib.
Kalaam-e Ghalib (Ghalib’s Works)
Everyone has heard of the Divaan-e Ghalib, which sounds like a single book, but the reality is that Ghalib published five different editions of his Urdu divaan, each a bit different in content than the other, to go with a Farsi one as well. Typically, when we refer to the Divaan-e Ghalib nowadays, we are talking about the comprehensive one published by Maulana Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi in 1958. Arshi (1904–81) was a librarian, linguist and scholar from Rampur, and his compiled divaan remains in print, from the Anjuman-e Taraqqi-e Urdu (Hind) in New Delhi.
There are other compilations of Ghalib’s divaan, such as the one by Professor Hameed Ahmed Khan (1903–74) of Punjab University in Lahore, brought out in 1969 to mark Ghalib’s death centenary. Kalidas Gupta Riza (1925–2001), an extraordinary Ghalib scholar, attempted to compile every single verse Ghalib had written and arrange them in chronological order. The resultant book, titled Divaan-e Ghalib Kamil, contains 4209 Urdu couplets, many more than are in the Arshi Divaan. The book is in print in Pakistan (Anjuman-e Taraqqi-e Urdu, Karachi) and India (Sakar Publishers, Mumbai).
Ghalib’s letters were put together by Dr Khaliq Anjum (1935–2016) in a four-volume set titled Ghalib ke Khutoot. The volumes emerged over a period; the last one was published in 1993. They too can be obtained from the Anjuman-e Taraqqi-e Urdu (Hind) in New Delhi. This is a comprehensive set; an edited two-volume set titled Khutoot-e Ghalib was compiled by Maulana Ghulam Rasool Mehr (1893–1971) of Lahore in 1969 to mark Ghalib’s death centenary.
Ghalib’s Dastambu (A Fistful of Flowers) was published several times, most recently in 1969 by Abdash Shakoor Ahsan. It is out of print but is available as full text on the Internet.
Tarjumaan-e Ghalib (Ghalib Translated)
Ghalib has been rendered into English by many translators.1 To begin with the most recent, noted Ghalib scholar Professor Frances Pritchett and Owen Cornwall brought
out a selection of his work titled Ghalib: Selected Poems and Letters, published by Columbia University Press (New York) in 2017. Prof. Pritchett’s works on Ghalib are discussed later as well.
Translations of Ghalib include K.C. Kanda’s Mirza Ghalib: Selected Lyrics and Letters, published in 2011 (Sterling Publishers, New Delhi); Azra Raza and Sara Suleri Goodyear’s Ghalib: Epistemologies of Elegance, published in 2009 (Viking, New York); Sarvat Rahman’s comprehensive Diwân-e-Ghalib, published in 2003, which contains a ‘complete translation into English, including all the ghazals, qaseedas, masnavis, qitas & quatrains of the published Diwan and a selection from the unpublished Diwan’ (Ghalib Institute, New Delhi); Sarfaraz Niazi’s Love Sonnets of Ghalib, published in 2002, another complete translation of the Divaan (Ferozsons, Lahore, and subsequently Rupa & Company, New Delhi); Ralph Russell’s The Seeing Eye: Selections from the Urdu and Persian Ghazals of Ghalib (Oxford University Press, Pakistan, 2000); and others. Earlier translations include a poetic selection edited by Aijaz Ahmad titled Ghazals of Ghalib (Columbia University Press, New York, 1971) and C.M. Naim’s Twenty-Five Verses by Ghalib (Writer’s Workshop, Calcutta, 1970). An early comprehensive book on Ghalib was P.L. Lakhanpal’s Ghalib: The Man and His Verse, published in 1960 by International Press, New Delhi. The book includes interesting biographical data, literary criticism and several translations of Ghalib’s work. The earliest example of English writing on Ghalib I found dated back to 1928, with S.A. Latif’s Ghalib: A Critical Appreciation of His Life and Urdu Poetry.