The Taste of Words: An Introduction to Urdu Poetry (6 page)

Another member of the ‘Delhi school’, Dard (1721–85) was a Sufi, and also one of the first proponents of a very direct authorial voice in the ghazal.
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Mystical in bearing, he had a passion for music, which is reflected in the rhythms of his poems. His ascetic manner did not help him financially, as he refused all attempts by local noblemen to patronize him in any way. In his own eyes, Dard was truly a man of God. Representing the transitory phase between Persian and Urdu, Dard wrote most of his prose in Persian—a tome titled
Ilm-ul Kitaab
(The Knowledge of the Book) is especially noteworthy—but began gravitating to the people’s tongue for his poetic output. His mysticism often cast the world as a brief stop in a longer spiritual sojourn, and saw death as just another move in that ongoing journey. In his most famous sher, he conveys this with a simplicity that perhaps owes a connection to Mir: ‘
Dosto dekha tamaasha yaan ke bas
/
Tum raho ab ham to apne ghar chale
’ (‘Friends, I’ve had enough of this display / I am off, if you wish, you can stay’).

Interesting in this context is the defiant pose that Dard strikes in the third couplet of this ghazal, vis-à-vis the religious straw man (sheikh). The sher (which is one of Dard’s most widely quoted couplets and also famously performed by the singer Mukesh) taunts the sheikh for viewing his soaked garments (presumably with wine, since the maqta also extols drinking), stating that if he were to wring his clothes, the angels would view the squeezed liquid pure enough to use for their ablutions. The implicit celebration of the repudiation of religious strictures also characterizes Mir’s work, and became an important element in the aesthetic traditions of the Delhi school.

Hum tujh se kis havas ki falak justaju karen

Dil hi nahin raha hai jo kuchh aarzoo karen

Mit jaayen ek aan mein kasrat numaiyaan

Hum aaine ke saamne aa kar jo ‘hoo’ karen

Har chand aainaa hoon par itnaa hoon na-qubool

Moonh pher le vo jis ke mujhe ru-ba-ru karen

Nai gul ko hai sabaat na ham ko hai aitbaar

Kis baat par chaman havas-e rang-o-bu karen

Hai apni ye salaah ke sab zahidaan-e shahr

Ai Dard aa ke bayat-e dast-e sabu karen

Should I ask fate for passion? I’m loath to do my part

I lost all desire when I lost my feckless heart.

All forms of consciousness will dissolve to one true state

When I look at the mirror and proclaim God is great!

Sneer not, dear judgemental sheikh, at my clothes wet with wine

When they’re wrung, angels ablute in this liquid divine.

I’m truthful like a mirror, but solitude’s the price

Anyone who looks at me leaves, hates to remain near.

Spring I cannot guarantee, nor is the rose so strong

On whose hopes can gardens bloom, with colour, scent and song?

It’s my advice, O Dard, to the city’s puritans

That they shun their false gods, and to wine pay obeisance.

In the pantheon of Urdu poetry, it is interesting to ask why it was only Mir (1723–1810) who came to be known as the
Khuda-e Sukhan
(God of Poetry). There is something originary about his work, which is not immediately apparent (just as a novice to cinema studies may not appreciate the trailblazing nature of
Citizen Kane
or
Battleship Potemkin
without an appreciation of the history of cinema itself). It is just that much of what is aesthetically brilliant about the ghazal seems to originate with Mir’s work. The masters themselves, of course, paid obeisance. Consider for example this couplet by Ghalib: ‘
Rekhta ke tumhi ustad nahin ho Ghalib / Kehte hain agle zamane me koi Mir bhi tha
’ (‘You are not the only great exponent of Urdu, Ghalib / It is said that in the past there used to be a Mir as well’).
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Mir’s life coincided with a very eventful phase in India. On the one hand, he was accompanying his patrons to hunts (composing poems known as
shikar nama
s or hunt poems), writing his autobiography, revelling in his status as the poet laureate of the cognoscenti, and indulging his sensual desires.
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On the other hand, his beloved Delhi was under such constant attack from serial marauders like Ahmed Shah Abdali that Mir had to move to Lucknow. His interactions with the Lucknow poets produced great strain because he had developed his own inflexible aesthetic and grew tired of their florid romanticism, while they found him puzzlingly quotidian (his clashes with the local star Sheikh Khalandar Bakht Jur’at remind one of the stand-offs between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, with Mir standing in for Shakespeare).

In deference to Mir’s exalted status, I have chosen to translate three of his poems here, all ghazals. The first one marked
my personal entry point into his poetry, when I listened enthralled to Lata Mangeshkar’s rendition of ‘
Dikhaai diye yoon ke bekhud kiya
’ in the 1982 movie
Bazaar.
I would draw special attention to Mir’s poignant maqta
in this poem, which summarizes the essence of existential angst as depicted in romantic Urdu poetry.

The second ghazal, which I initially did not take to, mystified me because many Urdu poets themselves regard it as the finest ghazal ever written (Ghalib listed it among his favourites, especially the sher that went ‘
Naazuki us ke lab ki kya kahiye / Pankhudi ek gulaab ki si hai
’).
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The final ghazal is also very celebrated, having been immortalized by the likes of singers such as Begum Akhtar, and also demonstrates Mir’s sly asides at religion, which paved the way for a familiar anti-religious iconoclasm in Urdu literature. Mir’s playful yet hard-hitting asides at religious orthodoxy (for example he says ‘
Dekhi hai jab se us but-e kaafir ki shakl, Mir / Jaata nahin hai jee tanik Islam ki taraf
’; ‘Ever since I saw that infidel statue, Mir / My heart is not even mildly inclined toward Islam’) set the tone for future poets to bring about an antagonistic and dialectical relationship between love and religion, a tradition that endures in Urdu poetry even today.

Faqiraana aaye, sadaa kar chale

Miyaan khush raho hum dua kar chale

Jo tujh bin na jeene ko kahte the hum

So is ahd ko ab vafaa kar chale

Koi na-ummeedaana karte nigaah

So tum hum se moonh bhi chhupa kar chale

Bahut aarzoo thi gali ki teri

So yaan se lahu mein naha kar chale

Dikhaai diye yoon ke bekhud kiya

Hamein aap se bhi juda kar chale

Jabeen sajda karte hi karte gayi

Haq-e bandagi hum ada kar chale

Parastish ki yaan tak ke ai but tujhe

Nazar mein sabon ki Khuda kar chale

Kahen kya jo poochhe koi hum se Mir

Jahaan mein tum aaye the, kya kar chale?

Entering like a beggar, unfulfilled I went

Said a prayer for you mister, now be content

A promise I made not to stay alive without you

Now I leave the world to honour it, adieu

Any sign from you would confirm hopelessness

So you left sans a goodbye, hiding your face

To reach your street, was all that to me mattered

I arrived, but left defeated, blood-splattered

’Twas portrayed as a selfless quotidian act

But it tore me asunder from you in fact

My head prostrated before you on the ground

The essence of servitude, my love had found

So devout, O idol, was my faith in you

That in other eyes, I made you a God too

How should I respond, they ask me as I leave

In this stay on earth, Mir, what did you achieve?

Hasti apni hubaab ki si hai

Ye numaaish saraab ki si hai

Naazuki us ke lab ki kya kahiye

Pankhudi ek gulaab ki si hai

Baar baar us ke dar pe jaata hoon

Haalat ab iztiraab ki si hai

Main jo bola kaha ke ye aawaaz

Usi khana-kharaab ki si hai

Mir, un neem-baaz aankhon mein

Saari masti sharaab ki si hai

My life, like a bubble, is transient

This show, like a mirage, evanescent

Exquisite, those lips that lie in repose

Delicate as the petals of a rose

Again and again I go to that door

In a state of panic, need I say more?

I spoke and everyone guessed that this sound

Belonged perhaps to that wretched, cursed hound

Those half-lidded eyes of that love of mine

Mir, they bear all the headiness of wine.

Ulti ho gaeen sab tadbeerein, kuchh na dava ne kaam
kiya

Dekha? Is beemari-e dil ne aakhir kaam tamaam kiya

Ahd-e jawani ro-ro kaati, peeri mein li aankhen
moond

Yaani raat bahut the jaage, subah hui, aaraam kiya

Na-haq hum majbooron par ye tohmat hai mukhtari
ki

Chaahte hain so aap kare hain, humko abas badnaam kiya

Sarzad hum se be-adabi to wahshat mein bhi kum hi
hui

Koson us ki ore gaye par sajda har har gaam kiya

Mir ke deen-o-mazhab ko ab poochhte kya ho? Un
ne to

Qashqaa khencha, dair mein baithaa, kab ka tark
Islam kiya

All those efforts came to naught, my wound no salve could mend

See! This affliction of the heart beat me in the end.

I squandered youth in grief. Came age, I shut my weary eye

I’d stayed awake all night—at dawn, I rested with a sigh.

Prisoners of fate are termed players of the free-will game

How ironic, victims of caprice shoulder the blame.

I went mad but never broke devotion’s protocol

Miles I walked toward you, bowed at each step, I recall.

Ask not of Mir’s faith, he’s smeared ash-marks on his forehead

He lives in temples, and from Islam’s call, has long fled.

Widely credited with popularizing the nazm tradition in the ghazal-dominated canon of eighteenth-century Urdu poetry, Nazeer Akbarabadi, whose real name was Sheikh Wali Muhammad (1735–1830), chose to write in relatively accessible language. Like many who choose to experiment with simplicity, he paid a price when the elite saw his experiment as an aesthetic failure, i.e. an inability (rather than a refusal) to affect the florid rhythms that constituted the canon of his time. History, of course, has been kinder to Nazeer; he is now acknowledged as a true ‘poet of the people’ and his nazms hark back to a tradition where great poetry was sung in streets instead of being imprisoned unread in texts. The noted theatre artist Habib Tanvir based his famous play
Agra Bazaar
on Nazeer’s life.

Nazeer’s poetic reflection on mortality,
Banjaara Nama
(Gypsy Tale), has assumed the status of metaphor, with its refrain ‘
Sab thaath pada reh jaayega, jab laad chalega banjara
’ (‘All your pomp will stay behind when the gypsy loads up and walks off’) now an acknowledged proverb in spoken Hindustani. He wrote plays on festivals like Diwali and Eid-ul Fitr, but chose to focus on their role as celebratory events rather than spiritual ones.

I have chosen to translate here a small part of his long poem titled ‘
Aadmi-Nama
’ (‘The Human Story’). Note that each verse has five lines; such a stanza is known as the mukhammas (‘fiver’). The fifth lines form a refrain across verses (in this case, with
‘
. . . hai so hai woh bhi hai aadmi
’). The simplicity of the verses likens the poem to a street ballad.

Duniya mein badshah hai so hai woh bhi aadmi

Aur muflis-o-gada hai so hai woh bhi aadmi

Zar-dar be-nawa hai so hai woh bhi aadmi

Ne’mat jo kha raha hai so hai woh bhi aadmi

Tukde jo mangta hai so hai woh bhi aadmi

Abdaal-o-qutb-o-ghaus-o-wali aadmi hue

Munkir bhi aadmi hue aur kufr se bhare

Kya kya karishme kashf-o-karamaat ke kiye

Hatta ke apne zor-o-riazat ke zor pe

Khaliq se ja mila hai so hai woh bhi aadmi

Fir’aun ne kiya tha jo daawa khudai ka

Shaddad bhi bahisht bana kar hua khuda

Namrud bhi khuda hi kahaataa thha bar mala

Yeh baat hai samajhne ki aage kahoon main kya

Yan tak jo ja chuka hai so hai woh bhi aadmi

Yaan aadmi hi naar hai aur aadmi hi noor

Yaan aadmi hi paas hai aur aadmi hi door

Kul aadmi ka husn-o-qaba mein hai yaan zahoor

Shaitaan bhi aadmi hai jo karta hai makr-o-zor

Aur haadi, rehnuma hai so hai woh bhi aadmi

Masjid bhi aadmi ne banaayi hai yaan miyaan

Bante hain aadmi hi imaam aur khutba-khwaan

Padhte hain aadmi hi namaaz aur quran yaan

Aur aadmi hi un ki churaate hain jootiyaan

Unko jo taad-ta hai so hai woh bhi aadmi

Yaan aadmi pe jaan ko ware hai aadmi

Aur aadmi hi tegh se maare hai aadmi

Pagdi bhi aadmi ki utaare hai aadmi

Chilla ke aadmi ko pukare hai aadmi

Aur sun ke daudhta hai so hai woh bhi aadmi!

The king of this vast domain is also a man

And the beggar mendicant is also a man

The wealthy or the poorest is also a man

The one who eats sumptuously is also a man

And the one who begs for crumbs is also a man.

The sage, the saint, the prophet, yes—they all were men

The unbelievers, atheists, they too were men

The miracles they showed us were beyond our ken

They ruled us with the force of both the sword and pen

The creation who now seems a god? Also a man.

The Pharaoh did claim divinity, such were his lies

Shaddad made a city; called it his Paradise

Nimrod too decided to make the divine claim

What can I say? Fools! Their hubris was the same

The one who falls to such crass depths? Also a man.

Man is a blazing fire and the blessed light

It’s man who’s gone so far away, and is in our sight

It’s man who is so beautiful and is so right

And man it is who represents Lucifer’s blight

And he who saves us from perils? Also a man.

The mosques where we seek God’s help—why are they man-made?

Men led the prayers and helped us pay spiritual dues

It was men who were lost in God, and while they prayed

Men they were too, who crept around and stole their shoes

The one who screams at those rascals? Also a man.

Who’ll agree to sacrifice for another man?

Who’ll smite a man with a sword? He too is a man.

Who will besmirch a man’s reputation? A man!

Whom do the wretched call for redress? Yea, a man.

He who runs away, unheeding? Also a man.