The Secret of Mirza Ghalib's Poetry

We now know the secret of the bard's poetry, well, it was the ...mangoes

...with his stunning memory and deep study of Ghalib's life, Hali was the winner in proving that Ghalib had in fact tasted most of the 4,000 varieties of mangoes grown in India. This might be a funny incident but the truth is that Ghalib was the one who loved eating mangoes in sweltering summers more than composing his couplets.

The varieties of mangoes that Ghalib mentioned in 63 letters written to his friends are - Malda, Fasli, Chausa, Zard Aaloo, Jahangir, Dasehri, Rehmat-e-Khas, Sarauli, Malghoba, Aziz Pasand, Mahmood Samar, Sultan-us-Samar, Ram Kela, Bombay Green, Ratol, Safeda Mallihabadi, Dil Pasand, Husan Aara, Nazuk Pasand, Kishan Bhog, Neelam, Khudadad, Hamlet, Tota Pari, Nishati, Zafrani, Sinduri, Khatta Meetha, Barah Masi, Langra, Alfonso, Fajri Samar Bahisht, Gulabakhsh, Bishop, Xavier, Rumani and Badami. Ghalib had tasted all these.

Happy Birthday, Mirza Ghalib

(On the 209th birth anniversary of Mirza Assadullah Khan Ghalib- 27 Dec)

Over the last fifteen years, there is only one book that has always accompanied me. I had bought it in 1991 for rupees twenty, a pretty neat sum considering my first job paid me a microscopic amount. The cover has seen more than one adhesive tape 'bandages' on the sides, many pages have threatened to tear out and have been supplicated to be in their place with glue and tape. The pages of my copy of Diwan e Ghalib have, over these years, turned yellow, even brown.

My attempts to learn Urdu have been erratic in a persistent sort of way.

But the magic of the words has never changed over the years.

I have often wondered what is it about Ghalib that makes him so eternal? His language is certainly more difficult than of many others, he belongs to the "high" tradition that used a very Persianized form of Urdu, unlike Mir his sheyrs in the short behr (length) are few, his concerns, again unlike Mir, are often didactic and even his collection of ghazals and sheyrs is much smaller than that of many others.

So why is it that Ghalib appeals not only to such great poets like Allama Iqbal (who, like me, or me, like him, always carried a copy of the Diwan e Ghalib with him) and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, whose first book of verse bore a title after Ghalib's ibtidayi sheyr of the Diwan, as well as the commoner folk?

I think one of the reasons is that Ghalib roars over and above his predecessors as well as successors. He rarely whimpers. He is a lively, even a gregarious character. For a long time and especially till the age of twentyfive, Ghalib refused to consider any criticism of his poetry. Consider the following sheyr:

Bandagi men bhi vuh azada o khud-bin hain ki ham
Ulte phir ae dar I kaba agar va na hua.

(We serve You, yet our independent self regard is such
We shall at once turn back if we would find the Kaba closed)

Another is his irreverence. Ghalib was hardly a 'good' Muslim. For one, he drank wine, as is famously known (French wine, in case you were wondering). He did not keep fasts or say his prayers or go on pilgrimage. In this he follows other Urdu poets who stand on the verge of transgression or beyond. For instance, Mir had said:

Mir ke deen-o-mazhab ko, ab poochtey kya ho, unney toh
Kashka khaincha, dair main baitha, kab ka tark islam kiya

(Do not ask what Mir's religion is, he has
Put on the sacred mark on the forehead (tilak), sits in the idol house, and has given up Islam)

Ghalib wrote much that ridiculed and often put to serious cross-examination many of the religious and Islamic concepts. One of his somewhat cryptic posers is:

na tha kuch, toh khuda tha, na hoga kuch toh khuda hoga
Na thaa kuch to khuda thaa, kuch na hota to khuda hota
duboya mujhko hooney ney, na hota main, toh kya hota?

(When nothing was, then God was there; had nothing been, God would have been,
My being has defeated me, had I not been what would have been? )

This irreverence was driven by a spirit of transgression, of crossing the accepted norms of society that excited Ghalib. He echoed in his poetry a popular Punjabi saying:

Jo had tapey so auliya, behad tapey so pir
Jo had, behad dono tapey, us noon aakhan fakir

(The one who crosses all boundaries attains the exalted title Auliya, the one who crosses non- boundaries becomes the Pir,
The one who crosses both boundaries as well as non- boundaries, becomes a Fakir)

And Ghalib, of course, prided himself on being a fakir. He remarked:

Banakar fakeeron ka hum bheys ghalib,
Tamasha-e-ahl-e-karam dekhtey hain

(Taking on the garb of a fakir, Ghalib
I watch the goings on of the world with a detached air)

That is why Ghalib continues to surprise- there are frontiers that we become aware of only when we cross them with his poetry.

Even as I browse his diwan umpteenth time, I find myself marking sheyrs that had escaped my attention earlier.

Here is a selection of some that have been marked in my copy over the years, a handful of selection, of course:

Naqsh fariyaadee hai kiskee shokhee-e-tehreer ka
Kaaghazee hai pairhan har paikar-e-tasveer ka

Ghalib zamanaa mujh ko mitaataa hey kiss liyay,
Loh-e-jahaan peh herf-e-mukerrer naheen hoon main

(Ghalib the world should not erase or displace me, since I am the ‘word’ not to be written twice on the Eternal Slate)

Bas ke hun Ghalib, asiri main bhi aatash zer e pa
moo e atash deeda, hai halka meri zanjeer ka

Ishk taasir se naumeed nahin
Jaan supari shajar e bed nahin

Bhaagey the hum bahut, so usi ki saza hai yeh
hokar aseer daabtey hain, rahzan ke paon

Ishk ne pakda na tha abhi vehshat ka rang
rah gaya tha dil main jo kuch, zauk e khawari hai hai

Saaya mera mujh se misl e dood bhaagey hai, Asad
paas mujh aatash bazan ke, kis se thehra jaaye hai

A related post.

Source of Mirza Ghalib's image

'Il Postino', Pablo Neruda and Makhdoom

"And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me."
- Pablo Neruda

'Il Postino' (The Postman) is a movie about a fumbling postman whose job is to deliver mail to Pablo Neruda while the latter is in exile on an island in Italy. This is partly fictitious. I don't have his autobiography with me so I cannot verify about this incident if at all it is mentioned in the book, I don't remember reading about it.

Mario watches a documentary news item in a cinema recounting the journey of Neruda to Italy. When he is asked to deliver mail to him, he gets interested in Neruda's poetry so that he too, like Neruda, can "impress the girls".

Starting with this rather innocuous motive, he begins to understand the art of writing poetry and imbibes ideas from Neruda himself. The dialogues are wonderful and the interactions between the postman and the Poet are a delight every time Mario goes to deliver mail to Neruda. The rustic intelligence of Mario is pitted against the wisdom of the Neruda and the brilliance comes through despite the translation.

There area couple of sentences that I particularly liked. Mario takes a poem from Neruda to impress a girl he likes (called Beatrice). When Neruda castigates him for doing so, he responds with the following, leaving the poet speechless:

Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, it belongs to those who need it

Later, his friendship with Neruda evolves and he starts understanding "complex" words like "metaphors" and starts writing poetry himself. Neruda also helps him in convincing Beatrice to marry him. When the priest discovers that Mario wants Neruda, a well known communist, as his best man, he is outraged:

Priest: Find yourself a person who isn't a communist. If Neruda doesn't believe in God, why should God believe in Neruda. What sort of a witness would he be?

Mario: God never said a communist can't witness at a wedding

The movie is peppered with snippets from Neruda's poetry. Here is a short (abou 9 minutes) clip available at youtube where Neruda composes a poem, and Mario begins to interpret it. At the end he makes a powerful comment:

Is it that the whole world is a metaphor for something else?

The clip:


A spoiler here, so don't proceed if you intend to watch the movie yourself), Mario is invited to attend a communist demonstration and dies there. At the end of the movie, Pablo Neruda returns and finds that Mario's son, born after he has died, is named Pablito.

Mario also records the sounds of his islands to send them on tape to Neruda. This clip captures that recording.


Needless to say, it has been one of the best movies that I have seen for a long time (not that I watch much), it is perhaps also the only movie I was able to watch without any break- and it was twice in two days.

Incidentally, the role of Mario was played by the actor- writer Massimo Troisi who died one day before the movie was released. He had deferred his heart treatment so that he could complete the movie (from Wikipedia)

'Il Postino' reminded me of a similar episode in the life of Makhdoom Mohiuddin, the communist poet from Hyderabad. It was recounted in the TV serial Kahkashan, and what I recollect is recounted here.

When the CPI was banned in 1948, Makhdoom was incarcerated in a jail where his cellmate was a young man who had been jailed in trumped up charges by the family of a girl he was in love with. Makhdoom leads him via his poetry to become politically educated. The young man is somehow released and Makhdoom as well, after a gap. Years later, while passing by a town he is informed of the sacrifice of a young man and a woman during the Telengana struggle. Makkhdoom finds the graves of the young man who had been his cellmate and beside his grave, that of that of the girl he had loved.

Makhdoom wrote a very moving nazm when he saw this.

The Kahkashan version is here, it has also been used in a Bollywood film Cha Cha Cha.

Thanks to HD for recommending the movie.

Wadali Brothers: Sufism as Emancipation

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Remembering 06 December 1992: "Doosra Banwas "

Kaifi Azmi's poem written in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition revealed the contradictions in the movement that led the demolition.

Ram banwaas se jab laut ke ghar mein aaye,
Yaad jangal bahut aaya jo nagar mein aaye,
Raqsse deewangee aangan mein jo dekha hoga,
6 december ko Shri Ram ne socha hoga,
Itne deewane kahan se mere ghar mein aaye?

Jagmagate thhe jahan Ram key qadmon ke nishaan,
Piyaar kee kahkashan leti thi angdayee jahan,
Mod nafrat ke usee rah guzar mein aaye,
Dharam kya unka hae, kya zaat hae, yeh janta kaun?
Ghar na jalta tau unhe raat mein pehchanta kaun,
Ghar jalane ko mera, log jo ghar mein aaye,
Shakahari hae mere dost tumahara khanjar.

Tumne Babar kee taraf pheke thhe saare patthar
Hae mere sar ki khata zakhm jo sar mein aaye,
Paun Sarjoo mein aabhi Ram ne dhoye bhee na thhe
Ke nazar aaye wahan khoon ke gehre dhabbe,
Paun dhoye bina Sarjoo ke kinare se uthe,
Ram yeh kehte hue aapne dwaare se uthe,
Rajdhani kee fiza aayee nahin raas mujhe,
6 December ko mila doosra banwaas mujhe.
(Acknowledgement: Zafar Iqbal)

A rough translation:

"The Second Exile"

That evening when Lord Ram returned to his home
He remembered the jungles where he had spent his years of exile
When he must have seen the dance of madness that December 6
It must have crossed his mind
From where have so many demented ones landed on my home

Wherever he had stepped and his footprints had shone
The river waters where thousands of stars of love meandered
Instead now took turns of violence and hatred
What is their religion, what is their caste, who knows?
Had the house not burnt, who would have known the faces
Of those who came to burn my house
Your sword, my friend, is vegetarian.

You threw towards Babar all the stones
It is my head's fault that, instead, it bleeds
Lord Ram had not even washed his feet in the Saryu waters
When he saw deep blots of blood.
Getting up without washing his feet in the waters
Lord Ram left the precincts of his own residence, bemoaning,
The state of my own capital city no longer suits me
This December 6, I have been condemned to a second exile

Related link: Review of PV Narasimha Rao's book 06 December 1992

Kaifi Azmi: The Poet who would die in Socialist India

(The play Kaifi aur Main based on the memoir written by Shaukat Azmi, and played by Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar is currently on tour in India)

Kaifi Azmi was part of the fiery triumvirate of the Urdu poets in post independent India. Along with Sahir Ludhianvi and Ali Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi wrote "red poetry" when the appeal of socialism among the intelligentsia in India and the world at large was substantial.

Two names that should belong to the list are Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Makhdoom Mohiuddin.

Makhdoom gave priority to politics over his poetry- representing the Communist Party of India as an MLA in Andhra Pradesh while Faiz Ahmed Faiz in a metaphorical sense, and in a reversal of roles, substituted the lack of the political Left in Pakistan with his poetry. Sahir Ludhianvi wove magic with his uncanny, and unsurpassed ability to lyricize complex ideas, including ideological, into a brilliant tapestry of words making films his terra firma.

Kaifi Azmi and Ali Sardar Jafri together tread the path of literary activism, practically being the official poets of the Communist Party of India.

It would be futile to look for Kaifi Azmi, the man, in his film lyrics. They represent him only partially and those that do, bring out only the personally romantic side of him, specially in those sung by Mohammad Rafi in his mellow, bass elegance. Kaifi lacked the lyricism of Sahir that appealed to Bollywood movies and also the great literary sweep of Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

What Kaifi excelled at was the nazm, marking as he did, the break from the classicism of the ghazal form. As one of the angry young men thrown up in the aftermath of the Civil Disobedience Movement, at the time when it was very heaven to be young- the time of Jawaharlal Nehru's youthful swerve to socialist ideas, the formation of the Congress Socialist Party and the radical appeal of the Communist Party of India under P.C. Joshi who made culture as one of the 'fronts' on which the party had to fight in its struggle for socialism- much before Antonio Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony came to be known and gain credence.

Kaifi was one of the major activists of the Indian People's Theater Association in his younger days and in 1986 made a valiant effort to revive the movement as its president. He was known for his closeness to the CPI, and even once had a spat with Sahir when he accused the latter of compromising his lifestyle while proclaiming his leftist political commitment.

I remember Kaifi Azmi, Comrade Kaifi to us youngsters, reciting his famous nazm Naujawan, after a spate of street dramas enacted by various groups in the IPTA troupe. His recitation was the last one as night crawled around us and a mild March breeze began to blow. His voice boomed in the pin drop silence, what a voice he had !

Raah agyaar ki dekhain yeh bhale taur nahin
Hum Bhagat Singh ke saathi hain, koi aur nahin.

Zindagi humse sada shola e jawaani maange
Ilm o hikmat ka khazana humdaani maange
aisi lalkaar ke talwaar bhi paani maange
aisi raftaar ke dariya bhi rawaani maange

(That we would wait for others to take lead, does not suit us,
We are the comrades of Bhagat Singh, and none else

Life beseeches us our burning youth
The treasures of knowledge and courage
A cry so sharp that the swords may cry out
Such an electric flow that the oceans may look to us for inspiration)

At its most sensitive turns, Kaifi Azmi's poetry was meant to highlight the life of the poor and the suppressed, and at its most inspired movements, meant to inspire the young cadre of the communist movement to go out and work for upliftment of the "insulted and the humiliated". Kaifi Azmi had once proudly declared: I was born in colonial India, I have lived in an independent India, and will die in a socialist India.

Kaifi lived to see the dreams of his youth smothered as fort after fort of existing socialism collapsed in East Europe and its citadel, the Soviet Union. He was shell shocked.

And even in his silences he spoke for the grim silence of all those who had been inspired by the message of the October Revolution. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he did not speak for many months, and neither did he write.

It was the attack on Indian secularism on 06 December 1992 that awoke the activist poet in him and he wrote the nazm invoking Lord Rama.

Towards the end of his life, he returned to his roots, the small mofussial town of Azamgarh, building a high school for girls and a hospital. He had written:
Woh mera gaanv hai, woh mere gaanv ke chooleh
Ke jinme shole to shole, dhooan nahin milata

(That indeed is my village, and those indeed are the ovens of my village
In which, not to speak of the fires, even the smoke is not seen)

In the more famous matla of this ghazal, he had expressed the restlessness that inspired him:

Main dhoondta hoon jise woh jahan nahin milta
Nai zameen, naya aasmaan nahin milta

(The world that I search for, I do not find,
The New World, the New Heavens I do not find)

To look for Kaifi, is to keep on searching the for new, better, more egalitarian worlds. And heavens that are more just. To remove this search from his poetry would be to take away its soul.

On a personal note, I had the opportunity to meet with "Comrade Kaifi" at Ajoy Bhawan in New Delhi in 1986. On seeing a bunch of youngsters from the Punjab, he gave me a pointed look, the tuft of hair on his forehead falling over his eyes, and asked me, referring to the Khalistanis: Why are these young men angry?

I did not have an instant answer. And perhaps the question in that context has become irrelevant. But then, perhaps Kaifi was also referring to his own younger days, and asking: What is it that makes young men (and women) angry?

He had spent a lifetime in poetry trying to answer this question.

***

Thanks to Alok for having revived memories of Kaifi and for the link to the "Kaifi aur Main" site.

Image Source

Paul Robeson and India

Sean Coughlan writes about Paul Robeson, the singer, black activist and socialist (full report at BBC):

"Robeson was like an electro-magnet going through a pile of iron filings. It wasn't just admiring fans, it was deep admiration... he radiated personality, a man of great commitment and strength... totally immune to the persecution he suffered."

Prompted by Benn's elderly aunt, Robeson sang Old Man River. "The whole tea room went silent, it was the most extraordinary experience."

And to those in India, Paul Robeson's song Ol' Man River, came to us much before one came to learn about Paul Robeson himself, for me, the introduction was via Philip Roth's I Married a Communist. The song itself had come to us in Bhupen Hazarika's invocation to the river Ganga (in Hindi) and to the mighty Brahmaputra (in Asomiya).

An mp3 version of the song sung by Robeson, though it is a very short clip.

Robeson,however, came to us in the voice of Bhupendra Hazarika- in the Hindi and the Asomiya versions.

Hazarika had met Paul Robeson and was so influenced that he rendered the famous song into Asomiya and Hindi.


Few know that, during his time at Columbia University, Hazarika was a friend of Paul Robeson, the great black American singer, actor and civil rights activist. Robeson’s passionate crusade for social justice and black pride has permeated Bhupenda’s own worldview. Inspired greatly by Robeson’s powerful rendition of the song “Ole Man River”, Hazarika created his own moving ode to the Brahmaputra.

(Bard of the Brahmaputra by Sanjoy Hazarika)



For this song alone, he is forgiven the sin of joining the BJP in his later years.

An excerpt from the song (full text), with its powerful message in the language as spoken by the Afro Americans:

O' man river,
Dat ol' man river,
He mus'know sumpin'
But don't say nuthin'
He jes' keeps rollin'
He keeps on rollin' along.

Long ol' river forever keeps rollin' on...

He don' plant tater,
He don' plant cotton,
An' dem dat plants 'em
Is soon forgotten,
but ol' man river,
He jes' keeps rollin' along.

Long ol' river keeps hearing dat song.
You an' me, we sweat an' strain,
Body all achin an' racked wid pain.
Tote dat barge!
Lif' dat bale!
Git a little drunk
An' you land in jail.

Ah, gits weary
An' sick of tryin'
Ah'm tired of livin'
An' skeered of dyin',
But ol' man river,
He jes'keeps rollin' along!

Link to BBC report via the Histomat.

Tags: India, Assam, Music, Racism, Socialism

Tamil Dalit Poetry

The State of Tamil Nadu in South India is ubiquitous in many ways- perhaps the most important being that in the 1920s it gave rise to a powerful non- Brahmin movement called the Self- Respect Movement led by social reformer Periyar. It later led to the formation of the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) party.

Tamil Nadu politics is today dominated by two Dravidian parties- the DMK that morphed out of the DK and its off- shoot, the AIADMK, the former led by Karunanidhi and his family, the latter, by the temperamental Jayalalitha.

Periyar's social reform movement was largely rationalist and is perhaps without parallel in its expanse and intensity. Periyar's oft- quoted statement is:

"He who created god was a fool, he who spreads his name is a scoundrel, and he who worships him is a barbarian."

Unlike elsewhere in India, Tamil social structure is not in the form of a pyramid- instead it has a caste system with a very small Brahmin (less than 2%) population, a large chunk of the backward castes and a substantial Dalit population (about 20% of the total state population) - the "other upper castes" like the Kshatriyas are absent. 90% of the Dalits in Tamil Nadu own no land.

Tamil politics is dominated by some of the backward castes many of which are no longer "backward" in most ways. Periyar's movement produced a powerful assertion of the Tamil backward castes but left little or no space for the Dalits.

Even serious Dalit literature arrived only in the early 1990s.

But it is in this state that the Dalit intelligentsia can emerge as a powerful voice. Over the years, a literacy culture has taken strong roots in the state- literacy is far higher than in all states except Kerala. There is also an immediate tradition of protest and assertion albeit of the backward castes.

The fervour, the controlled but intense anger and the intellectual restlessness to understand society in order to change it among some of the young Dalit professionals and students in the state is like the one that one earlier used to observe only among the Marxist inclined youth in the sixties and seventies.

The Sep- Oct issue of Muse India, edited by the young and talented Meena Kandasamy, containing a selection of some of the Dalit poetry emerging out of Tamil Nadu offers a poignant window into these undercurrents of protest.

Rajkumar ND in the poem 'A Wish' gives an inkling of the mood:

He who desires peace
Under oppression
Is a fraud.

It is human tendency to disturb
And attain clarity in the fight
For liberation.

In "Infection", Devadevan sarcastically comments on the sacred thread that is the privilege only of the Brahmin men:

The chief doctor came,
Examined my friend
And raised his head.
In the direction of the ears
That were throbbing with worry
And concern and questions
He bent his head
And from his white-gloved hand
Held a dirty sacred thread
And said,
"This could have caused
The infection."

There are 15 poems in this issue of the magazine, most of them translated by Meena Kandasamy who also provides a short and cogent backgroud to the emergence of Dalit literature in Tamil Nadu.

Like all other Dalit literature, Tamil Dalit literature too has an excess of autobiographies. Critics condemn these literatures of lament, but they too have a central place within the creative core. Tamil Dalit literature is characterized by the call for self-identity and assertion. It tramples all conventions with its intensely personal expression; is concerned with the life of the subaltern, and deals out a stark brutality. This literature should be viewed not as a literature of vengeance or a literature of hatred, but a literature of freedom and greatness.

Link to Muse via Whitejasmine

Tags: Dalit, Literature, Poetry, Tamil , India

Namdeo Dhasal and the Fall of the Dalit Panther Movement

While I write this at night
it's three o' clock
Though I want to have a drink
I don't feel like drinking.
Only I want to sleep peacefully
And tomorrow morning see no varnas

- Namdeo Dhasal

Namdeo Dhasal now makes news only for moving further away from the cause he stood for, that is for moving away from Marxism to the Shiv Sena and now to the Sangh Parivar's fountainhead- the RSS- organizations that he had once bitterly opposed.

But once Namdeo Dhasal had founded the Dalit Black Panthers movement in 1972, and heralded the era of Dalit poetry, though the term Dalit Poetry had existed since 1958.

Anand Teltumbde places his poetry in the context of his times (the early seventies):

The times were just ripe for the protest movement of dalits to germinate.... The most notable example of this protest came in light in the form of Golpitha- a collection of poems by Namdeo Dhasal. Golpitha - name of a red-light district in Mumbai, depicted the tough life of a dalit there and is considered as Dhasal's most stellar work. People were shocked by the raw energy exuded by each of its word entirely unfamiliar to the established literary circles. They had never seen quite like it before. Its proletarian lingo, iconoclastic imagery, defiant idiom and terrible anger shook the establishment to its very foundation. A spate of poetry followed

Dhasal's poetry is powerful and poignant, and very raw.

Dhasal's poetry is shocking to those who have not experienced the excruciating circumstances of caste exploitation:

In one of his poems Dhasal describes how caste society and male domination deformed his mother, making her into a "machinery for the production of worms." Identifying with her spiritual butchery at the hands of a bigoted society, he tells her, "Just as I have been stripped bare, so have you." This identification with his mother, however, doesn't lead him to inner healing; instead, it hardens him and gives his despair an unpredictable edge. With a baiting bitterness, he asks her, "On the day you cut my umbilical cord, why didn't you slash my throat with your fingernail?" He then proceeds to rail at her some more, accusingly but also as an act of self-mutilating triumph over any possibility of romanticization --

You didn't even moo once from the depths.
You didn't stir the sky with a shrill cry.
The earth didn't crack.
How easily you lived, wrapped in rhinoceros hide.

In What More Than This Can Be, he wrote:

I am a common man of this contemporary history
I have put down the head guard out of self-humility
I wish to embrace deeply my innermost being
That will end up the essence,
Do not shed the innocent skin of this grammar
After all this heinous world belongs to human beings
Power is not in words but in the desire
This fever-stricken, exaggerated pretention
Will bother the deep relations
Clear away the self-chosen inhuman path
Seasons come and go
Who are you waiting for?

Dhasal has since then moved across the political spectrum from Leftist leanings to now sharing the stage with RSS leaders. It is a left handed tribute to the Dalit Panthers' movement that even the Shiv Sena, once a backward caste outfit opposed to the Dalit cause, now allies with one or the other splinter groups. Ram Puniyani explains the phenomemon well:

Dalit panthers came up as the most promising organisation for dalit rights and their path was that of alliance with the other oppressed sections of society. They broadened the definition of dalits to include workers, minorities, adivasis and women. This indicated the line of allaince to be followed. This last concerted effort fell to pieces with different leaders of dalit movement getting co-opted by one or the other political power or personality.

Though Dhasal now has his own convoluted explanation:

"But Dalits have come into political power in some places," Namdeo said. "They are accused of corruption, but they learned it from the Brahmins who ruled before them. The reservations do not work as they now stand. I believe that our people will start to make more demands and the Hindus will be forced to submit to them."

Dilip Chitre considers him to be one of the towering poets of the 20th century:

Namdeo is a big poet in the sense Whitman, Mayakovsky and Neruda are big. But unlike them, his poetry contains large chunks of a real and dirty world peopled by have-nots and their slang. Henry Miller once said, “I am not creating values; I defecate and nourish.” Namdeo did precisely this for Marathi poetry. He restored its soil-cycle by feeding it the very excrement and garbage that could fertilise it for the future.

The interview with Namdeo Dhasal alone makes VS Naipaul's India: A Million Mutinies Now worth a read.

Poetry is politics, he once stated. Undoubtedly, his current politics will not cast a shadow on his poetry and Dhasal's poetry will live long after his current politics is dead.

***

More on Namdeo Dhasal, his poetry and his political drift from Marxism to the Sangh Parivar.

Picture: Dalit poet and leader Namdeo Dhasal shakes hands with RSS chief K Sudarshan at a book release function in New Delhi on Wednesday (Acknowledgement: ToI)

Tags: Dalit, Poetry, NamdeoDhasal, India, RSS, Marathi

Be Near Me...Tum Mere Paas Raho

This verse in Alfred Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' is uncannily similar to Faiz's 'Paas Raho'.

Be near me when my light is low,

When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick

And tingle; and the heart is sick,

And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame

Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;

And Time, a maniac scattering dust,

And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,

And men the flies of latter spring,

That lay their eggs, and sting and sing

And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,

To point the term of human strife,

And on the low dark verge of life

The twilight of eternal

Faiz seems to have transcreated the verse in Paas Raho:

tum mere paas raho
mere qaatil, mere dildaar, mere paas raho
jis gha.Dii raat chale
aasamaano.n kaa lahuu pii kar siyah raat chale
marham-e-mushk liye nashtar-e-almaas chale
bain karatii hu_ii, ha.Nsatii hu_ii, gaatii nikale
dard kii kaasanii paazeb bajaatii nikale
jis gha.Dii siino.n me.n Duubate huye dil
aastiino.nme.n nihaa.N haatho.n kii rah takane nikale
aas liye

aur bachcho.n ke bilakhane kii tarah qul-qul-e-may
bahr-e-naasudagii machale to manaaye na mane
jab ko_ii baat banaaye na bane
jab na ko_ii baat chale
jis gha.Dii raat chale
jis gha.Dii maatamii, sun-saan, siyah raat chale
paas raho
mere qaatil, mere dildaar, mere paas raho

An English translation of the above nazm by Agha Shahid Ali:

Be Near Me

You who demolish me, you whom I love,
be near me. Remain near me when evening,
drunk on the blood of skies,
becomes night, in the other
a sword sheathed in the diamond of stars.

Be near me when night laments or sings,
or when it begins to dance,
its stell-blue anklets ringing with grief.

Be here when longings, long submerged
in the heart’s waters, resurface
and everyone begins to look:
Where is the assasin? In whose sleeve
is hidden the redeeming knife?

And when wine, as it is poured, is the sobbing
of children whom nothing will console–
when nothing holds,
when nothing is:
at that dark hour when night mourns,
be near me, my destroyer, my lover me,
be near me.

English translation by Agha Shahid Ali from The Rebel’s Silhouette.

Via Streetphotos

A related post on Sahir's nazm 'Khoobsoot Mod' and the 17th century English poet Michael Drayton's The Parting

Technorati Tags: Urdu, Poety, Faiz

Anti War Poem Parchaiyaan by Sahir Ludhianvi

Since long has the polemic of politics decreed
That the child that flowers into youth is ripe for slaughter
Since long have the rulers decreed
That poisonous weeds be sown in far- off lands

***

bahut dinon se hai ye mashgala siyasat ka
ke jab jawaan ho to bachche katl ho jayain
bahut dinon se hai ye khabt hukamranon ka
ke door door ke mulkon main kehat bo aain

***

Here are the last few stanzas of Sahir Ludhianvi's taveel nazm Parchaiyaan that is reminiscent of Faiz's Mujh se pehli si mohabbat meri mehboob na maang - Faiz juxtaposed romantic love with revolution, Sahir does the same by juxtaposing romantic love with a call to oppose war.

The Shadows

Since long has the polemic of politics decreed
That the child that flowers into youth is ripe for slaughter
Since long have the rulers decreed
That poisonous weeds be sown in far- off lands

Since long are the dreams of youth vacuous
Since long love seeks refuge
Since long, on the trampled roads
Life, like a maiden's honor, seeks a sheltering roof

Let us call upon all suffering souls
To give voice to their wounds
Our secrets are not only ours
They belong to the entire world
Let this entire world, henceforth, be our confidant

Let us tell these political gamblers
That we hate their ways of war and destruction
Life that is draped in hues of only the colour of blood
Is repugnant to us

Let us declare that if a murderer comes this way
Each road shall turn narrower
Each waft of breeze shall turn around viciously
Each delicate branch of every tree
Shall harden into veins of stone

Arise and tell the war mongers
What we need are tools to work
It is not other's lands that we crave
We need ploughs to farm our own land

Declare that no usurper
Shall turn his eyes towards us
No maiden's honour shall be sold again
The vast lands have arisen
The crops are shoulder high
No strip of land now shall be sold

This is the land of Gautam and Nanak
No spoilers shall stride on these sacred lands
Our blood belongs to the generations to come
Swords shall not sprout from our blood

Declare that if even today we remain silent
This throbbing world shall cease to be
A world engulfed in atomic furies
Shall not last,
Nor shall the skies be

During the previous wars
only the homes and hearths were razed
But this time it will not be surprising if even our solitudes remain no more
During the previous wars
It was only bodies that were lost
But this time, it will not be surprising
If even the shadows are forever gone

The mind begins to conjure shadows of imaginations

***

Picture acknowlegements here, and here

I had translated these stanzas in the wake of the nuclear blasts by India and Pakistan in May 1998 but find them as relevant now as they were then, or when they were written.

Tags: Sahir, Anti- War, Lebanon, Urdu Poetry

Technorati Tags: Sahir, Anti- War, Lebanon, Urdu Poetry

Lebanon

Mohib reminds us of a verse by Faiz on Beirut "aik nagma karbala e beirut ke liye" that he wrote on the eve of the invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982. History has turned a full circle as it were.

Here is another excerpt from "sar e vadiye seena" written after the Arab- Israel war of 1967:

har aik aula il umr ko sada do
ki apni farde amal sambhale
uthega jab jam e sarfaroshan
padainge daar o rasan ke lale
koi na hoga jo bacha le
jaza, saza, sab yahin pe hogi
yahin aazaab o savaab hoga
yahin se uthega shor e mehshar
yahin pe roz e hisaab hoga

Pictures and coverage on the devastation in Lebanon. More pictures (link via AmLeft) on Israel's "liberation" of Lebanon.

While on Faiz and Lebanon, one cannot but help recall the late Eqbal Ahmed as well. An article on Lebanon at a site devoted to his life and works.

Tags: Lebanon, Faiz, Politics,Antiwar

Technorati Tags: Lebanon, Faiz, Antiwar, Politics

Lal Singh Dil

Lal Singh Dil one of the few poets in Punjabi who had instictively appealed to the restless teenager in me.

His collections of poems were published by some of the Naxalite publishers (usually a one- man publishing house) in those little pocket book size booklets of thirty or forty pages, with a gray or brown cover that gave them the deceptive look of a bygone age, even when the booklets were printed recently. The inside pages were generally whiter, and smelled fresh.

In the mid- eighties, there was still awe of the Naxalite movement among some of the more socially sensitive students. Its aura had not yet dimmed, though the embers flickered very little, and news of a Nagabhushan Pattanaik being released from incarceration, was of little interest to the major newspapers, then the main source of news. Even though newspapers then were newspapers, and not yet printed television.

Lal Singh Dil's poems that I read then were generally short, and I knew little of his background. It was even rumoured that he had died and that a news item had been published regarding his death. There was one particular poem that invoked Guru Gobind Singh. I had then wondered why Guru Gobind, and why not Baba Nanak.

Slowly, as I turned away from my armchair fascination for the movement and got embroiled with the 'softer' versions of the Left, Lal Singh Dil became another forgotten recess in the labyrinthine passages of growing up.

Paash, a contemporary of Dil, and a poet with much wider appeal, somehow did not appeal initially, though later, when my reading expanded, I could appreciate a poem here and a metaphor there. I found his poetry to be very raw- so was Dil's in some ways- but I felt more detached from Paash than from Dil. Surjit Pattar was suave compared to any of them.

It was much later that I became aware of the Dalit element in his persona and poetry. I had myself arrived by then at a better appreciation of the need and significance of the Dalit movement, after an long drawn "ideological struggle" with my friends- and a particular father- figure of a teacher- who emphasized the class nature of conflcit denying caste and other factors, but specially caste.

It came as news to me that Dil had fled to Uttar Pradesh after the police reprisals in the seventies, and that he had converted to Islam. And that he was Dalit.

Rahul's write up therefore invoked a certain personal poignance for me. (Link via Krishworld)

His writings may have been inspired in the heat of the times, in the shadow of the flames of the Naxalbari uprising, but the light from his, and those of others of the "Naxalite trend" in Punjabi poetry continues to remind us of the struggles that have not yet ended.

When the labourer woman
Roasts her heart on the tawa
The moon laughs from behind the tree
The father amuses the younger one
Making music with bowl and plate
The older one tinkles the bells
Tied to his waist
And he dances
These songs do not die
Nor either the dance...

***

Lal Singh Dil has an insightful observation on the relevance of Sufism for the Dalits in Punjab.

The impact of Sufism in Punjab, as it exists now, is highly debated. Lal Singh `Dil', a noted writer, said: "Sufism doesn't solve anything. It favours Dalits, though, because of their need for a place of refuge." He added: "Sufism can be defined as a critique of society. That was the root. Although Sufi songs are nice to bond over, they must not be de-contextualised. The logic of this Sufi tradition lies in non-Brahmanical culture, and not in secularism."

More on Lal Singh Dil here, and here.

An article on Dil in Punjabi.

Technorati Tags: Punjab, Poetry, Punjabi, Dalit, Left, India

Remembering Majaz

This year is the 50th death anniversary of Asrar ul Haq or Majaz. Today he may be better remembered as an uncle of Javed Akhtar, but he was one of the most powerful Urdu poet that the Progressive Writer's Movement produced in the thirties and forties. His alma mater still sings the tarana penned by Majaz, and the rendition of ae gham e dil kya karoon can still be heard in the shimmering, silken voice of Talat Mahmood. Unfortunately, Jagjit Singh's last memorable singing (for the serial Kahkashan) is not popular or easily available- it had included some excellent renditions of Majaz's poetry.

Majaz's life was short, he rose like a star but collapsed soon in his unrequited love for a married woman and alcohol.

Majaz's poetry, in my humble opinion, was very rich in metaphor and his poetry was embellished with some of the finest metaphors in Urdu poetry after Mirza Ghalib. Sample the following from his most famous verse awaara:

ik mahal kii aa.D se nikalaa vo piilaa maah_taab
jaise mullaah kaa amaamaa jaise baniye kii kitaab
jaise muflis kii javaanii jaise bevaa kaa shabaab

Some of his qalam is avalable here.

One of my favourites is the ghazal with the following maqta:

is mahafil-e-kaif-o-mastii me.n is anjuman-e-irafaanii me.n
sab jaam-ba-kaf baiThe rahe ham pii bhii gaye chhhalakaa bhii gaye

His poem on a little girl visiting the temple with her mother is another favourite. Even as the five year old girl bows her head in prayer, her mind is occupied by the toys in the house. It is a beautiful poem striking in the portrayal of a child and her pre occupations amidst the life guided by older people. It is reminiscent of Tagore's numerous poems on the theme in Gitanjali.

Majaz was one of the poets in the famous scene in Guru Dutt's Pyaasa along with Majrooh and Jigar Moradbadi. In fact, he recites one of his ghazal (roodade-gham-e-ulfat), as does Jigar recite a couplet as well (kaam akhir jazba). Guru Dutt captured both art and life in that one memorable scene.

Some of his poetry, or at least his radeefs were used (plagiarized?) by other lyricists like Hasrat Jaipuri. This may remind you of a popular Rafi number Chalkey teri aankhon se sharaab aur ziyada.

He drank himself to death, and in that he was typical of a generation of Muslim Urdu poets who found themselves lost in the decades that brought about the partition. Most of them were typically leftists and found themselves kafirs in Pakistan and their language treated as that of the mlechhas in India.

Today, Majaz is remembered merely as an uncle of the lyricist (and an average poet) Javed Akhtar. Whether that is heartening or merciful is difficult to say. Some people are just born on the wrong side of history.

You may like to read this English translation of Madhav Moholkar's memoir as well.

technorati tags:
Literature , Urdu

Amrita Pritam

Surjit Pattar, perhaps the finest Punjabi poet and writer today on the east of the border, remembers Amrita Pritam:

Amrita Pritam is no more. It's as if the five rivers of Punjab are dead - Ravi is no more, nor is Chenab. Amrita Pritam was like the five rivers which make Punjab. She made Punjabi literature.

Her name, those two words - Amrita Pritam - will always be music to the ears of Punjabi literature lovers. When it comes to 20th century Punjabi poetry, we can debate who should be the sun but when it comes to the moon, there is no discord. Amrita Pritam, who passed away quietly in her home at Hauz Khas, New Delhi, is undoubtedly the moon of the 20th century Punjabi poetry, and this moon never needed to borrow someone else's light. She had so much light of her own that many like us glowed in it.

Amrita Pritam represented both the Charhda (Indian) and the Lehnda (Pakistan) Punjab. Her poems gave voice to the pain of women who had hitherto woven their sufferings into folk songs sung softly behind voluminous veils. She was also the pathos of Partition. No poet could parallel her when it came to pouring ts agony into words . Her lines Aj akhan Waris Shah nuun, kitho uth kabran cho bol... have been immortalised in both the Punjabs.

Nirupama Dutt sums up the life and art of Amrita Pritam:

In her lifetime, Amrita authored over 100 books of poetry, fiction, biography and essays. In one of her last poems written from the sick bed, she consoled her love Imroz by saying, ‘Main tainu phir milagi…’ (I will meet you yet again). This is the promise she made to her soul mate but she will yet meet us all again through her writings. For today on Divali eve she has passed out of history into legend to stand in the row of poets like Meera Bai, Rabia and Lal Ded.

A very comprehensive compilation at indianwriting.

Review of The Famous Ghalib by Ralph Russel

The Famous Ghalib
Selected, Translated and Introduced By Ralph Russell
Roli Books, New Delhi Rs. 295 (HB), Pages 192

Ralph Russell came to India as a British soldier during World War II and went on to join the Department of Oriental Studies at Cambridge. His previous works over the years, mostly written along with Khursidul Islam, have made him known as an authority on Urdu literature especially on Mirza Ghalib.

He remarks that, "If his (Ghalib’s) language had been English, he would have been recognised all over the world as a great poet long ago. My translations are an attempt to present some of his poetry in English so that English speakers may be able to judge the work for themselves." However, the book caters well even to those already familiar with the poetry of Ghalib, this is so both in the selection and translations of the poetry and in the accompanying essays.

The sheyrs and ghazals translated into English are followed by the original in Urdu and the transliterated versions in Roman and Devnagari. An essay on 'Getting to Know Ghalib' serves as an insightful introduction to Ghalib, his poetry and the milieu that it grew on. Another essay 'On Translating Ghalib' brings forth the problems and techniques of translating from Urdu to English. These essays help to supplement and explain the translations. They weave together the translated sheyrs into a cohesive whole.

The current translations are marked by a stress on the literal meaning of the sheyrs, though there are some sheyrs and ghazals where the translator has tried to practically recreate both the meaning and the form in English. This is not a mean achievement and as compared to the other two significant translations (one by Qurrat-ul- ain Haider and another edited by Aijaz Ahmed), Russel has attempted -and achieved- much more. One hopes that it will encourage the reader to read the original.

*****

Ghalib roars over and above his predecessors as well as contemporaries, he rarely whimpers. He is a lively, even a gregarious character. For a long time and especially till the age of 25, Ghalib refused to consider any criticism of his poetry. Consider the following sheyr:

Bandagi men bhi vuh azada o khud-bin hain ki ham
Ulte phir ae dar I kaba agar va na hua.

(We serve You, yet our independent self regard is such
We shall at once turn back if we would find the Kaba closed)

This assertion of the self was to reach its crescendo in Iqbal (with the development of the concept of khudi) and still later metamorphosed into the collective individual in the poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz:

Aur raaj kareygi khalaq-e-khuda,
Jo main bhi hoon, aur tum bhi ho

(And the Creations of the Lord, which is you and me,
Shall rule the world)

Russel’s selection rightly brings forth this aspect of Ghalib’s poetry. One cannot stress this enough as the traditional ghazal form does not facilitate presentation of the poet’s world- view in a systematic form. Each sheyr is a complete poem in itself, and it is not necessary for a ghazal to express the same mood in all the sheyrs- in that sense it can be said that the form tends to dominate the content. The exposition is, therefore, disparate and scattered in sheyrs across different ghazals. One has to wade through to pick and choose and then reconstruct- a difficult and onerous task.

Understanding Ghalib requires that one understands not only the literal meaning of a verse, but also the allusions that occur in them. Ghalib wrote from within the Muslim tradition and it is therefore necessary to understand that tradition, the religious concepts, references to aspects of the Muslim way of life and so on. Russell explains some of these and illustrates the usage in some sheyrs.

Ghalib himself, however was hardly a 'good' Muslim. For one, he drank wine, as is famously known. He did not keep fasts or say his prayers or go on pilgrimage. In this he follows other Urdu poets who stand on the verge of transgression or beyond. For instance, Mir had said:

Mir ke deen-o-mazhab ko, ab poochtey kya ho, unney toh
Kashka khaincha, dair main baitha, kab ka tark islam kiya

(Do not ask what Mir's religion is, he has
Put on the sacred mark on the forehead (tilak), sits in the idol house, and has given up Islam)

Ghalib wrote much that ridiculed and often put to serious cross-examination many of the religious and Islamic concepts. One of his somewhat cryptic posers is:

na tha kuch, toh khuda tha, na hoga kuch toh khuda hoga
duboya mujhko hooney ney, na hota main, toh kya hota?

(When nothing was, then God was there; had nothing been, God would have been,
My being has defeated me, had I not been what would have been? )

Regarding the references to idol- worship and Hinduism in Ghalib’s poetry, Russell observes that Hinduism was the nearest religion outside Islam known to Ghalib. He points out that the practices of Hinduism afford a vivid symbol of the worship of God through the worship of beauty. "The idol is the symbol of the irresistibly beautiful mistress you 'idolise' and adore... All these concepts make 'Hinduism'- that is, Hinduism as a symbol rather than actual Hinduism- the expression of one of the mystics' key beliefs."

Ghalib was aware that the milieu in which he grew up was in its twilight and was being replaced by a more advanced civilization. At the same time, he saw the emerging world from the framework of ‘medieval ways of thought and shared many of the attitudes of his eighteenth century predecessors in poetry.’ Hence, the conflicting pulls in the following sheyr:

Iman mujhe roke hai, jo khainche hai mujhe kufr
Kaba merey peeche hai, kalisa merey aagey

(My faith restrains me while the lure of unbelief attracts me,
That way, the Kaaba, and this way, the Church before my eyes)

It was the spirit of transgression, of crossing the accepted norms of society that excited Ghalib. "If you are to experience life to the full, you must not confine yourself to actions approved by the virtuous", remarks Russell. This recalls to mind a Punjabi Sufi couplet:

Jo had tapey so auliya, behad tapey so pir
Jo had, behad dono tapey, us noon aakhan fakir

(The one who crosses all boundaries attains the exalted title Auliya, the one who crosses non- boundaries becomes the Pir,
The one who crosses both boundaries as well as non- boundaries, becomes a Fakir)

And Ghalib, of course, prided himself on being a fakir. He remarked:

Banakar fakeeron ka hum bheys ghalib,
Tamasha-e-ahl-e-karam dekhtey hain

(Taking on the garb of a fakir, Ghalib
I watch the goings on of the world with a detached air)

Russell points out that Urdu poetry, unlike poetry written in English, is meant to be primarily recited and not read. "It is significant that in Urdu idiom, you don't write verse; you say verse; and the poet who 'says' it presents it to his audience by reciting it to them. Only later does it appear in print... Clearly, poets who compose in this tradition need qualities which those who compose for a tradition of written transmission do not need at all...."

"The mushaira is a long- drawn out affair and the poet’s main enemy is monotony. If they are to participate effectively in a mushaira, which will perhaps last for hours together, they cannot hope to do so without resort to variety. The audience knows as soon as the first couplet has been recited what the metre and the rhyme scheme are. Unless the ghazal is one of quite exceptional force, uniformity of tone and emotional pitch are likely to pall."

*****

The present selection has a number of sheyrs from what is considered to be one of the finest ghazals that Ghalib wrote in Urdu and whose matla is:

Muddat huee hai yaar ko mehmaan kiye hue
Josh-e-qadah se bazm chiraaghaan kiye hue

Russel has translated this as:

(An age has passed since I last brought my loved one to my house
Lighting the whole assembly with the wine- cup's radiance)

One would only have appreciated if the author had included the ibtidaayi (first) ghazal of Diwan-i- Ghalib. It provides the poet’s own introduction to his diwan, despite it being a little complicated for a beginner:

Naqsh fariyaadee hai kiskee shokhee-e-tehreer ka
Kaaghazee hai pairhan har paikar-e-tasveer ka

Ali Sardar Jafri wrote that visionary is the one who sees and speaks to the future. It is to this exalted group of remarkable men that Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib belonged. In his own time, he had rued:

Today none buys my verse's wine, that it may grow old
To make the senses reel in many a drinker yet to come
My star rose highest in the firmament before my birth
My poetry will win the world's acclaim when I am gone

Urdu poetry, Kaifi Azmi once remarked once in an interview, will keep the Urdu language alive. In the last one-decade or so, interest in Ghalib's poetry has seen something of a revival with the increasing presence of audio and visual mediums in addition to print. While the TV serial 'Mirza Ghalib' and the rendering of his poetry by a variety of singers have increased the reach of his poetry, one still has to turn to the written word to drink deep and not merely taste the Pierian Spring. This is clearly illustrated by the book under review- a masterly introduction to the Urdu language’s greatest poet.

April 3, 2001
Published: The Tribune 20 May 2001