Faiz's early poems are steeped in the romantic tradition of Urdu poetry but it is also possible to see the early development of a temperament that wouFaiz's early poems are steeped in the romantic tradition of Urdu poetry but it is also possible to see the early development of a temperament that would lead him, in due time, to become the finest poet of his age
I still haven't read a poem as world-changing as "Raqeeb Se," which ended the everlasting acrimony between the lovers of the same person and turned it into a relationship of empathy and understanding.
Only Faiz could write something like that. Salutes!...more
Of my account of pains and sorrows how would a mathematician take a count?
I was thrilled when Oxford University Press came out with slim editions of seOf my account of pains and sorrows how would a mathematician take a count?
I was thrilled when Oxford University Press came out with slim editions of selected works of classical Urdu poets in a series titled Urdu Virsa (Heritage), which serve as good introductions to the often massive collected works of those poets. In its scope of purpose Virsa is comparable to the VSI series.
Bahadur Shah Zafar’s collected works take up more than 2000 pages of a densely printed volume. Frankly, general readers can’t be expected to sit through all of his poetry to fish out his relatively fewer good poems amid a sea of poetic exercises in every conceivable poetic form. And let’s not even mention his Farsi corpus which is a world of its own. This selection gives one a very good idea of the spread of Zafar’s craft, his diction, his themes � and of his weaknesses.
The flagrant, naked irony of Bahadur Shah Zafar’s life couldn’t be more obvious. Here is the “Emperor� of India, Zil-e-ilaahi (Shadow of God), Aalam Panah (Refuge of the World), Siraj-ud-Daula (Sun of the State), whose royal writ extends from his bedroom to his drawing room; whose bejeweled crown is worth less than an Englishman’s boots; who, reduced to a symbol, a shadow of his ancestral glory, is forced to source his palace expenses from the pension the Feringhees, in their sheer generosity, have awarded him; whose nom de plume � Zafar � means victory, a noun soon to be turned into its ugly antonym as the fateful summer of 1857 draws near.
So what does he do with his useless life? He surrounds himself with his literary friends, there are poetry recitations every night at Red Fort of the dozens of fresh poems he’s spent the day composing between rich meals and long garden walks, in the state of post-coital satiety or under the influence of Shiraz wine � and, so, here’s our poet, our protagonist, our unlucky old king to offer us the best fruits of his life: a celebration of language and aesthetics he’s passed down to us.
His favourite theme, then, is ruminating over the vagaries of fate against which reason and effort are unable to stand the ground. He laments the day he was brought into the world from the slumber of nothingness to be subjected to the indignity and ignominy his person had had to endure. Yet, though there is pain and helplessness, his sense of humour, his witticisms, and his adolescent playfulness help to dilute and channel all his life’s disappointments into clean diction and fresh imagery at a time when Urdu verse was ruled by poets who prided themselves on extreme pedantry and vague, almost unintelligible verse construction. His style reminds one of the simplicity of his predecessor Mirza Sauda and the facility of Mir Taqi Mir in his ability to express profound thought in few words in a crystal clear manner, all in a single, small couplet of a ghazal.
Zafar had also left a vast archive of ghazals on the classical theme of love, of the various states of happiness, the pains of separation, the joys of moonlight trysts, the pleasures of mapping the physical geography of the beloved - all that went into Urdu love poetry of the 19th century. And he loves wordplay as any keen wordsmith would, and often employs them to create situational double entendres to the much delight of the reader.
All qualities counted, however, many of his fans tend to count him among the greatest of 19th century poets. I would humbly disagree. Zafar is a good poet, not a great one. His massive kulliyat (collected works) attest to this. One has to read stretches of poems before one spots something serious and pleasing. Sometimes his diction becomes so muddled as if he’s gone back to becoming a high school boy, if you allow the modern term. This is due to his difficulty with stringing words on the metre he’s chosen for the poem. A poet has to find a balance between retaining idiom and diction and circumventing the grammar Nazi’s strictures of Urdu poetic metre.
Translating poetry into English may be called my pastime. So here I offer a selection of original couplets with transliteration and translation for those friends who will care to read to the end. These are self-contained, stand-alone epigrammatic couplets part of the larger ghazal but one can read them individually, as indeed the editor has selected them out of full ghazal-poems.
سوتے تھے چین سے ہم خوابِ عدم میں لیکن شورِ ہستی نے ہمیں آہ جگا کے مارا
Sote the chain se hum khwab-e-adamm mein laikin Shor-e-hasti ne hamein ah jaga ke maara
We slumbered in peace in the dream of Nothingness but, The commotion of Being woke us, and killed us so
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رنج و غم کے حساب کا کیونکر آے فہمِ حساب داں میں جوڑ
Ranj-o-gham ke hisab ka kyun-kar aaye fehem-e-hisaab daan mein jor
Of my account of pains and sorrows how would a mathematician take a count?
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کہاں خلقت عزیزو زیرِ چرخ پھرتی ہے یا فانوسِ خیالی میں ہر اک تصویر پھرتی ہے ظفر کو منزلِ مقصود پر تقدیر لے پہنچی کدھر بھٹکی ہوئ سی عقلِ بے تدبیر پھرتی ہے
Kahaan khalqat azeezo zer-e-charkh phirti hai Ya fanoos-e-khayali mein har ik tasveer phirti hai Zafar ko manzil-e-maqsood per taqdeer le pohanchi Kidher bhatki hui si aql-e-be-tadbeer phirti hai
Here, mankind under the whirling skies going, Or, in the chandeliers of mind every image showing? The chariot of Fate took Zafar to the Destination Where, the train of Reason still clueless going?
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سرنامہ میرے نام کا اور خط رقیب کا ظالم تیرے ستم کے ہیں عنواں عجب عجب
Sarnamah mere naam ka aur khat raqeeb ka? Zaalim tere sitam ke hain unwaan ajab ajab
You write a letter to your lover but address it to me? Your cruelty comes under strange headings.
[Notice the duel-meaning of this lovely couplet]
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چشمِ نرگس، زلف سنبل، سرو قد، رخسار گل یار کیا آیا ہاتھ اپنے کہ باغ آیا ہے
Chashm nargis, zulf sumbal, sarv qadd, rukhsar gul Yaar kya aaya haath apne ke baagh aaya hai
Eyes like the flower of narcissus; tresses scented with hyacinth As tall as a cypress tree; and cheeks? Roseate. Is this my lover or a garden I have discovered?
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گرمئ خوں سے سلگتا ہی تھا دل اور ظفر تری سرد مہری نے جلایا، اسے کیا کہتے ہیں؟
Garmi-e-khoon se sulagta hi tha dil aur zafar Teri sard mohri ne jalaya, isay kya kehte hain?
Yes, blood's desire did burn Zafar's heart but your coldness burned it to cinders - explain!
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عمر کی صرف اسی بحث میں ناداں تو نے لکھنا آتا ہے کوئ نحو سے اور صرف سے خط؟
Umr ki sarf isi behes main nadaan tu ne Likhna aata hai koi nahav se aur sarf se khat?
Your life is wasted perfecting the rules of grammar and the syntax of high language to discover in the end that a love letter needs neither.
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And of course, the most well known ghazal. I will type out the Urdu later but won't dare translate it. It's exquisite and I don't want to lose the tone and pathos of the supplicating melancholy of this heartrending ghazal.
Ya mujhe afsar-e-shahana banaya hota Ya mera taaj gadayana banaya hota
Apna deewana banaya mujhe hota tu ne kyun khirad-mand banaya, na banaya hota
Khaksari ke liye garche banaya tha mujhe Kaash sang-e-dar-e-jana na banaya hota
Nashe-e-ishq ka gar zarf dia tha mujh ko Umr ka tang na paimana banaya hota hota
Dil-e-sadd chaak banaya to bala se laikin Zulf-e-mishkeen ka tere shaana banaya hota hai
Sufion ke na the jo laiq-e-sohbat tou mujhe Qaabil-e-jalsa-e-rindana banaya hota
Tha jalaana hi agar doori-e-saaqi se mujhe Tou chiragh-e-dar-e-maikhana banaya hota
Shola-e-husn chaman main na dikhaya us ne Warna bulbul ko bhi parwana banaya hota
Roz mamoora-e-dunia main kharabi hai Zafar Aisi basti se tou veerana banaya hota...more
Where are the sights that I must know alone (Wang Wei).
Why does one read poetry? This simple question opens up a vast debate and provokes the proverbiWhere are the sights that I must know alone (Wang Wei).
Why does one read poetry? This simple question opens up a vast debate and provokes the proverbial one thousand and one responses. I will let this debate be and tell you why I read (often not well known) poetry by men and women dead for centuries. I want to see how they expressed in poems more passionately that which they could otherwise say to their friends and families in simple ordinary speech; I want to know how people living in other eras, other places, other cultures lent eternity to their human emotions; I want to learn about the metaphors and images they employed in the service of their loves and passions, obsessions and hatreds, their beliefs and dogmas...and so before I write further I want to pay my respects to the first of men who came up with the idea of translation.
This pithy Penguin Little Black Classics No.9 gave me a flavour of three 8th century poets from what is now China and left me wanting for more. It covers quick word bites for those on the run or those, like I, who otherwise won't look for an opening to dig further to pull out poets from old China amid the great mass of books out there. Here, we meet Wang Wei (699-761), Li Po (701-762) and Tu Fu (712-770), known as the finest poets of their times, who all lived during Tang Dynasty era.
Wang Wei (699-761) must have lived in a place abundantly endowed with natural beauty. He is the poet of nature and pastoral bliss, of blue mountains and green streams, of peach blossom and luxuriant trees up to the clouds, of fishermen and shepherds who live guarded by mountains and encircled by crystalline brooks - so beautiful that No one can tell which may be / the spring of paradise; when he took a walk deep into the forest He sat and looked at the red trees / not knowing how far he was. I quote "The Green Stream" for sampling.
"To get to the Yellow Flower River I always follow the green water stream Among the hills there must be a thousand twists The distance there cannot be fifty miles There is the murmur of water among rocks And the quietness of colours deep in pines Lightly lightly drifting water-chestnuts Clearly clearly mirrored reeds and rushes I have always been a lover of tranquility And where I see this clear stream so calm I want to stay on some great rock And fish for ever on and on."
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On Marble Stairs still grows the white dew That has all night soaked her silk slippers
Li Po (701-762) is your playful, witty, irreverent drinking buddy whose mood takes a 180-degree turn when suddenly the thought of being away from his wife and kids hits him. He is away on work assignment and can't return. In a beautiful poem, "Letter to his Two Small Children Staying in Eastern Lu," he wonders if the only peach tree he had put in their small garden might have grown past his children, and whether his son might have reached his big sister's shoulder.
In "The Ballad of Ch'ang-Kan," a young wife counts winds and weathers in wait for her sailor husband who has gone off to distant lands. Three stanzas.
"Here by the door our farewell footprints, They one by one are growing green moss, The moss so thick I cannot sweep it, And fallen leaves: autumn winds came soon!
I remember, in my maiden days I did not know the world and its ways; Until I wed a man of Ch'ang-kan: Now, on the sands, I wait for the winds...
But, go or come, it's ever sorrow For when we meet, you part tomorrow: You'll make Hsiang-tan in how many days? I dreamt I crossed the winds and the waves."
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The ghosts of those by blood defiled are homeless!
The last of the trio, Tu Fu (712-770), writes of the ravages of war and poverty that must have gripped his part of the world. He pours forth into his poems his harrowing experience as a war veteran. A potent sense of dark sorrow at the waste of life and happiness pervades his poems. Here are two stanzas of a poem he'd written after a battle had destroyed the royal clan and compelled the commoners to scatter to the four winds. From "Lament by the Riverside."
"The old man from Shao-ling, weeping inwardly, Slips out by stealth in spring and walks by Serpentine,
And on its riverside sees the locked Palaces, Young willows and new reeds all green for nobody."
In another poem he recounts his experience of homecoming from a long war and is pained to see his family in utter poverty. I loved the imagery of this poem. Selected lines from "The Journey North: the Homecoming."
"A year but past, to my simple home And my own wife, in a hundred rags;
Who sees me, cried like the wind through trees Weeps like the well sobbing underground And then my son, pride of all my days, With his face, too, whiter than the snows
Next by my couch two small daughters stand In patched dresses scarcely to their knees And the seawaves do not even meet Where old bits of broidery are sewn; Whilst the Serpent and the Purple Bird On the short skirts both are upside-down"
Who wouldn't feel a stab in the heart for the description of young girls' dresses...
When all has been tried, yet Justice is not in sight, It is then right to pick up the sword, It is then right to fight
چوں کار از ہمہ حیلتے در گزشت حلال اسWhen all has been tried, yet Justice is not in sight, It is then right to pick up the sword, It is then right to fight
چوں کار از ہمہ حیلتے در گزشت حلال است بردن بہ شمشیر دست
THE MILIEU
The Sikh community led by Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708) was faced with a double whammy. On one hand they braced denunciations of Hindu leaders for their program that challenged caste-based social order and rejected blind ritualism and idolatry as it was practiced at that time. This conflict often turned violent as Sikhs became organised as a distinct socio-religious group with a fighting capacity to defend their stronghold of against sporadic attacks from the neigbouring hill rajahs. On the other hand, although it seems that Sikhs did not challenge the security of the state, the reigning Emperor Aurangzeb nevertheless felt threatened by their martial prowess, egged on by rajahs and maharajas that saw the Sikhs as enemies of their religion. The Mughal-Sikh relations had been poisoned before when Aurangzeb, then new to the throne, beheaded Guru Tegh Bahadur, the father of Guru Gobind, for, inter alia, siding with Prince Dara Shikoh in the wars of succession.
Things came to a head with the siege of Sikh stronghold Anandpur in 1704. When supplies bled out Guru Gobind Singh received a message from the Emperor in the form of an oath sworn on the Quran promising him safe passage along with his family if he surrendered peacefully. The Guru, faced with the impending starvation of his community, agreed. But the promise was broken; they were attacked as they left the precincts of the residential complex, and in the pitched battles over a few days four of Guru’s sons were killed, his mother died of shock, and many relatives and devotees were put to sword. The Guru, however, escaped to safety. A year later he received a conciliatory message from Aurangzeb inviting him to put an end to hostilities in return for security and friendship. The Guru replied with a poem that was to stand testament to his unbending will and indomitable spirit.
THE POEM
Under the shower of bullets and arrows So numerous were the dead That like the poppy flower The earth itself turned red
بسے بار بارید تیر و تفنگ زمیں گشت ہمچوں گل لالہ رنگ
For a man who suffered a great personal tragedy to show such equanimity and phlegm as evinced in the poem is as remarkable as it is moving. There is a strong sense of a person who’s been wronged, deceived, and oppressed, yet there is not a scintilla of self-pity in his lines or bitterness towards his enemy. From the poem emerges an image of a man of high values who is willing to sacrifice everything to protect his people and principles. But The Guru does not mince words; he indicts the Emperor for his atrocities and declares his complete mistrust of everything that comes out of the Emperor’s mouth: "I have no faith at all / In the oath that you swear, / That the God Who is One / Your witness does bear", and later, "In your false oath on the Quran / Had I not believed, / My brave army wouldn’t be crippled, / Nor in such manner deceived."
The poem begins with twelve verses in praise of God that serve as a customary preface to long narrative poems in the Persian poetry tradition. From verse 13 onwards it proceeds to give a brief account of the battle in which, despite being outnumbered, the Sikhs led by him displayed great valour and destroyed the enemy lines before being eventually subdued. He sees victory of spirit and sacrifice in the defeat and affirms that the real victory is to stand true to one’s principles. Then in the later part of the poem Guru Gobind Singh turns the tables when, instead of asking for clemency, as the Emperor, being the centre of power, might have expected, offers to forgive the Emperor if he repents: "Come so that we can meet / And talk face-to-face, / I can show you forgiveness / And grant you my grace", preceded by an ironical verse which should shame the Emperor for what his men had done to the Guru in the siege of Anandpur: "There is no danger to you here, / No one will raise a hand; / This community of Bairars* / Is under my command."
This brilliant ironical vein continues in the subsequent couplets. After criticising Aurangzeb’s subterfuge, his oppressive policies, his claims to piety and justice, Guru Gobind begins praising the talents and virtues of Aurangzeb. This is to achieve two purposes. One, to make Aurangzeb realise how far he has strayed from the ideal he professes and second, in Persian poetic tradition, if high praise follows severe criticism it is done to shame the addressed, to show him the proverbial mirror. The Guru says to Aurangzeb: "You are handsome and clever / And steeped in wisdom, / Chief among the chiefs, / Lord of this kingdom." And two couplets later, "Blessed by looks and beauty, / Good conscience and high mind, / And of land and wealth / A giver, merciful and kind." In between there is a prescient message that condemns Aurangzeb forever:
But if you still disregard Your falsehood and your lies, You too will be forgotten by God, Be ever guilty in His eyes.
Aurangzeb was so moved by the brave and beautiful Zafarnama that he instructed his governors to send a word of respect to the Guru. Aurangzeb till he died did not bother him again.
The poem is a gem of Persian poetry and stands witness to Guru Gobind’s literary genius. At the same time it showcases his fearless spirit and lays down his philosophy of self-belief and spiritual strength with which to fight tyranny and oppression even when odds are stacked against you.
A thousand plots of the enemy, Full of treachery and fraud, They cannot harm a single hair Of the one protected by God.
خصم دشمنی گر ہزار آورد نہ یک مُوے او را ازار آورد
NOTE ON TRANSLATION
Zafarnama, or Epistle of Victory, is written in the form of and comprises 111 couplets in short metre. The Persian poem employs high vocabulary and beautiful compound phrases brought to perfection with the musicality of the rhymed endings. A translation should aim to convey the style and diction of the original but in this instance the translator has opted to replicate the rhyming scheme in alternating lines in four-line stanzas which has watered down, to a great extent, the effect of the original. I’d have preferred a freer translation that conveyed the diction of the original instead of getting jammed into simple English rhymes that often read like the work of a novice rhymester. There is a translation by Christopher Shackle but I have yet to read it. There are other prose translations if the purpose is just to understand the text.
Since most readers of this book will understand only English, I am rating the translation. It gets 2.5 stars which I have rounded to three. However, I give additional star for the actual Persian text. Thanks Waheguru it's a dual language edition, I could understand quite a bit despite my fledgling Persian reading skills.
* Bairars refers to the Brars Jats of Malwa who were under Guru Gobind’s allegiance. The Guru quips that his men are in his control unlike Aurangzeb's, whose generals and governors are out of the emperor's control.
I will just say, 'I was familiar with that face', when I see her again. Why to remind the time lost, a pact broken, a hope vanished?
It was a mirror, thatI will just say, 'I was familiar with that face', when I see her again. Why to remind the time lost, a pact broken, a hope vanished?
It was a mirror, that face of hers In it I glimpsed the world and everything that exists; her face became a mirror-house
Life feels like a dream Those who dwelt in the abode of my heart Have become stories.
(Urdu has gender-neutral pronouns so 'her' in the poem above can be replaced with 'him' while retaining complete fidelity. Nothing in the poem establishes the gender)
Urdu text
یہی کہیں گے کہ بس صورت آشنائی تھی جو عہد ٹوٹ گیا یاد کیا دلانا وہ
اس ایک شکل میں کیا کیا نہ صورتیں دیکھیں نگار تھا، نظر آیا نگار خانہ وہ
فراز خواب سی دنیا دکھائی دیتی ہے جو لوگ جان جہاں تھے ہوئے فسانہ وہ
Transliteration
Yehi kahen ge ke bas soorat aashnai thi Jo ehed toot gaya yaad kya dilana woh
Us ek shakl main kya kya na sooraten dekheen nigar tha, nazar aaya nigar khana woh
Faraz Khwab si dunia dikhai deti hai Jo log jaan-e-jahaan the hue fasana woh
I would love to post more and translate more. Maybe some day, when I am more confident, I will. Till then this beautiful collection from Ahmad Faraz's years of exile will resonate in my soul for days, weeks, months, to come. But here is modern Urdu poetry with its sweet splendour, understated emotion, simmering melancholy, traditional metaphor worked into modern expression, retaining the past while segueing seamlessly into the present, that has charmed me and pleasured me so much.
Faraz is perhaps the last major guardian of classical Urdu poetry that took root in 18th century India in Hyderabad Deccan, Delhi and Lucknow and elevated what was then a relatively new language to challenge the literary dominance of its formidable Persian rival, and at the same time influenced so many local languages and vernaculars in the length and breadth of historical India.
This collection is a collage of metered ghazal poems, metered nazm poems, and azad nazm (free verse). Faraz is famous for his ghazal poems but in this particular collection my favourites are mostly his metered nazm poems such as Takhleeq, Nauha, Nazr-e-Nazrul, and a few in free verse that deal with a single theme or trope like Rozna the German and Kushan Bibi.
There is a famous ghazal from this collection that was rendered into a beautiful song by no other than Lata Mangeshkar. For those who understand Urdu, here is the . Jagjit Singh, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Noor Jahan have also sung the same ghazal.
There is but one pain, my heart is but a continuation of the same. Everything that befalls me I attribute to her graces...more
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