The Taste of Words: An Introduction to Urdu Poetry (22 page)

Ishrat Afreen (b. 1956) moved from Pakistan to India and then to the USA, and currently teaches at the University of Texas. She has her own official website
1
, and has been publishing her poems since she was fifteen. Two of her collections have been published, one in the 1980s and one, more recently, in 2005:
Dhoop Apne Hisse Ki
(My Share of Sunlight). One can watch her perform her poetry in the public domain. Her poems published in Rukhsana Ahmed’s anthology,
Beyond Belief: Contemporary Feminist Urdu Poetry
(1990), deployed a rawness that consciously gendered the poetic experience.
2

Here, I include two poems. The first is one of my favourites for its ‘take-no-prisoners’ attitude and its direct evocativeness. The second poem positions her more in the tradition of the progressive writers, especially Makhdoom, who sought to see beauty in labour and valued women’s labour through traditional invocations of beauty. Afreen takes the metaphors much further, though, positioning them directly against the ephemeral concept of beauty associated with privilege.

Mera qad

Mere baap se ooncha nikla

Aur meri maa jeet gayi

I grew taller than my father.

My mother had won.

Kheton mein kaam karti hui ladkiyaan

Jeth ki champai dhoop ne

Jin ka sona badan

Surmayi kar diya

Jin ko raaton mein os aur paale kaa bistar mile

Din ko sooraj saron par jale

Ye hare lawn mein

Sang-e marmar ke benchon pe baithi hui

Un haseen mooraton se kahin khoobsoorat

Kahin mukhtalif

Jin ke joode mein joohi ki kaliyan sajee

Jo gulaab aur bele ki khushboo liye

Aur rangon ki hiddat se paagal phiren

Khet mein dhoop chunti hui ladkiyaan bhi

Nai umr ki sabz dehleez par hain magar

Aaina tak nahin dekhteen

Ye gulaab aur dezi ki hiddat se naa-aashna

Khushboo-on ke javan-lams se bekhabar

Phool chunti hain lekin pahanti nahin

In ke malboos mein

Tez sarson ke phoolon ki baas

Un ki aankhon mein roshan kapaas

These girls who toil in the fields

Whose golden skin has been dyed dark by the sun

Who sleep on beds of frost and dew at night

And are burned by the sun in the day.

They are much prettier than those statues

Sitting on marble benches

On green lawns

Prettier and more different

Than those whose tresses are adorned with roses and jasmine buds

And who run wild in a sharp profusion of colours.

The girls who pluck sunlight in the farms

Are also at the green threshold of the new era, but

Do not even look at mirrors

They are unfamiliar with the sharpness of rose and
juhi

They pluck the flowers, but do not wear them

Their clothes carry the pungent scent

Of mustard flowers instead

And their eyes the brightness of cotton.

Zeeshan Sahil (1961–2008) was an accomplished poet whose untimely demise deprived Urdu of a remarkable voice. I include him here as a representative of the ‘caged beasts’—seven remarkable new voices that were introduced to English-speaking readers in a 1999 book titled
An Evening of Caged Beasts: Seven Postmodernist Urdu Poets
1
. His poems on the city of Karachi were remarkable in their use of rhythms of children playing to invoke the city’s resilience and terror, even as it attempted to preserve its own sanity in an era when lawlessness was the order of the day. In his own words:

It is a lie that in Karachi, after the rain, the sprouting grass doesn’t have blades deep green and soft. Or that the trees do not give shade without the help of clouds . . . With us in Karachi live birds who fly from trees through the sound of bullets and bombs; perch on walls; always they gather somewhere to pray. Our books don’t wait inside cupboards for termites. Now our hearts swim these seas where once our eyes searched for golden flowers and our hands tear down the walls that once buried us alive.
2

The first short poem I have translated below reflects Sahil’s ability to show (with such economy of language) how categories are the product of human thought. The poem turns around the poetic rhyme of ‘
rasta
’ (path) and ‘
basta
’ (the wanderer’s bag), and the idea of forgetful humans, wandering without realizing that they have the moon and the stars in their bags. The second poem beautifully invokes the joy of the quotidian: how a mere bus journey with a friend or the memory of a lover’s modest room can be the basis of joy and reflection, and how memory imposes itself on the consciousness through minor, slight observations.

Zindagi adhoori hai

Lekin us mein har lamha

Khwaab aur mohabbat ki

Aarzoo zaroori hai

Khwaab aur mohabbat hi

Aadmi ke chalne ko raaste banaate hain

Chaand aur sitaaron ko

Aaasmaan se laakar

Zindagi ke raste mein

Aadmi ke baste mein

Rakh ke bhool jaate hain

Life is incomplete

But in it, every moment

Needs the desire

Brought by dreams and love

For it is dreams and love

That transform human wandering

Into ordered paths

And bring the moon and the stars

From the skies

To the path that life takes

Into the rucksacks that humans carry around

Who having placed them there

Forget about them.

Hamesha rehne ke liye

Ye duniya kitni na-munasib jagah hai

Aur zindagi har roz

Pehle se ziyaada na qaabil-e bardaasht

Lekin Saiduddin ke saath

Bus mein safar karne waali khushi

Aur tumhaare dressing table par

Jalne waali batti se behta hua mom

Aur aaine par jamne waala dhuaan

Har cheez ki jagah le lete hain

Meri kitaabon mein band phool

Khwaabon ke jangal ban jaate hain

Tum Formica par jami gard pe

Apni ungliyon se bahut se

Raaste banaati ho

Beshumaar khaali raaston waale shahr mein

Raat gehri hone par tumhaari

Door-uftaada maujoodgi

Sitaaron ko ghair-zaroori, chaand ko faaltu

Aur samandar ko izaafi cheez banaa deti hain

Tumhaari yaad, aur apne dil par

Badhte hue dabaao se ghabraa kar

Main dua maangta hoon

Shaayaron se khuda ki musalsal naaraazgi

Ke baavujood meri dua

Hamesha tum se shuroo hoti hai

As a place to stay in continually

This world is so undesirable

And life, every day,

Becomes ever more unbearable.

But some pleasures abound.

The journey on the bus with Saiduddin

And that congealed wax on your dressing table

From the worn-down candle

And the residue of smoke on your mirror

Take the place of all else.

The pressed flowers in my books

Become the deep forests of dreams.

You draw many paths with your fingers

On the dust that settles on the Formica

And when night settles on that city of countless empty paths

Your distant presence makes stars unnecessary, the moon useless

And turns the sea into something redundant.

Your memory and the heaviness in my heart scare me

And I begin to pray.

Despite God’s unceasing anger toward poets

My prayer always begins with you.

Foreword

 
1.
  When I approached Gulzar Saheb to write a foreword, he was kind enough to suggest that he write it as a poem, and I obviously accepted that idea gratefully. I enclose the Urdu version of his introductory paragraph here: ‘
Urdu zaban apne aap mein ek riyasat hai. Vo jahaan jaati hai, apni zameen bana leti hai. Hindustan mein paida hui, magar sirf Hindustan ki nahin. Pakistan ki sarkari zaban hai. Lekin sirf Pakistan ki nahin. Oslo (Norway) gayi to vahaan bas gayi. Bartaniya gayi to vahaan bhi apni jagah bala li. Canada gayi to ek aur basti bas gayi. Amreeka gayi to vahaan ki ho gayi. Raza Mir ne god le liya.

‘
Sach to ye hai ke agar “god lena” ki jagah aisa koi muhaavra hota to kahte: “labon pe le liya.” Jahaan jaati hai, seene se lag jaati hai. Vo rivayat ho jaati hai. Dastoor ho jaati hai. Urdu ek tehzeeb ki awaaz hai.
’

Preface

 
1.
  My teachers over time have included such stalwarts as Amar Dehlavi (who published the Amar Publications chapbooks of Urdu poets); K.C. Kanda (whose translations of Urdu ghazals and nazms are veritable labours of love); Nita Awatramani’s Urdu Poetry Archive (
www.urdupoetry.com
); older bulletin boards like rec.music.indian.misc and alt.language.urdu.poetry (both of which are now Google groups); Victor G. Kiernan’s translations of Faiz and Iqbal—
Poems by Faiz
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971) and
Poems from Iqbal
(Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999); Khushwant Singh’s translations of Rajinder Singh Bedi [
I Take This Woman
(Delhi: Penguin India, 1994)], Iqbal [
Shikwa and Jawab-i-Shikwa: Iqbal’s Dialogue with Allah
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997)] and Mirza Hadi Ruswa [
The Courtesan of Lucknow: Umrao Jan Ada
, translated by Khushwant Singh and M.A. Husaini (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1961)]; Frances W. Pritchett’s awesome website
http://www.columbia.edu/~fp7
that includes translations of the
Deevan-e Ghalib
as well as Mir’s ghazals; C.M. Naim and M.U. Memon’s editorship of the
Annual of Urdu Studies
(
http://urdustudies.com/
); Mehr Afshan Farooqi’s two-volume history of Urdu literature—
The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature
, 2 vols (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008); and numerous others. A recent site that I would recommend highly is
www.urdushahkar.org
, which is maintained by S.M. Shahed, and which provides accessible translations for a variety (and increasing corpus) of poems, and includes transliteration, Urdu script versions, and audio files with performance and exegesis.

Introduction: The Flutter of Angel Wings

 
1.
  Refers to the debt incurred by anyone who eats salt in another’s home.

 
2.
  Refers to the debt incurred by anyone who eats salt in another’s home.

 
3.
  
Na ho jab
= if there is no;
phir =
then;
kyon
= why;
yaqeenan
= certainly;
milawat
= adulteration;
shab ko
= to the night.

 
4.
  In the interests of full disclosure, I am a great partisan of the Progressive Writers’ Association, and believe that the best poetry in Urdu was produced during the progressive phase. I have co-authored with Ali Husain Mir a book on the topic titled
Anthems of Resistance: A Celebration of Progressive Urdu Poetry
(New Delhi: Roli Books, 2006).

 
5.
  I have dealt extensively with this phenomenon elsewhere: ‘“Voh Yar Hai jo Khusbu ki Tarah / Jis ki Zuban Urdu ki Tarah”: The Friendly Association Between Urdu Poetry and Hindi Film Music,’
Annual of Urdu Studies
15 (2000),
http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/15/18mir.pdf
.

 
6.
  See Akbar Hyder, ‘Urdu’s Progressive Wit: Sulaiman Khatib, Sarvar “Danda” and the Subaltern Satirists Who Spoke Up,’
Annual of Urdu Studies
20 (2005),
http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/20/07AkbarHyder.pdf
.

 
7.
  Online portals have proved to be a treasure trove of the work of these poets, and I would urge you to seek out the performances of some of their verses on sites like YouTube.

 
8.
  Those wishing to start reading right away on this issue may consider starting with Carla Petievich’s essay ‘Feminine Authorship and Urdu Poetic Tradition: Baharistan-i Naz vs. Tazkira-i Rekhti,’ in
A Wilderness of Possibilities: Urdu Studies in Transnational Perspective
, edited by Kathryn Hansen and David Lelyveld (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005). Also see Gail Minault’s ‘Other Voices, Other Rooms: The View from the Zenana,’ in
Women as Subjects
, edited by Nita Kumar (Calcutta: Stree, 1994); and Ruth Vanita’s
Gender, Sex, and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India, 1780–1870
(New York: Macmillan, 2012). Minault’s essay—‘Begamati Zuban: Women’s Language and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Delhi,’ in
India International Centre Quarterly
11, no. 2 (1984): 155–70—is also instructive. An Urdu article from the 1930s, Nasiruddin Hashmi’s ‘Khavatin-e Dakkan ki Urdu khidmaat,’
Sabras
1, no. 1: 120–24, mentions three thirteenth-century women poets of Hyderabad, named Chanda Bai, Sharfunnisa and Fatima, who may be available in print—I’m on the prowl . . .

 
9.
  The four-volume set was produced bilingually and titled
Vazahat-e Urdu Kitabiyat (Imrani Uloom)
in Urdu, and
Annotated Urdu Bibliography (Social Sciences)
in English. Both were published by the Educational Publishing House in New Delhi in 2008.

Amir Khusrau

 
1.
  My selection unfortunately throws his more serious work in the shadows, but the Khusrau enthusiast may find a lot more joy at ‘Amir Khusrau Website,’ compiled by Yousuf Saeed,
http://www.angelfire.com/sd/urdumedia/index.html
.

Quli Qutub Shah

 
1.
  For more on Quli Qutub Shah, see Narendra Luther’s appreciative essay, ‘A Multi-faceted Prince,’ Narendra Luther Archives,
http://narendralutherarchives.blogspot.com/2006/12/multi-faceted-prince.html
.

Mirza Sauda

 
1.
  This verse has been beautifully performed by singers like Ustad Salamat Ali Khan and Tina Sani. Recordings of both these performances are available on YouTube.

Khwaja Mir Dard

 
1.
  The interested reader who wishes to follow up on Dard will find a lot in Ian Bedford’s paper on the difficulties of translating from Dard’s eighteenth-century Urdu idiom into English, which includes a competent translation of twelve of his best-known ghazals: ‘Approaching Khvaja Mir Dard,’
Annual of Urdu Studies
22 (2007),
http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/22/04IanBedford.pdf
; or in Homayra Ziad’s essay, ‘The Nature and Art of Discourse in the Religious Writings of Khvaja Mir Dard,’
Annual of Urdu Studies
20 (2005),
http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/20/10Ziad.pdf
. Both commentators seem to agree that Dard’s spiritual (Sufi) leanings influenced his poetry greatly.

Mir Taqi Mir

 
1.
  While one could dedicate several books to Mir’s work, the true enthusiast is directed to the page maintained most painstakingly by F.W. Pritchett, ‘A Garden of Kashmir,’ Columbia University,
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00garden/index.html
; as well as to C.M. Naim’s translation of Mir’s autobiography, which is itself a marvel of literary merit and an extraordinary exposition of a chequered life—C.M. Naim,
Zikr-i Mir: The Autobiography of the Eighteenth Century Mughal Poet: Mir Muhammad Taqi ‘Mir’ (1723–1810)
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), excerpts from which are published in ‘Mir on His Patrons,’
Annual of Urdu Studies
14 (1999),
http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/14/08naimcMiron.pdf
, along with Naim’s analysis in ‘Mir and His Patrons,’
Annual of Urdu Studies
14 (1999),
http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/14/07naimcMirand.pdf
.

 
2.
  For example, this verse shows his love for a young man: ‘
Mir kya saade hain, beemar hue jis ke sabab, Usi attar ke bete se dawaa lete hain
’ (‘Mir is so simple-minded, he seeks medicine from the very apothecary’s son, who has caused him to fall ill’).

 
3.
  Of its many renditions in the public domain, I like the one by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan a lot, but recommend the one by Shishir Parkhie even more strongly. Both versions are available on YouTube.

Insha

 
1.
  See Christopher Shackle and Rupert Snell’s exposition of the poem and their discussion of Insha’s life at ‘Insha Allah Khan,
Rani Ketki ki Kahani
(c. 1803),’ Columbia University,
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/shacklesnell/302insha.pdf
.

Mir Anees

 
1.
  The interested reader may find much more about Anees at ‘Mir Anees: A Poet Extraordinaire,’ edited by Abu Talib Rizvi,
http://www.miranees.com/
. A longer marsiya has been translated by David Matthews, and is available in the public domain at
http://razarumi.com/?p=794
.

Bahadur Shah Zafar

 
1.
  Those who are interested in the poet-king would do well to visit ‘Bahadur Shah Zafar,’
http://www.kapadia.com/zafar.html
—a website that contains a trove of information about him, including history, poetry and even a photograph (the sole photograph of a Mughal emperor!).

Zauq

 
1.
  In order to access the deevan electronically, see Malik-ul Shaura, Khaqani-e Hind and Shaikh Ibrahim Zauoq, ‘Deewan-e Zauq,’ Allama Iqbal Urdu Cyber Library,
http://www.urducl.com/Urdu-Books/969-416-207-003/
.

 
2.
  See Mohammad Husain Azad,
Aab-e Hayaat: Shaping the Canon of Urdu Poetry
, translated and edited by F.W. Pritchett and Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).

 
3.
  In particular, I’d recommend Begum Akhtar’s rendition of ‘
Laayi hayaat aaye
’ and Jagjit Singh’s version of ‘
Ab to ghabraa ke
’, both of which are available on YouTube.

 
4.
  The prophet Khizr is known to have lived for an inordinately long time.

Mirza Ghalib

 
1.
  For some interesting commentary, see F.W. Pritchett, ‘“The Meaning of the Meaningless Verses”: Ghalib and his Commentators,’ in
A Wilderness of Possibilities
, 251–72; it can be read at
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00fwp/published/ghalib_commentary2.pdf
. Pritchett marshals a variety of expositions of this sher from multiple
sharah
s and commentaries, and rightly concludes that the search for definitive meanings in poetry is simultaneously futile, arrogant and reductive.

 
2.
  Other places to look for Ghalibiana on the Internet include Pritchett’s work on Ghalib’s deevan (available on the web at ‘A Desertful of Roses: The Urdu Ghazals of Mirza Asadullah Khan “Ghalib”,’ F.W. Pritchett and Columbia University,
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib/index.html
); and ‘Wine of Passion: The Urdu Ghazals of Ghalib,’
http://ghalib.org/
, maintained by Dr Sarfaraz Niazi.

 
3.
  I would recommend Jagjit Singh’s rendition of ‘
Aah ko chahiye
’. Mohammad Rafi does a great job of rendering ‘
Bas ke dushwaar
’ in his trademark clean style, and also does justice to ‘
Bazeecha-e atfaal
’. Begum Akhtar sings ‘
Sab kahaan kuchh
’ in breathtaking fashion (the version I heard at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqp_27apaVA
included a bonus reading of a snippet from one of Ghalib’s letters in Kaifi Azmi’s dreamy voice). I would recommend a return to Jagjit Singh for ‘
Hazaaron khwaahishein
’.

 
4.
  This refers to a folk reference that some raindrops, when they fall into the sea, are swallowed by oysters and become pearls. It is a metaphor for the difficulties that are encountered in the journey toward fulfilment.

 
5.
  For Muslims, the sign of the new moon announces the festival, and here, Ghalib connects the curve of the executioner’s scimitar to the curve of the moon, to describe a martyr’s passion.

 
6.
  Ghalib is being ironical here.

 
7.
  Lovers eventually find their clothes torn or bloodstained.

 
8.
  Agha Shahid Ali translated this ghazal rhythmically; it can be read at ‘Agha Shahid Ali: “Not All, Only A Few Return” (After Ghalib),’ golempoem,
http://matthewsalomon.wordpress.com/2007/12/28/agha-shahid-ali-not-all-only-a-few-return-after-ghalib/
.

 
9.
  Perhaps Ghalib is extolling nightlife here. The constellation referred to is the
Banatunnash
(literally, ‘the daughters of the bier’, a name for the constellation Ursa Major, usually associated in Urdu poetry with beautiful women).

10.
The poet’s feelings provided the material for the nightingale’s songs, so he thinks of himself as a teacher here.

11.
Why would you want to be the scribe to letters written by your lover? Curiosity, jealousy, or a Cyrano de Bergerac–style attempt to communicate your own feelings through other suitors? You be the judge. In this day and age, Ghalib may have written verses about peeking into his lover’s Facebook page!

12.
Referring to one’s love as infidel is an old practice in the ghazal tradition; it indicates that, at its peak, love begins to resemble worship, and so produces religiously undesirable effects.

13.
Over the course of time, Ghalib’s poetry has occasionally been infiltrated, sometimes by people who deleted a few verses, and at others by those who inserted a few ‘rogue verses’ in it. Purists swear that this is one such rogue verse that Ghalib never wrote. This, however, is not a book for purists, and I also include it to highlight this delightful phenomenon of plagiarism-in-reverse.