Celebrating the Best of Urdu Poetry Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  CELEBRATING THE BEST OF URDU POETRY

  Khushwant Singh is India’s best-known writer and columnist. He has been founder–editor of Yojana, and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, the National Herald and the Hindustan Times. He is also the author of several books which include the novels Train to Pakistan, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, Delhi, The Company of Women and Burial at Sea; the classic two-volume A History of the Sikhs; and a number of translations and nonfiction books on Sikh religion and culture, Delhi, nature and current affairs. His autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice, was published in 2002.

  Khushwant Singh was a Member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974, but returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the storming of the Golden Temple by the Indian Army. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan.

  ~

  Kamna Prasad is the editor of the festschrift Khushwant Singh: An Icon of Our Age.

  Praise for Celebrating the Best of Urdu Poetry

  This elegantly produced volume brings Urdu’s characteristic poetic grace back onto the radar for those who love the verses but are today unable to read them because of unfamiliarity with the script . . . Singh’s characteristic zest for life seeps through the translations. In most places, the poems rhyme in English as well, retaining the music of Urdu verse, giving the readers a feel of the original composition . . . [this book] will compel you to look for more Urdu poetry—The Indian Express

  The collection is particularly significant in the politically biased and communally charged times we live in, and will be a delight for those who still share a passion for Urdu poetry—The Week

  The great thing about this book . . . is that each verse is printed thrice, first in Devnagri, then with English phonetics, and finally the English translation . . . Works wonderfully well—First City

  Celebrating the Best of Urdu Poetry

  Selected by

  Khushwant Singh and Kamna Prasad

  Translated with an introduction by

  Khushwant Singh

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  To Fatma and Rafiq Zakaria

  for rekindling my love for Urdu poetry

  Khushwant Singh

  To my father late Gyaneshwar Prasad,

  who initiated me into Urdu poetry,

  and my daughter Jiya,

  to whom I pass on this cultural legacy

  Kamna Prasad

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Mohammad Rafi Sauda

  Meer Taqi Meer

  Sheikh Ghulam Hamdani Mus-hafi

  Bahadur Shah Zafar

  Sheikh Ibrahim Zauq

  Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

  Momin Khan Momin

  Nawab Mirza Khan Daagh Dehlvi

  Akbar Hussain Akbar Allahabadi

  Shaad Azimabadi

  Mohammad Iqbal

  Mirza Wajid Husain Changezi

  Firaq Gorakhpuri

  Balmukand Arsh Malsiyani

  Abdul Hameed Adam

  Faiz Ahmed Faiz

  Ghulam Rabbani Taban

  Habib Jalib

  Kishwar Naheed

  Zehra Nigaah

  INTRODUCTION

  One summer when on vacation in Kasauli, I was looking for an anthology of Urdu poetry to read before taking my afternoon siesta and before retiring for the night. I laid my hands on Gyaneshwar Prasad’s selection of Urdu verse in Devanagri script. I read Devanagri with some difficulty and my Urdu vocabulary is poor. To my dismay I found the meanings of difficult words in the footnote even harder to understand than the original. Back in Delhi, I asked Gyaneshwar’s daughter Kamna Prasad who, though unable to read the Arabic script in which Urdu is usually written, has a sizeable repertoire of Urdu poetry which she reels off by rote. She loves Urdu poetry, and organizes an annual Jashn-e-Bahaar Mushaira of leading Indian and Pakistani poets in the capital. I asked Kamna to help me select what she thought were gems of Urdu verse which I could translate into English as a joint offering to lovers of the language.

  I have been translating Urdu poetry off and on, and including it in the syndicated weekly columns I write for Hindustan Times (‘With Malice Towards One And All…’) and The Tribune (‘This Above All’). I also included Urdu verse in my novel Delhi. This was followed by a translation of Mohammed Iqbal’s ‘Shikwa’ and ‘Jawab-e-Shikwa’. I went on to translate more Urdu verse for the collection Declaring Love in Four Languages, in collaboration with Sharda Kaushik. I mention all this here to prove that, despite my shortcomings, I have an abiding passion for Urdu poetry.

  Although we have named this collection ‘Celebrating the Best of Urdu Poetry’, connoisseurs of the language may feel our selection doesn’t deserve to be called the best. Urdu is dying a slow death in the land where it was born and where it flourished. There is little to celebrate about the status of Urdu in present-day India. The number of students who take it as a subject in schools and colleges is dwindling very fast. Rashid laments:

  Maangey Allah se bas itni dua hai Rashid

  Main jo Urdu mein vaseeyat likhoon beta parh ley

  All Rashid asks of Allah is just one small gift:

  If I write my will in Urdu, may my son be able to read it.

  Nevertheless, Urdu continues to be extensively quoted in debates, and it remains the most quotable of all Indian languages. Khurshid Afsar Bisrani put it aptly:

  Ab Urdu kya hai ek kothey kee tawaif hai

  Mazaa har ek leta hai mohabbat kaun karta hai

  What is Urdu now but a whore in a whorehouse

  Whoever wants has fun with her, very few love her.

  Apart from Kashmir, where Urdu is taught from the primary to the post-graduate levels, in the rest of India it is the second or third language. With the passing of years it has come to be dubbed as the language of the Muslims, which is far from the truth. However, even parents of Muslim children prefer to have their offspring learn Hindi or the language of the region in which they live. Knowledge of Urdu cannot ensure getting jobs either in the government or in private business houses, while knowledge of English, Hindi or regional languages does. Besides economic considerations, champions of both Urdu and Hindi refuse to budge from their positions on the scripts to be used. Those who write Urdu in the Arabic script refuse to admit that it can be as easily read in Devanagri or Roman. Hindi purists, likewise, refuse to have selections of Urdu poetry included in school or college textbooks. As a result, while Urdu is dying out in this country, it continues to flourish in Pakistan, where it has been recognized as the national language in preference to the more commonly spoken Punjabi, Sindhi, Baluchi or Pushto.

  Urdu is rich because of its mixed linguistic heritage. It evolved as an argot—a mixture of Turkish, Arabic and Persian that was spoken by the Muslim soldiers in invaders’ armies, combined with the Sanskrit, Hindi, Braj and Dakhani spoken by the Indian soldiers in Mughal military encampments. (The word ‘Urdu’, incidentally, means ‘camp’.) It was also known as Rekhta during the time of Meer and Ghalib. The educated elite, who preferred to write and speak Persian, looked upon the language with some disdain at first. It was the same with poets like Meer and Ghalib, right down to Mohammad Iqbal. All of them wrote in Persian till they realized that Urdu was more acceptable to the masses and gave them much larger audiences. But the influence of Persian remains dominant to this day in imagery as well as in the use of composite words like qaid-e-hayat-o-band-e-gham (prison-of-life-andchain- of-sorrows).

  It may come as a surprise to readers that while most Urdu poets were, and are, Muslims, to whom wine is haraam (forbidden), they wrote more on the joys of drinking than on any oth
er subject. (Some, like Ghalib, Sahir and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, were also hard drinkers.) Urdu poetry is replete with odes and references to the maikhana (tavern) and the saqi (wine server). However there is no historical evidence of maikhanas in any city. There were wine shops from where hard liquor could be bought and consumed alone, in exclusively male gatherings, or in salons of courtesans who, besides singing, dancing and flirting with their patrons, sometimes filled men’s goblets with wine, or got their maids or boy servants to do so. The saqi, too, is as much a figment of the poet’s imagination as are the taverns. The saqis in literature not only served wine but could also get men drunk by merely exchanging glances with them.

  While high Muslim society was rigidly segregated according to gender, and women covered themselves from head to heel in burqas, it did not deter poets from showering praise on their beauty and proclaiming the joys of making love to them. Much of Urdu love poetry was addressed to courtesans, whose mehfils the poets patronized. Quite a lot of it was also addressed to rosy-cheeked, round-bottomed boys, who on occasion acted as wine servers. Pederasty, though frowned upon by puritans, appears to have been commonly practised.

  Stock images from Arabic and Persian ar t and literature persist in Urdu poetry. Four of the commonest are the nightingale’s (or the bulbul’s) lament for the unresponsive rose, moths incinerating themselves on candle flames, Majnu’s unending quest for his beloved Laila, and Farhaad hacking rock-cliffs to get to his Shirin. Almost all Urdu verse is overwhelmingly romantic, and there’s a morbid obsession with the decline of youth into old age and, ultimately, death. A mood of despair runs through much of Urdu poetry. Nevertheless, there is also plenty of wit, satire and humour, their chief contributor being Akbar Allahabadi. Later poets made use of them as weapons of social reform, to denounce bigotry and religious hatred. Being largely iconoclasts, the poets frequently lampooned preachers of morality who went under the titles of Sheikh, Zahid, Vaaiz and Naseh. A convention that has been carried on from the Middle Ages to the present day is the inclusion of the poet’s name or pseudonym in the last couplet (maqta). Poets often added the names of the places they belonged to to their assumed poetic names. Thus Mirza Asadullah Khan used ‘Ghalib’ (conqueror) as his pseudonym. Daagh came to be known as Daagh Dehlvi (of Delhi), Akbar was better known as Akbar Illahabadi (from Allahabad), and today we are familiar with Firaq Gorakhpuri, Shakeel Badayuni, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Agha Hashr Kashmiri and Sahir Ludhianvi.

  Urdu poets also owe much of their popularity to the ghazal, the most popular form of Urdu poetry. One interesting aspect of the ghazal is that it is not confined to one theme. Although its rhyming pattern is consistent, the thought content in every couplet is often at variance and can be quoted independently. That is why ghazals are rarely given titles or have names to them. All this may suggest that ghazals can be difficult or confusing, or obtuse, but this is not the case. In fact, this quality (or structure) makes a ghazal very flexible—it isn’t always necessary to write or recite the entire ghazal. You can pick and choose any of the couplets, so you may hear different versions of a ghazal by different people. This is what I’ve done in some of my translations— picked only my favourite couplets from a ghazal.

  Hindi films—music composers and playback singers—have had a great role to play in popularizing Urdu verse. In India, there were K.L. Saigal, Mohammad Rafi, Begum Akhtar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Talat Mahmood and Jagjit Singh; in Pakistan Noor Jahan, Mallika Pukhraj, Mehdi Hassan, Ghulam Ali, Iqbal Bano and Farida Khanam. These singers have made Urdu ghazals known to millions who do not even know that the language is written from right to left. Above all, it is the unparalleled resonance of Urdu words and their musical content that has got many like me, who are not Urdu speakers, hooked to the language.

  I consulted many translations before I embarked on this venture. I wish to acknowledge my debt to the late Gyaneshwar Prasad of Patna, Victor Kiernan, Arberry, Ralph Russell, Issar, Badri Raina, Purshottam Nijhawan, Kuldip Salil, Naseem Muqri, Roshan Chauffle, K.C. Kanda, Zarina Sani, Vinay Waikar and T.N. Raz.

  While working on these translations I had Sultan Nathani’s Lughatd and Shri Ram Vidharthi’s romanized Hindi–Urdu to English dictionaries by my side.

  Summer, 2006

  New Delhi

  Khushwant Singh

  MOHAMMAD RAFI SAUDA

  (1706–1781)

  Mirza Mohammad Rafi Sauda was born in Delhi, his father having migrated from Kabul. Sauda sought the patronage of Shah Alam but was disappointed. He shifted to Farrukhabad and then to Lucknow during the reign of Nawab Asaf-ud-daulah. One of the most versatile poets of his age, he composed ghazals, qaseedas (eulogies) as well as marsiyas (songs of lament), though he is best known for his satires on Delhi and Lucknow.

  अब और नहीं

  साक़ी गयी बहार दिल में रही हवस

  तू मिन्नतों से जाम दे और मैं कहूं के बस

  Ab aur naheen

  Saaqi gayee bahaar dil mein rahee havas

  Too minnaton sey jaam dey aur main kahoon key ‘'bas!’'

  जुल्फ़ें

  जब यार ने उठा कर जुल्फ़ों के बाल बांधें

  तब मैंने अपने दिल में लाखों ख़्याल बांधें

  Zulfein

  Jab yaar ney utthaa kar zulfon key baal baandhey

  Tab mainey apney dil mein laakhon khayaal baandhey

  No More

  O saqi, gone is the spring of youth

  Remains but one regret in this heart of mine:

  Had you but pressed the goblet in my hand

  Had I but said, 'Enough! Enough, no more wine!'

  Her Tresses

  When my beloved raised her arms to gather up her tresses

  A million desires gathered in my heart and got tied up in a tangle.

  MEER TAQI MEER

  (1722–1810)

  Meer was born in a village close to Agra. His father was a dervish. Meer began composing poetry in Persian very early in life. Later he switched to Urdu and became the most celebrated exponent of love. He migrated to Delhi in the hope of gaining patronage of the Mughal king and the city’s nobility. There he witnessed the devastation of the city at the hands of the Afghan invader Ahmed Shah Abdali, which he recorded in his autobiography Zikre- Meer. Meer often suffered bouts of acute depression. Having failed to make a living in Delhi he moved to Lucknow where rich Nawabs were known for their love of Urdu poetry. He died a pauper in 1810. His grave was later demolished to make space for the city’s railway station.

  मैं नशे में हूं

  यारो मुझे मूआफ़ रखो मैं नशे में हूं

  अब दो तो जाम ख़ाली ही दो मैं माशे में हूं

  मस्ती से बरहमी है मेरी गुफ़्तुगू के बीच

  जो चाहो तुम भी मुझ को कहो मैं नशे में हूं

  माज़ूर हूं जो पांव मेरा बेतरह पड़े

  तुम सरगिरां तो मुझ से न हो मैं नशे में हूं

  भागी नमाज़-ए-जुमा तो जाती नहीं है कुछ

  चलता हूं मैं भी टूक तो रहो मैं नशे में हूं

  नाज़ुक मिज़ाज आप क़यामत हैं मीर जी

  जूं शीशा मेरे मुहं न लगो मैं नशे में हूं

  Main nashey mein hoon

  Yaaro mujhey muaaf rakho main nashey mein hoon

  Ab do to jaam khaali hee do main nashey mein hoon

  Masti sey barhamee hai meree guftagoo key beech

  Jo
chaaho tum bhee mujh ko kaho main nashey mein hoon.

  Maazur hoon, jo paaon mera betarah padey

  Tum sargiraan to mujh sey na ho main nashey mein hoon.

  Bhaagee namaaz-e-jumma to jaatee nahee hai kuchh

  Chalta hoon main bhee, tuk to raho main nashey mein hoon

  Naazuk mizaaj aap qayaamat hain Meer jee

  Joon sheesha merey munh na lago main nashey mein hoon

  I Am Somewhat Drunk

  Friends, you should forgive me, for I am somewhat drunk.

  And if you must, give me an empty cup, for I am somewhat drunk.

  This is intoxication you hear not malice in my talk

  You too may curse and call me names, for I am somewhat drunk.

  You can see that I am helpless, when I try to walk I stumble

  Don't be cross with me, please don't grumble, for I am somewhat drunk.

  The Friday prayer is always there; it won't run away

  I will come along too if you stay a while, for I am somewhat drunk.

  Meer can be touchy as hell, he's made of fragile glass;

  Watch what you say to him tonight, for he is somewhat drunk.

  इश्क़ क्या है

  इश्क़ ही इश्क़ है जहां देखो

  सारे आलम में भर रहा है इश्क़