book excerptise:   a book unexamined is wasting trees

Celebrating the best of Urdu Poetry

Khushwant (tr. ed.) Singh and Kamna Prasad (ed.)

Singh, Khushwant (tr. ed.); Kamna Prasad (ed.);

Celebrating the best of Urdu Poetry

Viking Penguin India 2007-02 (hardcover, 191 pages $25.58)

ISBN 9780670999057 / 0670999059

topics: |  poetry | india | urdu | translation | anthology


The quality of the translations are quite mediocre.  Sometimes the language
is just hackneyed, verbose, and fails to carry:
	Remains but one regret in this heart of mine
	That thou never pressed a goblet in my hand
Elsewhere, an attempt to rhyme may destroy and otherwise powerful
sentiment:
	My theme makes me bold, makes my tongue more eloquent.
	Dust be in my mouth against Allah I make complaint.
sometimes, he injects something into the Urdu, that makes it interesting,
as when "dil mein laakhon khayaal baandhey" is rendered as "A million
desires gathered in my heart and got tied up in a tangle", but purists may
object to such additions, and even then, it does not live up to
expectations as poetry.

Khushwant Singh's poetry will never match the translations of Faiz by Agha,
but it still is interesting as an interesting anthology of Urdu poems that
is open to the English speaker.  The fact that the originals are provided,
along with transliterations, lend value to the text.


Mohammed Rafi Sauda (1706-81) p.1

Sauda: ab aur naheen : no more


	saaqi gayee bahaar dil mein rahee havas
	too minnaton sey jaam dey aur main kahoon key 'bas!'

O Saki, gone is the spring of youth
Remains but one regret in this heart of mine
That thou never pressed a goblet in my hand
And I protested "I’ve had enough of wine."


Khushwant Singh's comment on Mohammed Rafi Sauda and the above poem

The adage forbidden fruit is always sweeter and certainly true of the choice
of subjects on which Urdu poets wrote. Most of them were Muslims. For them,
alcohol was haram (forbidden) as was gazing on women outside their families
(most of them observed strict purdah). Notwithstanding these religious
taboos, the two subjects they wrote most about were the joys of drinking and
making love. We don’t find the same obsession with drink and debauchery with
Hindi and Punjabi poetry. Many Urdu poets were hard drinkers; Ghalib, Sahir
Ludhianvi, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ahmed Faraz. To the best of my knowledge, the
only hard-drinking Punjabi poet was Shiv Batalvi and he was the best of the
lot.

These thoughts strayed into my mind as I set about revising the manuscript of
Celebrating the Best of Urdu Poetry which I am doing in collaboration with
Kamana Prasad for Penguin-Viking. I was planning to start with Meer Taqi Meer
and end with Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Then I discovered that Mohammed Rafi Sauda
(1706-81) was earlier than Meer and could not be overlooked. So I chose one
couplet from his Diwan — needless to say celebrating the joy of drinking
(above).
	- This above all: Forbidden Fruit, 2005

Sauda: zulfein: her tresses


	jab yaar ney utthaa kar zulfon key baal baandhey
	Tab mainey apney dil mein laakhon khayaal baandhey

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

(this is the first couplet; see the rest in Urdu at http://forum.urduworld.com/f764/jab-yaar-ne-uthaa-kar-zulfo-n-ke-baal-baa-ndhe-26343/)


Meer Taqi Meer (1722-1810)

ishq kya hai : what is love? 8-9


	Ishq hee ishq hai jahaan dekho
	Sarey aalam mein bhar rahaa hai ishq

	Iahq maashooq ishq aashiq hai
	Yaanee apnaa hee mubtala hai ishq

	Kaun maqsad ko ishq bin pahoncha
	Aarzoo ishq mudda'a hai ishq

	Dard hee khud hai khud davaa hai ishq
	Shaikh kya jaaney too ki kya hai ishq

	Too na hovey to nazam-e-kul uth jaaye
	Sachchey hain shaairaan khuda hai ishq

It is love and only love whichever way you look,
Love is piled high from the earth to the sky above.

Love is the Beloved, love the lover too,
In short, love is itself in love with love.

Without love, what man his goal attains?
Love is desire, love its ultimate aim.

Love is anguish, love the antidote of love's pain
O wise man, what would you know of love?

Without love the order of the universe would be broken
God is love -- truly have the poets spoken.

sharaab ka jaadu: the miracle of wine 12-13


	shab ko vo piye sharab niklaa
	jaana ye ki aaftaab niklaa

	qurban pyala-e-mai-naab
	jis sey kee tera hijaab nikla

Last night she emerged, a little drunk
It was as if the sun was out.

My life i'd gladly give the wineglass
That drowned your modesty and brought you out.

[rest of the poem:
	masti mein sharab ki jo dekha
	aalam ye tamaam khwaab nikla
	shaikh aane ko mai-qade mein aaya
	par ho ke bahot kharab nikla
	tha gairat-e-baada aks-e-gul se
	jis juu-e-chaman se aab nikla]

==Mohammad Iqbal (1873-1938) p.91

The section on Iqbal is the longest in the book, due to Khushwant Singh's
well-known translations of shikva (complaint) and javaab-e-shikva (reply),
two poems about the fate of muslim society -- one a lament, and the other a
call to arms -- that remain poignant even today.

husn ka nazaara : ode to beauty


	Too khursheedee au man sayyaara-e-too
	Saraapa nooram az nazzara-e-too

You are the sun, I spin around you as a planet
One sight of you and I am lit from head to foot

From 'Shikva' (The mortal's complaint to Allah) p.110-133


Why must I forever lose, forever forgo profit that is my due,
Sunk in the gloom of evenings past, no plans for the morrow pursue.
Why must I all attentive be to the nightingale’s lament,
Friend, am I as dumb as a flower? Must I remain silent?
My theme makes me bold, makes my tongue more eloquent.
Dust be in my mouth against Allah I make complaint.

Before our time, a strange sight was the world You had made:
Some worshipped stone idols; others bowed to trees and prayed.
Accustomed to believing what they saw, the people’s vision wasn’t free,
How then could anyone believe in a God he couldn’t see?
Do you know of anyone one, Lord, who then took Your Name? I ask.
It was the muscle in Muslim’s arm that did Your task.

Your mehfil is dissolved, those who loved you are also gone;
No sighs through the nights of longing, no lamenting at dawn.
We gave our hearts to You, took the wages You did bestow;
But hardly had we taken our seats, You ordered us to go.
As lovers we came, as lovers departed with promise for tomorrow.
Now search for us with the light that on Your radiant face does glow.

Leilas love is as intense, Qais desires her evermore,
On Nejd's hills and dales, the deer swift-footed as before.
The same love beats in the heart, beauty is as bewitching and magical,
Your messenger Ahmeds following still abides, Your presence is eternal.
Neither rhyme nor reason has Your displeasure, what does it mean?
On the faithful is Your angry eye of censure! What does it mean?

Our love may not be what it was, nor told with the same blandishments;
We may not tread the same path of submission, nor the same way give consent.
Our hearts are troubled, their compass needles from Mecca may have swerved,
Perhaps the old laws of faithfulness we may not have fully observed.
But sometimes towards us, at times to others you have affection shown,
Its not something one should say, You too have not been true to Your own.

From javaab-e-shikva (Allah's reply to the mortal's complaint)


	Hum to maail-ba-karam hain koee saail hee naheen
	Raah dikhlaayen kisey, Rahrav-e-manzil hee naheen
	Tarbiyat aam to hai jauhar-e-qaabil hee naheen
	Jissey taameer ho aadam kee ye voh gil hee naheen
	Koee qaabil ho to hum shaan-e-kaee detey hain
	Dhoondhney vaalon ko, duniya bhee naee detey hain

Limitless is Our bounty, but none for it will pray.
Theres no one on the seekers path; to whom do We point the way?
Not one proved worthy of the care with which they were raised;
You are not the clay of which another Adam could be made.
If there were one deserving, Wed raise him to regal splendor,
To those who seek, We would unveil a new world of wonder. 121

Today's lovers are not like Qais; they cannot bear the loneliness of desert wastes
They have breathed the city's airs, for desert wines they have no taste.
Qais is crazed with love; he may or may not choose the city as his dwelling place
But there is no reason why Leila should not raise her veil and show her lovely face.
Enough of protesting against the cruelty, enough of complaining against tyranny
If love can wander freely, why should beauty be not set free? 129

Let not the sorry the plight of garden upset the gardner
Soon buds will sprout on the branches and like stars glitter.
Weeds and brambles will be swept out of the garden with a broom
And where martyr's blood was shed red roses shall bloom.
Look, how russet hues have tinged the eastern skies!
The horizon heralds the birth of a new sun about to rise. 131

With reason as your shield and the sword of love in your hand, Servant of God!
The leadership of the world is at your command.
The cry, “Allah-o-Akbar”, destroys all except God; it is a fire.
If you are true Muslims, your destiny is to grasp what you aspire.
If you break not faith with Mohammed, we shall always be there with you;
What is this miserable world” To write the world’s history, pen and tablet we offer you. 133

Links: text with original in Nastaliq script

Introduction: The dying Urdu heritage

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 form 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 language 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. ...

It may come as a surprise to reader 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 other 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. ...

Stock images from Arabic and Persian art 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 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 poets name or pseudonym in the last couplet (maqta). Poets often added
the names of the places they belonged 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 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 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 in 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.

Contents: Poets

Introduction                         ix
Mohammad Rafi Sauda                   1
Meer Taqi Meer                        5
Sheikh Ghulam Hamdani Mus-hafi        17
Bahadur Shah Zafar                    21
Sheikh Ibrahim Zauq                   29
Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib           35
Momin Khan Momin                      67
Nawab Mirza Khan Daagh Dehlvi         73
Akbar Hussain Akbar Allahabadi        79
Shaad Azimabadi                       85
Mohammad Iqbal                        91
Mirza Wajid Husain Changezi           135
Firaq Gorakhpuri                      139
Balmukand Arsh Malsiyani              145
Abdul Hameed Adam                     149
Faiz Ahmed Faiz                       153
Ghulam Rabbani Taban                  171
Habib Jalib                           177
Kishwar Naheed                        181
Zahra Nigaah                          187


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at-symbol] gmail) 2012 Apr 24