“The moon waxes big so that it might become your forehead”: Ghalib’s metaphor-inverting verses

[Note: I am returning to blogging on this site after  nearly four years. I hope to continue with a series of posts on Urdu poetry.]

The human mind works through metaphors and analogies. And no one understands this better than a poet. In the sub-continental Urdu-Persian poetic tradition, the metaphor was carried to great heights of sophistication during the classical period. The “Indian style” of Persian poetry (sabk-e-hindi) and its allied Urdu tradition became famous (some would say notorious) for their “metaphorical excesses.”[1] Mirza Asadullah Khan “Ghalib” (1797-1869) one of the foremost exponents of this style, is known for his intricate and abstract metaphorical constructions, so much so that he is sometimes called a “mushkil pasand shaayar” or “difficulty loving poet.” But Ghalib also wrote many accessible verses and has always been a very popular poet in India and Pakistan. Choosing some verses from his Urdu and Persian ghazals, in this essay I discuss a particular device that Ghalib used to impart freshness to established metaphors.

Ghalib on the coils of religious symbolism

With last time's post on the "Faith of Faithlessness" we have embarked upon a new project in collaboration with The South Asian Idea blog. Via selected couplets of Ghalib we wish to raise certain questions on religion, faith, humanity, divinity, pluralism and beyond. Questions that are at once eternal and of contemporary relevance.

This is what we have planned. Every week, or roughly every week we will choose one Urdu verse by Ghalib which speaks about the themes mentioned above. A literal translation along with commentary will be posted here. In concert with that, some questions will be posed around the verse and its meaning(s) here on The South Asian Idea. Our readers are encouraged to visit there to get the full experience of this endeavor. And if you know of good Ghalib verses that it would be relevant to discuss here, please send them our way.

Verse for this week:

نہیں کچھ سبحہ و زنار کے پھندے میں گیرائ
وفاداری میں شیخ و برہمن کی آزمائش ہے

nahii;N kuchh sub;hah-o-zunnaar ke phande me;N giiraa))ii
vafaadaarii me;N shai;x-o-barhaman kii aazmaa))ish hai

Literal translation:
there is no {'grip' / holding-power} in the noose/coil/snare of prayer-beads and sacred-thread
in faithfulness is the test of the Shaikh and the Brahmin

[Translation by FWP, click here for this verses entry in A Desertful of Roses.]

First let us here some commentary by Moazzam Siddiqi sahab (courtesy Anjum Altaf of The South Asian Idea):
[subbah and zunnaar are exoteric/external/zaahirii symbols and are incapable of penetrating and taking hold of the soul; wafaadaarii, which lies in the niyya(t) of the believer, and thus, cannot be externally seen/exhibited is an internal state of the believer]. The word "phanda" noose in Hindi, for which the Persian words are "kamand, daam" brings to mind the whole imagery of "shikaar," the game of hunting where the beloved is the shikaarii (the hunter) and uses the phanda/kamand to capture/seize the heart of the lover (the "shikaar," the prey or victim)].
--------------

Ghalib uses the pejorative or negative word, "phanda" or noose to refer to the rosary and the thread. Thus he seems to want to evoke images of being trapped, being unable to escape and realize the true nature of Divinity. But there is a tension here in the verse. The coils are weak, the noose is ineffective. It has no holding power. Thus it cannot really bind the Shaikh or the Brahmin to their vows, to their beliefs. Frances Pritchett expresses the dilemma very well:

"Does this mean that the Shaikh and Brahmin might be 'trapped' or 'ensnared' by their own religious symbols? And if so, would this entrapment occur against their will, so that they'd struggle to escape, the way trapped creatures normally do? If so, they would perhaps succeed, since these nooses have no real 'gripping power'. But what form would their struggle take?

Or would this 'entrapment' and 'snaring' occur without their awareness, such that they'd complacently think themselves well-grounded, or firmly anchored, or otherwise safely bound into their own religious systems? If so, they'd be deluded, since these symbolic coils have no 'gripping power' and thus can't provide any ultimate security."

What then can test the mettle of our religious figures, if not their adherence to religious symbols? The second line provides the answer. The strength of their faith, of course. Thus there is a very clear affinity, as several commentators note, with the verse from last week. What matters to Ghalib is the strength of inner faith rather than outer symbols such as the sacred thread or the rosary. The zunnar or the sacred thread is a commonly used poetic image for the religiosity of the Brahmin and its need is questioned very often by those who want to emphasize the inner purity or love and devotion over the outward expression of belief. For example the following verse by Amir Khusro:

کافر عشقم مسلمانی مرا درکار نیست
ہر رگ من تار گشتہ حاجت زنار نیست

kaafir-e-ishqam musalmaani maraa dakaar nist
har rag-e-man taar gasht haajat-e-zunnar nist

I am a kaafir of love, I have no need for musalmaai (the practice of Islam)
My every vein is a thread/wire, I have no need for the zunnar

On the issue of the rosary, Kabir says,

माला तो कर में फिरे जीभ फिरे मुख माही
मनवा तो चहुँ दिश फिरे ये तो सुमिरन नाही

maalaa to kar meiN phire jeebh phire mukh maahii
manvaa to chahuN dish phire yeh to sumiran naahii

The rosary turns in the hand, the tongue wags inside the mouth
But the mind roams the four directions, surely this is not prayer!

Ghalib on the Faith of Faithlessness

Ghalib has much to say on the meaning of faith (deen) and infidelity/faithlessness (kufr). A recurring theme is his insistence on constancy and purity of belief, as opposed to outward manifestations of piety or faith. The conclusion is that, if one is pure of heart or steadfast in faith, then the actual object of belied matters less. I had blogged earlier on a Farsi verse to that effect. Subsequently I was reminded of a very powerful, direct Urdu verse which echoes a similar statement. In this newer entry I am putting both next to each other.

The Farsi verse exhibits Ghalib's seemingly insatiable penchant for paradoxes or for juxtaposing opposing thoughts/concepts and showing them to be somehow connected/the same at some deeper level. Like the other Farsi verses I have previously commented on, this one too does not show too many intricate or ornate metaphors or improbably flights of fancy (as Ghalib is known to do from time to time). Such proclivity (fancy metaphors) is usually recognized to be a feature of the "Indian School" of Persian poetry (sabk-e-hind or sabk-e-hindi) of which Bedil and Ghalib are two excellent examples. Click here for a nice blog entry on some of Bedil's verses. A very informative article on the poetics of the Indian style of Persian poetry by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi is available here (pdf format).

Anyway, I digress. The point is, this verse is marked not by fancy metaphors so much as densely packed philosophical observations where the philosophical point is made by presenting something that at first glance present a paradox, or that does not seem to belong together. But the opposing things are shown to be connected somehow. Now on to the Farsi verse itself:

کفر و دین چیست جز آلایش پندار وجود

پاک شو پاک کہ ہم کفر تو دین تو شود

kufr-o-deen chest juz aalaaish-e-pindaar-e-vujood
paak sho paak ke ham kufr-e-to din-e-to shavad

What are faithlessness and faith
but corruptions of the conceit of being/existence
Purify yourself so that even
Your infidelity becomes your religion/faith

Both religion and infidelity or faithlessness are imperatives born of the Ego (the conceit of being). They both corrupt the Truth in their own way because neither conquers the Ego. But if the Ego is quelled through purification or if purification consists of quelling the ego, then faithlessness itself can be as good as faith. As is often the case, the first line is beautiful and expresses an important thought, but doesn't surprise us too much. Surprise is usually reserved for the second line, because in a mushaairah, the first line would be repeated several times building up the suspense for what was to come. The second line does not disappoint. First we are told to purify ourselves (presumably of duplicity, deceit and dishonesty), and then the punch is delivered at the last moment. If yuo purify yourself, then even your faithlessness (ham kufr-e-to) will become your faith (deen-e-to).

In an famous Urdu verse, Ghalib plays with this theme of a steadfastly followed infidelity being as good as faith. Here is the verse:

وفاداری بہ شرط استواری اصل ایماں ےہ

مرے بت خانے میں تو کعبے میں گاڑھو برہمن کو

vafaadaarii ba shart-e-ustuvaarii asl-e-iimaaN hai
mare but;xaane meN to ka((be meN gaa;Rho barahmin ko

Faithfulness, as long as it is firm, is the essence/root of religion/faith
If he dies in the temple (idol-house) bury the Brahmin in the Ka'ba

Fran Pritchett's entry for this verse is found here. The Urdu verse makes a point quite similar to the Farsi verse, though I think much more firmly, startlingly. Pritchett comments on the effect of the imperative tense of the second line. There is fantastic use of strong verbs, marnaa (to die) and gaaRhna (to bury) and of course the sheer contradictory pleasure of seeing the Brahmin, the scion of Hindu faith, buried (no less!!) in the Ka'ba (no less!!). Ghalib uses the power of this immediately felt contradiction (the Brahmin who dies in the temple, is to be buried in the Ka'ba), to point to the philosophical contradiction. That even faithlessness (of the Brahman) can be equal to faith, if only it is pure, it is firm, it is steadfast. The firmess in this instance of the Brahmin's faith is illustrated by his death in the temple. It is as if the Brahmin has followed the advice given by Ghalib in the second line of the Farsi verse: Purify yourself and your kufr (Hindu belief, idol worship) will be as good as deen/religion/Islam.

Finally, the image of dying in the house of worship, as a sign of faith, reminds me of Hazrat Ali's death in the Ka'ba, which is also invoked as a powerful symbol of his faith.

The metaphor of morning as death in Ghalib

Morning (or more precisely, dawn) is often a metaphor in poetry for birth or the start of a new life or a new social order. As typified by Saahir Ludhianvi's famous refrain वह सुबह कभी तो आएगी (woh subah kabhi to aayegi; that morning will come someday) in which morning is a metaphor for the new world free of injustice, exploitation and oppression. So keep that image squared away in your mind.

Now in parallel, almost contrariwise, at least in South Asia, a burning lamp or a flame is a metaphor for the soul or life-force. Thus the familiar trope in Bollywood movies to show death or the passing away of the soul from the body is to show the extinguishing of a flame.

So here is the rub. A lamp usually burns in the night. With the coming of dawn the lamp's inevitable fate is to be extinguished. Thus here morning takes away rather than gives life. Couple this now with the usual importance given, in the Ghazal universe to the night as the realm of all poetry, of colorful assemblies, of wine drinking and romance, or life itself. In the world of the classical Ghazal, the poet comes alive during the night, whether because he exults in shab-e-visaal (the night of union with the beloved, usually singular!) or pines in shabaan-e-hijraN (nights of separation from the beloved, usually plural!).

Thus perhaps it is not surprising that we find in Ghalib a beautiful inversion of the dawn = birth metaphor to a dawn = death metaphor. Metaphor (mazmuN) in general is a vital part of the Ghazal, and mazmuN afiirnii (metaphor creation) is considered even one notch superior to ma;anii afiirnii (meaning creation). But I don't know enough to say whether this particular metaphor originates with Ghalib or not.

Here I take a look at two verses, one Urdu and one Farsi, that both offer examples of this mazmuN of morning being death. First the famous Urdu verse (Ghazal 78, verse 7):

غم ہستی کا اسد کس سے ہو جز مرگ علاج
شمع ہر رنگ میں جلتی ہے سحر ہوتے تک

gham-e-hasti kaa 'asad' kis se ho juz marg ilaaj
sham;a har rang meiN jalti hai seher hote tak

The sorrow of existence 'Asad', what is its cure but death
The lamp burns in every color, until the morning comes

Click here to read Frances Pritchett's commentary on the verse as well as of other commentators she has collected.

First note that the verse follows a well-established pattern wherein the first line offers a general proposition and the second line offers a poetic "proof" for the "theorem." The first line is a more-or-less straightforward proposition: life is suffering, and there is no cure for it except death. To live is to suffer. So far so good. Poetically said, but not quite sublime. ـIt is the second line that takes the verse to Ghalibian levels. Here the lamp is a metaphor for the human body, while its flame is the spark of life. But Ghalib emphasizes not only the light given by the flame (the light of life) but also the heat (burning, jalnaa). Not only is the flame life of the lamp, as the soul is the life of the body, the flame also burns (jalnaa), its essence is burning as the soul also suffers, its essence is suffering (what is a flame if we take away the burning, what is life if we take away suffering?). Here Ghalib deploys the double meaning of the verb "jalnaa", to burn or to suffer. Further, not only does the lamp burn, but as all the commentators note, it is powerless to extinguish itself. Only the coming of morning will extinguish the lamp and relieve it of its burning/suffering. But that relief is the relief of death, for then the flame is extinguished and life is no more. So death extinguishes all the types of burning/suffering that life brings as morning extinguishes every colored flame of the lamp.

Of course as Pritchett notes in passing, from the point of view of Sufism or Vedanta death is only another beginning, the start of another journey. For one who is aware of divinity, of the oneness of being (wahdat al-vujood), of the True nature of Reality, death is a continuation of life by other means, as it were. This is where Ghalib takes us in his Farsi verse:

نشاط ھستی حق دارد از مرگ ایمنم غالب
چراغم چوں گل آشامد نسیم صبح گاھان را

nishaat-e-hasti-e-haq daarad az marg aimaanam Ghalib
chiragham chuN gul aashaamad naseem-(e)-subaH gaahaan raa

A literal translation based on Steingass might be:
I exult in the existence of God/Ultimate Reality, from death I am safe/secure Ghalib
My lamp, like a flower/rose drinks off the morning breeze

Before we compare it with the Urdu verse, a couple of small semantic points:
I haven't been able to find out if gaahaan (گاھان ) has an independent meaning, mostly Steingass uses it in combination with some other word to mean at such and such time (andar-gāhān, Intermediate times) or na-gahaan meaning unexpectedly or untimely. So perhaps naseem-e-subaH gaahaan should be read as one phrase (morning time breeze).

Secondly I am not sure why Ghalib uses the verb aashaamidan (unless aashaamad is not the third person singular of this verb) here. A lamp drinking or sipping the breeze seems funny (unless the breeze is like oil that the lamp drinks to burn).

In any case back to the main theme. We know that the morning breeze is the death of the lamp, but it enlivens the flower. Ghalib's lamp (the lamp of life of a Sufi or of one immersed in the existence of God/Brahman) unlike the regular lamp (the lamp of life of an ordinary person who considers death to be the end of life) described in the Urdu verse, is not extinguished by the morning breeze, rather it is enlivened by it. And why is that? Of course, the first line offers the clue. Because he is immersed in the existence of God or the Ultimate Reality.

This verse follows a logical structure quite similar to the Urdu verse. Once again, the first line offers a proposition. Now instead of being told that suffering in life ends only with death, Ghalib tells us he is secure from death because he knows the secret of existence. Once again, the first line itself though poetic is not particularly thought provoking. As Pritchett might note, like a good Ghazal verse, we have to wait not only till the second line of the verse but till the last part of the second line (the part about the morning breeze) to get the full impact of the metaphor. And once again, as with the Urdu verse, the second line takes the verse to a new level. It offers "proof" or example of the proposition stated in the first line.

Of course in both verses, as always we need to distinguish Ghalib, the historical personality, from "Asad" or "Ghalib" of the poem. The question of whether, in real life Ghalib would have been as sanguine about death, or as immersed in the Oneness of Being, is in some ways a moot point. We cannot expect the classical Ghazal to be personal in the same way as say the Romantic poets off the 19th century. "The poet in the poem" in the case of the Ghazal is a vexed issue. See S.R. Faruqi's essay on this theme.

Finally, in one sense the Farsi verse is also a response to the Urdu verse. It is true that life's suffering ends only in death, but one need not be afraid of death, if only one knows the secret of the Brahman, the Ultimate Reality.

As Kabir would say:

भला हुआ मोरी मटकी फूटी रे
मैं तो पनिया भरन से छूटी रे !

bhalaa hua mori matkii phootii re
main to paniyaa bharan se chhootii re

Its just as well that my pot lies shattered
I have been released from the duty of filling water!

The Lesser Known Ghalib (4): The Veil of Existence

This time's entry on the lesser known Ghalib collects two verses, one Urdu and one Farsi, which, in my opinion seem to display connected philosophical features. They both play with the theme that the world of appearance (that which we see around us) is a veil over (Divine) reality, it both gestures towards the Divine presence and elides it.

The first verse in Urdu, is one of my all-time favorites (Ghazal 98, verse 10, rhyme scheme "aab mein"). It goes

ہے غیب غیب جس کو سمجھتے ہیں ہم شحود

ہےں خواپ میں حنوز جو جاگے ہیں خواب میں

hai Ghaib-e-Ghaib jisko samajhte haiN ham shuhood
haiN Khvaab meiN hanoz jo jaage haiN Khvaab meiN

That which we think of as seeing/the seen is the hidden of the hidden
They are dreaming still those who have awakened in a dream

Click here to read Hali, S.R.Faruqi and Frances Pritchett on this verse. As Faruqi notes "the metaphor in the second line immediately captures the imagination with its 'peerless beauty.'" Faruqi continues:

"People who, in a dream, see themselves as awakened, are still in a dream (and asleep). When they consider that they have woken up, they are only in error. What kind of error is this? This error is not devoid of two aspects. The sleeping individual has not had the experience of awakening. When he thinks that he's had this experience, he's only in error. In this way, to consider appearance and shuhuud to be the experience of divine wisdom is an error.But this error is not entirely without reality. The way the experience of waking in a dream is a shadow of the real experience, in the same way knowledge of appearances is a shadow of knowledge of the Truth. The second aspect is that the person who is at that time absorbed in a dream, will sometime or other wake up. Just as nonexistence is a proof of existence, in the same way sleep/dream is a proof of wakefulness."

But as Faruqi also notes, while the second line entices us with the beauty of its image, the first line also packs complex thoughts very densely. Ghaib itself is an incredibly multivalent word meaning "Absence; invisibility; concealment; anything that is absent, or invisible, or hidden (from sight or mental perception); a mystery, secret; an event of futurity; the invisible world, the future state" according to Platts Dictionary. So the phrase Ghaib-e-Ghaib right at the beginning sets us up with an interesting mental construct, the absence of absence, the hidden of the hidden, or the concealment of concealment. If we take Ghaib to mean hidden/concealed then we get the following: Existence, the world that exists, which we consider to be a manifestation of the Divine presence (shuhood) is actually only the concealment of the concealed, a curtain, a veil over the Ghaib. As Faruqi says, "even seeing things in the form of Divinity alone does not bestow knowledge about the true Essence; rather, it only gestures toward that knowledge." Just as waking up in a dream is not really waking up but only a "gesture" towards real waking. So far so good. But I wonder if it would be valid to take Ghaib to mean "absence", then shuhood/appearance/manifestation is the absence of absence, its the non-existence of non-existence, i.e. existence itself. I am not sure this reading works very well in conjunction with the second line, but maybe someone can think of a connection.

Now let us compare the foregoing Urdu verse to the Farsi one below (rhyme scheme "aabi besh nist"):

خویش را صورت پرشتان ہرزہ رسوا کردہاند

جلوہ می نامند و در معنی نقابی بیش نیست

Khvesh ra soorat parastaaN harzah rusva kardand
jalwah mi namand dar ma'ani naqaabi besh nist

Perhaps an Urdu translation would be:
Khud ko soorat parastoN ne bevajah rusva kiya
jise jalwa kehte haiN, naqaab se besh nahiN

In vain have the form-worshipers disgraced themselves
What they call the splendor of appearance is no more than a veil on reality

It seems to me, if I haven't misunderstood the Farsi, that this verse can be read in at least two ways. In one reading Ghalib is saying, "The worshipers of form have disgraced themselves for no reason. They are actually not that far wrong. After all the splendor of appearance is only a veil on reality, it points to reality (just as the shuhood gestures towards the Ghaib or waking in a dream, though not waking in actual fact, is still a reflection of that fact). I would like to read it in this way, but I admit it may be a stretch.
In the second reading, which is less far-fetched maybe, Ghalib says, "Why have the form worshippers disgraced themselves for no reason? Their God is only a veil, a false God, not something you should disgrace yourself believing in, unless you are misguided (i.e. unless you mistake waking up in a dream with actually waking up).

I think it seems valid to claim that time and again Ghalib shows himself to be preoccupied with this Sufi and Vedantic trope or existence being a veil over the essence, what is called maya in Vedanta. His more well known verse,

jabki tujh bin nahiN koi maujood
phir yeh haNgamah ai Khuda kyaa hai?

seems to hover around in the same general space.

The Lesser Known Ghalib(2): In praise of commoness

Continuing the series on Ghalib. I just rediscovered one of my favorite "anti- intellectual" verses by Ghalib. Ghalib is commonly acknowledged to be a "difficult poet" and revels in abstruse imagery and metaphors. And with his knowledge of Urdu, Persian and Arabic as well as poetics, can certainly be considered an intellectual, in the modern sense of the term. So its interesting to find such a direct comment on the ways of the intellectuals.

ہیں اہل خرد کس روش خاص پہ نازاں

پا بستگی رسم و راہ عام بہت ہے

haiñ ahl-e khirad kis ravish-e khās pah nāzāñ
pā-bastagī-e rasm-o-rah-e ʿām bahut hai

Loose, literal translation #1:
Of what special method are the intellectuals so proud?
The hold of common practice is strong enough in them
Loose, literal translation #2
Of what special method are the intellectual so proud?
Adherence to common custom is good enough for us.

Click here for the commentaries available for this verse on Frances Pritchett's site.

Most commentators seem to have preferred reading #1 for this verse and this was also the reading that was most obvious to me on the first pass. In this reading, Ghalib is lampooning the intellectuals (ahl-e-khirad) for being vainly proud of their special methods/customs (ravish-e-khaas), when in fact they are as grounded/caught (paa-bastagi, lit. foot-fixedness) in everyday mores and custom (rasm-o-rah-e-aam) as the rest of us common people. At one level, the verse immediately appealed to me because of the number of times I have witnessed intellectuals display the all too common (common in both senses of the term, frequent and vulgar) traits of petty behavior, jealousy etc. At a more philosophical/methodological level, the verse can be interpreted as saying that the claims made on behalf of special methods ("scientific method" comes to mind, though Ghalib might not have had that in mind) are suspect because the individuals who espouse these methods are very caught up in mundane, everyday prejudices and limitations to really produce any objective or special knowledge. Am I reading too much into the verse?

Reading #2 is suggested by Pritchett as a possible secondary reading. Here, Ghalib is asking what is so special about these methods on the intellectuals? Being grounded in good old common sense is good enough for us. Here, "bahut hai" is interpreted not as "there is a lot" but as "is enough", both interpretations are perfectly valid. The only problem, as Pritchett point out, is that "paa-bastagi" has the negative connotation of "being caught" rather than a more neutral or positive connotation of "being rooted" or "being grounded."

Once again Ghalib shows how much can be done by simply exploiting the ambiguities or multivalence inherent in Urdu/Hindi.

The Lesser Known Ghalib(1): Veil of openness

I thought of doing this series of blog entries on lesser known verses of Ghalib. As lovers of Ghalib know, some of his ghazals, and in particular some of the verses in those ghazals have been made really popular in recent times, mainly because they have been sung by popular artists such as Jagjit and Chitra Singh, Begum Akhtar, Sudhir Narain, and go a bit further back, K.L.Saigal (yes Saigal has excellent renditions of some of Ghalib's greatest, in his own inimitable style).

But Ghalib's Urdu divaan, though small by Mir's standards, is still much larger than the popular ghazal set. So I though I would more or less randomly select verses that appeal to me, either verses from lesser known ghazals or lesser known verses from famous ghazals. Here is the first of the lot, from a relatively lesser known ghazal (Ghazal #198, verse 2):

در پردہ انھیں غیر سے ہے ربط نہانی

ظاہر کا یہ پردہ ہے کہ پردہ نہیں کرتے

dar pardah unhe;N ;Gair se hai rab:t-e nihaanii
:zaahir kaa yih pardah hai kih pardaa nahii;N karte

dar pardah = behind the veil, rabt-e-nihaani = relationship of hiddenness (a hidden connection), zaahir kaa pardah = veil of openness
I have taken the Urdu and the Roman from Frances Pritchett's site. As usual, Prof. Pritchett collects the available commentaries on this verse and adds her own interpretation. I don't have a whole lot to add to the excellent interpretations, but my own two cents follow.

In the first line Ghalib informs us of the behavior of (who else?), the beloved. We are told she carries on a secret relationship with "the Other" behind the purdah. So far it is not too remarkable though a bit puzzling (see below), we might think, except for the usual Ghalibian tautness of phrasing. But then the second line delivers the basic paradox, the veil of openness. We are informed that her not keeping purdah (purdah nahi karte) is itself a type of purdah, a type of veil, a way of hiding something. Her affair with the Other is there, only it is hidden in plain view so to speak. By not keeping purdah from the Other, the Beloved seems to announce to the world, "Look there is nothing between us, he is 'like a brother' to me. If there were something going on then would I not keep purdah, to convey the appearance of normalcy and to allay any suspicion?" But our lover is smart. He has seen through the deception. He tells us, "Don't be fooled by this lack of purdah, it is merely the zaahir kaa purdah, the veil of openness in the guise of which all kinds of nefarious activities are going on."

Try reciting this verse as it might be recited in a mushairah. It is brilliant. Repeating the first line several times, builds up the tension, we are led to expect something fishy afoot. We think to ourselves, "How can some hidden relationship (rabt-e-nihaani) exist within the veil (dar purdah)? Something could be going on between two people (two strangers, remember we are talking about a relationship with "the Other"), if the Beloved meets him like she does everyone else, i.e. by keeping purdah from him. But if she is meeting him inside the purdah, he must be above suspicion (an older male relative, a brother etc)." And the second line does not disappoint. It tells us, "Aha! But thats exactly it. Zaahir ka yeh purdah hai...ke purdah nahi karte!"

Brilliant!

Durbaan-e-Mazaar-e-Ghalib (The Gatekeeper of Ghalib's Grave)

(This is the last blog entry on the matter of graves! Actually these entries sum up the famous graves I have visited, apart from Emily Dickinson's, which is just a five minute walk from where I live in Amherst, Massachusetts.). Check out this blog for a picture and translation of the inscription on Ghalib's tombstone. (Added July 12, 2008)

हुए मरके हम जो रुसवा हुए क्यों न गर्क-ए- दरया
न कहीं जनाज़ा उठता न कहीं मजार होता।

ہوے مرکے ہم جو رسوہ ہوے کیوں نہ گرک دریہ
نہ کہیں جنازہ اٹھتہ نہ کہیں مزار ہوتا

hue marke ham jo rusva hue kyun na gark-e-darya
na kaheen janaazaa utthata na kaheen mazaar hota

The shame I endured after death, why did I not drown in the sea?
There would have been no funeral, nor a grave to be seen.

While Khusro is certain that his beloved will come to his grave (see previous entry), Ghalib, in his shame, wishes for no grave at all. He seems in this verse to reiterate Alexander Pope's conclusion, albeit in a more sombre mood, "steal from the world and not a stone tell where I lie." Except, in true ghazal tradition he writes after his death, from the other world. Oh, such shame have I endured here (on the day of judgment? in heaven? hell?), why did I not disappear into the sea, without a trace, with no grave to be a home wherein to wait for qayamat, the day of judgment.

But let us not confuse Ghalib the poet with the "I" in the verse. After all the "poet in the poem" rule, poetry as personal statement, does not seem to apply to the traditional ghazal, where the poet dies only to be resurrected in the next verse and often expresses contradictory sentiments not only in different ghazals but in different verses of the same ghazal (since the ghazal unlike the sonnet or other poetic forms inn English, has no requirement of thematic unity for its couplets).

In fact Ghalib's grave, far from being reviled or shamed as the lover's in the verse was, is rather an honored place of visit in Delhi. The grave is next to the Ghalib Institute (or the Ghalib Academy, one of the two) only a stone's throw from Nizamuddin Dargah. I went there at night and the resplendence of the dargah didn't quite make it to Ghalib, so the surroundings were rather dark. There is a small fenced compound just off the side of the gully, at one end of which is a small structure, a hut almost, of stone. At first I did not even notice the broad, in English, Hindi and Urdu, that proclaimed this to be the grave. When I did see it, I noticed that the only entry into the compound was gated and padlocked. It was past 8:30pm and I assumed this meant that the site was closed for the day. I looked around. There were several men selling flowers to those who wished to visit Hazrat Nizamuddin's dargah. On a whim I asked a flower-seller if this (pointing to the silhouetted structure behind him) was Ghalib's grave. Yes, he said. Can I see it from up close? I asked. Sure, he replied, to my surprise. Ask that gentleman over there, he said pointing to an old man in a kurta and lungi, sitting by the roadside. Intrigued, I approached the man and asked, Ghalib ki mazaar dikhaenge? Will you show me Ghalib's grave? Haan zaroor, he said. Absolutely. Getting up, he fished out a key from his pocket and walked over to the padlocked gate. I followed, strangely elated. Opening the gate, he led me. There turned out to be several graves there, right next to each other. Ghalib's was inside the stone structure visible from the road. Out in the open, next to it were some others. The old man, now in the role, not of gatekeeper, but of guide, pointed to them and mentioned the names of the people buried there. I am afraid I remember them no longer. I lingered in front of Ghalib for a while, imagining the remains (whatever is left after a hundred and fifty years) that lay underneath. The moon shone on the stone, on the inscription in stone above the little entrance, but there wasn't enough light to read. Dust thou art, to dust returnest. All those verses that leap off the printed page, that stay in your memory after reading them or hearing them just once, all came from a brain that is now scattered in the very soil beneath my feet. But Ghalib, conceited though he was (kehte hain ke Ghalib ka hai andaaz-e-bayaan aur, they say no one expresses like Ghalib does), may have disagreed with me. The verses did not come from his brain, they came from nothingness, from the hidden, the ghaib, in Urdu.

Aate hain ghaib se yeh mazzami khayaal mein
Ghalib sareer-e-khamah navaa-e-sarosh hai
These themes, they comes from the hidden
Ghalib, the scribbling of the pen, is the whisper of an angel

Anyhow, the guide waited patiently as I dreamed. On the short walk across the compound back to the gate, I asked him if he worked for the Ghalib Institute next door. Nahin, unse hamaara koi lena dena nahin, he said (I have nothing to do with them). I placed a ten rupee note into his hand and thanked him. I never discovered how he came upon this job, or what else he did by way of earning a living. I regret now, not asking him more questions. But mystery has its place too doesn't it? Let not the "will to truth" sully everything in life.

On Ghalib and Language-II

This post is a reply of sorts to the two excellent points raised in the comment to the previous post. You will need to read the brief comment to get the context here.
The range of language (even just in vocabulary) available to Ghalib is in fact the striking thing here. I am quite ignorant of English poetry in general but it seems to me that there isn't anything quite like this there. Poetic language can be simple or complex in different English poems, but words are generally not used verbatim (tatsam) from say German or French, except in unusual circumstances. While in Urdu, tatsam and tadbhav words can certainly be used from Sanksrit, and to extend the usage of tatsam and tadbhav, such words can also be used from Persian and Arabic (less frequently than Persian).

The manner of speaking a language is often associated with social class (this relates to the second point regarding the intended audience of a particular poem). As pointed out the vocabulary of different classes may have been vastly different during Ghalib's time. At least literary vocabulary was much more Persianized than street tongue. This harks back to the distinction between Sanskrit as the language of literature and the various Prakrits or Pali as the language of ordinary discourse.
Of course this class distinction also provokes literature in the ordinary tongue (like the Buddhist canon in Pali, instead of Sanskrit) as an explicit effort to make literature accessible to the ordinary person.
With a assuredly class conscious person like Ghalib, one wonders what made him write in more accessible language at all. Perhaps he felt a tension between composing in "high language" and the popularity to be gained by composing in "low language".
Also I suspect that he would have made a clear distinction between high and low language and high and low quality. As we know his simple and complex verses are both brilliant. So he really shows in some sense that language doesn't matter. He can be good at it all.
The one last thing to say is that he is reported to have said that all his Urdu divan is as naught compared to his Persian verse. But I don't know how much to believe that. After all he also says:
jo kehe ye ki rekhta kyun ke ho rashk-e-farsi
gufta-e-ghalib ek bar use padh ke suna, ke yun

To the one who says "how can Rekhta (Urdu) be the envy of Persian
Show him Ghalib's verse just once, and say "like so"!

On Ghalib and Language

I started talking about Ghalib, the last time in explaining why I chose "mehr-e-niimroz" as a title for the blog. Ghalib is as good a candidate as any (and better than most!) to start the first substantive blog entry.

The range of thoughts and emotions that find expression in Ghalib's shairi is of course quite apparent to anyone who reads him. But a related thing that I find equally fascinating, in his Urdu shairi, is the range of language itself, from very simpe, colloquial Urdu (what we might call Hindustani) which is very similar to the street language often called Urdu in Pakistan and Hindi in India, to highly Persianized or less often Arabicized Urdu. To offer some examples:

Consider the following verse from the ghazal "koi umeed bar nahi aati":

ham vahaan hain jahaan se humko bhi
kuch hamaari khabar nahi aati

or a matla (opening verse) from another ghazal:

kab woh sunta hai kahaani meri
aur phir woh bhi zabaani meri

Or the famous and amazingly multivalent maqta from a different ghazal:

pooncchte hain woh ke Ghalib kaun hai
koi batlao ke ham batlaien kya

This verse can be interpreted in English as:
He/she/they ask who Ghalib is
Tell them for what can I say
or
Tell me what should I tell them?
or
Tell me, should I tell them?

For this and all verses, I highly recommend visiting Frances Pritchett's online project "A Desertful of Roses" (http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib/index.html?#index) which is an online annotated Divan where Pritchett (a Professor of Urdu at Columbia University, New York) collects existing commentaries on each verse of Ghalib's urdu divan and then offers her own commentary. Also on her website you will find some excellent articles on Ghalib in particular and Urdu poetry in general by both her and Shamsur Rahman Faruqi.

Anyway, returning to our main point, all the above verses are in perfectly comprehensible everyday Hindi/Urdu. Khabar (in the first verse) and zabaani (in the second) are the only non-Indic (Arabic and Persian) words in the first two verses. The third one does not even have one.

Now contrast these verses with the following:
batufaangah-e-josh-e-iztaraab-e-sham-e-tanhaee
shua-e-aftab-e-subah-e-mehshar har taar-e-bistar hai

With the replacement of a single word (hai) with another (ast), this verse will become a perfectly respectable Persian couplet. And there are several such verses in thee Urdu divan.

And of course there is a range between these extremes wherein, probably most of his verses lie. Now the question that comes to my mind when I see this, is did Ghalib himself perceive this as something to be explained, or was it perfectly unremarkable for him to choose the words that best expressed his thoughts/emotions, with not much regard to their source/difficulty? Of course, in general Ghalib was thought to be a "difficult" poet and was well-known for using difficult language as well as complex imagery. There is also a belief among some that his early verses tend to be more Persianized than his later ones. But there are others who doubt this and I tend to agree with the later view. If time of writing is not an issue, what then explains the choice of extremely "simple" words at one time, and hugely "difficult" one at another? I put simple and difficult in quotes to remind us that it may the particular way in which Urdu and Hindi evolved in the 20th century, that may also play a role in what we consider difficult or simple. A phrase such as shua-e-aftab (ray of the Sun) is a perfectly simple Urdu phrase, albeit one that modern Hindi speakers may have trouble with.

I don't really have an answer to this (possibly ill-posed) question. I leave it there for the moment. But this isn't the last you've heard of Ghalib on this blog!