The Taste of Words: An Introduction to Urdu Poetry by Mir, Raza Read Free Book Online Page A

Kitaab
(The Knowledge of the Book) is especially noteworthy—but began gravitating to the people’s tongue for his poetic output. His mysticism often cast the world as a brief stop in a longer spiritual sojourn, and saw death as just another move in that ongoing journey. In his most famous sher, he conveys this with a simplicity that perhaps owes a connection to Mir: ‘
Dosto dekha tamaasha yaan ke bas
/
Tum raho ab ham to apne ghar chale
’ (‘Friends, I’ve had enough of this display / I am off, if you wish, you can stay’).
    Interesting in this context is the defiant pose that Dard strikes in the third couplet of this ghazal, vis-à-vis the religious straw man (sheikh). The sher (which is one of Dard’s most widely quoted couplets and also famously performed by the singer Mukesh) taunts the sheikh for viewing his soaked garments (presumably with wine, since the maqta also extols drinking), stating that if he were to wring his clothes, the angels would view the squeezed liquid pure enough to use for their ablutions. The implicit celebration of the repudiation of religious strictures also characterizes Mir’s work, and became an important element in the aesthetic traditions of the Delhi school.
Hum tujh se kis havas ki falak justaju karen
    Hum tujh se kis havas ki falak justaju karen
    Dil hi nahin raha hai jo kuchh aarzoo karen
    Mit jaayen ek aan mein kasrat numaiyaan
    Hum aaine ke saamne aa kar jo ‘hoo’ karen
    Har chand aainaa hoon par itnaa hoon na-qubool
    Moonh pher le vo jis ke mujhe ru-ba-ru karen
    Nai gul ko hai sabaat na ham ko hai aitbaar
    Kis baat par chaman havas-e rang-o-bu karen
    Hai apni ye salaah ke sab zahidaan-e shahr
    Ai Dard aa ke bayat-e dast-e sabu karen
Should I ask fate for passion?
    Should I ask fate for passion? I’m loath to do my part
    I lost all desire when I lost my feckless heart.
    All forms of consciousness will dissolve to one true state
    When I look at the mirror and proclaim God is great!
    Sneer not, dear judgemental sheikh, at my clothes wet with wine
    When they’re wrung, angels ablute in this liquid divine.
    I’m truthful like a mirror, but solitude’s the price
    Anyone who looks at me leaves, hates to remain near.
    Spring I cannot guarantee, nor is the rose so strong
    On whose hopes can gardens bloom, with colour, scent and song?
    It’s my advice, O Dard, to the city’s puritans
    That they shun their false gods, and to wine pay obeisance.

Mir Taqi Mir
    In the pantheon of Urdu poetry, it is interesting to ask why it was only Mir (1723–1810) who came to be known as the
Khuda-e Sukhan
(God of Poetry). There is something originary about his work, which is not immediately apparent (just as a novice to cinema studies may not appreciate the trailblazing nature of
Citizen Kane
or
Battleship Potemkin
without an appreciation of the history of cinema itself). It is just that much of what is aesthetically brilliant about the ghazal seems to originate with Mir’s work. The masters themselves, of course, paid obeisance. Consider for example this couplet by Ghalib: ‘
Rekhta ke tumhi ustad nahin ho Ghalib / Kehte hain agle zamane me koi Mir bhi tha
’ (‘You are not the only great exponent of Urdu, Ghalib / It is said that in the past there used to be a Mir as well’). 1
    Mir’s life coincided with a very eventful phase in India. On the one hand, he was accompanying his patrons to hunts (composing poems known as
shikar nama
s or hunt poems), writing his autobiography, revelling in his status as the poet laureate of the cognoscenti, and indulging his sensual desires. 2 On the other hand, his beloved Delhi was under such constant attack from serial marauders like Ahmed Shah Abdali that Mir had to move to Lucknow. His interactions with the Lucknow poets produced great strain because he had developed his own inflexible aesthetic and grew tired of their florid romanticism, while they found him puzzlingly quotidian (his clashes with the local star Sheikh Khalandar Bakht Jur’at