A Thousand Yearnings

by Ralph Russell

  qahr ho ya bala ho, jo kuchh ho

  kaash ke tum mere liye hote

  Do not break off the bond uniting us—

  If nothing else, grant me your enmity.

  qata keeje na ta’alluq hum se

  kuchh nahin hai to adaavat hi sahi

  But unlike Mir, he is not prepared to commit himself unreservedly, and many of his verses written to or about his beloved are far from adoring. In reply to her taunt that what he suffers from is not love, but madness:

  ‘It is not love, but madness’? Be it so.

  My madness is your reputation though.

  (That is, it is my mad love for you that makes you famous.)

  ishq mujh ko nahin, vahshat hi sahi

  meri vahshat teri shuhrat hi sahi

  To every word that I utter you answer,‘What are you?’

  You tell me, is this the way, then, I should be spoken to?

  har ek baat pe kahte ho tum ki ‘tu kya hai’?

  tumhi kaho ki ye andaaz e guftagu kya hai

  If this is testing, can you tell me, what would persecution be?

  It was to him you gave your heart; what do you want with testing me?

  yehi hai aazmaana to sataana kis ko kehte hain?

  adu ke ho liye jab tum to mera imtihaan kyon ho?

  Is this affliction not enough to work one’s ruin utterly?

  With you as friend, what need is there for fate to be an enemy?

  ye fitna aadmi ki khaana veeraani ko kya kam hai?

  huey tum dost jis ke dushman us ka aasmaan kyon ho?

  Jealousy says,Alas! Alas! Her love is for my rival!

  Reason says, One cold as she cannot love any man.

  rashk kehta hai ki,‘us ka ghair se ikhlaas, haif!’

  aqal kehti hai ki,‘vo be-mehr kis ka aashna?’

  To think desire is adoration is to be a fool

  How should I worship her who treats me with such tyranny?

  khvaahish ko ahmaqon ne parastish diya qaraar

  kya poojta hoon uss but e be-daadgar ko main?

  All that the nightingale can do provokes the rose’s laughter

  What men call love is really a derangement of the mind.

  bulbul ke kaarobaar pe hain khandaha e gul

  kehte hain jis ko ishq khalal hai dimaagh ka

  Mystic Love

  For most ghazal poets it is Mir’s view of love rather than Ghalib’s that has prevailed. Love is absolute, unconditional and never failing, and what the lover learns through devotion to his beloved forms the foundation of an outlook which informs his whole life and conduct. To appreciate what this implies, we need to understand another dimension of what ghazal poets understand by ‘love’.

  In the ghazal, as in the poetry of medieval Europe, ‘love’ was of two kinds: love of two human beings for one another, and love of the truly religious person for God. Inspired by Sufi traditions, the early ghazal poets understood the love of God to be allembracing—the primary experience of love (called haqiqqi)—and saw the experience of longing for a human beloved (majazi) as a reflection of the fundamental impulse to seek union with God.

  The themes of these two kinds of love not only dominate the ghazal; they are very closely intertwined, and there are innumerable verses which can be taken in either sense. Indeed many couplets can imply both senses at the same time.

  A ghazal of Dard (1721–1785), Mir’s contemporary, includes these (thematically linked) couplets:

  As long as I can seek it will be you I seek

  As long as I can speak it is of you I speak.

  mera ji hai jab tak tera justuju hai

  zabaan jab talak hai yahi guftagu hai

  The longing that I feel is longing for you

  And when I yearn, it is for you I yearn.

  tamanna teri hai agar hai tamanna

  teri aarzu hai agar aarzu hai.

  This garden of the world—I roamed all through it

  No flower can match the scent and hue of love’s flower.

  kiya sair sab hum ne gulzaar e duniya

  gul e dosti mein ajab rang o bu hai

  What is it draws my inner eye towards you?

  No matter where I turn you are before me.

  nazar mere dil ki pari Dard kis par

  jidhar dekhta hoon vahin ru ba ru hai

  Urdu has no capital letters, and no one can tell whether the English translator should write ‘you’ or ‘You’. Nor does it matter. The lines are equally valid in both senses, and every Urdu reader takes this for granted. Urdu readers also accept without difficulty the most sensuous expressions of love for another human being as valid allegorical statements of love for God. So did medieval Europeans. (Perhaps an example of this parallelism best known to English readers is in the Song of Songs in the Old Testament, where, for example, the human lover’s very sensual, detailed description of his beloved’s body is titled,‘Christ sets forth the graces of the Church’.)

  In the South Asian Muslim context the parallelism between the two kinds of love is closer than is immediately evident. Mystics incurred a fierce hostility from the orthodox religious establishment, for their search for God was entirely personal and gave no credence to official interpreters of Islam. So the poet’s love for his God is just as illicit as that of the lover of a human beloved. It impels him to assail the pillars of conventional society, and to face the consequences. In the ghazal the poet is always depicted as facing up to this hostility gladly and defiantly.

  Further, this situation makes it natural for him to accept and exalt all love. To the ghazal poet, as Hasrat Mohani puts it,‘All love is unconditionally good’. In terms of human beloveds, this could be both heterosexual and homosexual, so the ghazal has a surprisingly modern ring. All this sits easily in poetry which moves simultaneously on two levels, and there is almost no couplet which cannot be taken in this sense. Hasrat Mohani’s full couplet is:

  All love is unconditionally good

  Be it for God, be it for human beauty.

  muhabbat khair e mutlaq hai baharhaal

  vo haq se ho ki ho husn e bashar se

  For the modern reader it is necessary to make another point. In medieval societies ideals of life and conduct were necessarily conceived of as religious ideals. Whatever your principles in life, you regarded them as God’s commands to you, and there was no other intellectual framework available within which you could conceive them. In the twentieth century there are, of course, still many for whom this remains true, but there are also many others who formulate their ideals in entirely secular terms, and Urdu poetry will speak to them more powerfully if they think of the poets’ assertion of their love of God as an assertion of their love of, and commitment to, their highest ideals of life and conduct.

  Neither Mir nor Ghalib were mystics in the literal sense, but they were steeped in the traditions and values of ghazal poetry, and like all ghazal poets drew closely on the concepts of early poets, who were themselves genuine mystics. They both seek God in the sense that they strive to be ever closer to Him.

  Mir writes:

  I seek you like the morning breeze that with each dawn goes forth again

  From house to house, from door to door, from town to town, from lane to lane.

  jaise naseem har sahr teri karun hoon justaju

  khaana ba khaana, dar ba dar, sheher ba sheher, ku ba ku

  For Ghalib this search—for God, or the ultimate meaning of life—is deeper and more comprehensive. He is convinced that He can be found, even if a lifetime is too short a span in which to complete the search. To those who give up he says:

  You are the ones who do not know the music of His secrets,

  Hidden no more than melody lies hidden in the lute.

  mahram nahin hai tu hi navaaha e raaz ka

  yan varna jo hijaab hai parda hai saaz ka

  You can look at almost all the couplets already quoted and read them in this additional sense, as allegorical statements of mystic love, or a commitment to deeply held values
. When Ghalib writes about having suffered because of his love, he may mean any one of this infinite range of loves—as in this couplet (where ‘in pledge to’ means ‘a victim of’):

  Though I have passed my life in pledge to all the age’s cruelties

  Yet never was the thought of you once absent from my mind.

  go main raha raheen e sitamha e rozgaar

  lekin tere khayaal se ghaafil nahin raha

  To summarize, the ghazal exalts that person who is steadfast in love in the face of affliction, knows that this commitment is certain to entail suffering, and may demand the sacrifice of his life. His love may be for a fellow human being, for God, for his country, for his people, for his community, or for any moral, social or political ideal in which he passionately believes; and the ghazal poets conceive of all these loves as being simply aspects of a single love that embraces them all, or at any rate that which can embrace them all.

  The Challenge to Orthodoxy

  From these mystical concepts ghazal poets draw far-reaching conclusions which lead them into violent collision with the religiously orthodox, and towards a strong commitment to the values of humanism.

  In these days when resurgent Islamic fundamentalism makes the headlines it cannot be stressed too strongly that a very different kind of Islam, which challenges the fundamentalists, has existed for centuries and has exercised an enormous influence. It pervades the Urdu ghazal, and had been equally prominent in Persian poetry centuries earlier.

  The passionate love of God is its starting point, and it has some parallels in the Christian tradition too. Joinville in his Life of St Louis relates how a friar met an old woman in Damascus who was carrying a bowl of burning coals in one hand and a flask of water in the other, and who, when he asked her what they were for, replied that the fire was to burn paradise to ashes and the water to put out the fires of hell, so that people could live their lives no longer motivated by the hope of paradise and the fear of hell but solely by their love for God. This sentiment is common in the ghazal poets.

  The true lover of God attaches little or no importance to the traditional religious observances. Strict Muslims pray five times a day, fast during daylight hours in the month of Ramzan and make every effort to make a pilgrimage to Mecca once in their lifetime. Clearly, these can be inspired by true love for God, but it is more likely that they will be motivated by mere convention, or even a pharisaical desire to feel self-righteousness—and in the ghazal they are always regarded as being so motivated.

  Mir writes scathingly of the things that are supposed to attract men to paradise—houris, beautiful women, and ghilmans, beautiful boys, who are said to serve the faithful in paradise:

  Houris and boys and palaces and streams of Paradise—

  Cast every one of them to Hell, and I will love my Love.

  hoor o qasoor o ghilmaan, nahr o naeem e jannat

  ye kulluhum jahannum! mushtaaq e yaar hain hum

  He looks with pitying contempt on those who are consumed by the anxiety to ‘earn’ paradise:

  To save their souls they kill themselves with care.

  A Paradise like that can go to Hell!

  jaaye hai ji najaat ke gham mein

  aisi jannat gayi jahannam mein

  Ghalib writes similarly:

  God’s will be done, but not from greed for heaven’s wine and honey

  Take hold of paradise, someone, and cast it into hell!

  taa’at mein ta rahe na mai o angabeen ki laag

  dozakh mein daal do koi lekar bahisht ko

  Abstinence wins no praise from me. What though it be sincere?

  Behind it lies raw greed to win reward for virtuous deeds.

  kya zuhd ko maanun? ki na ho garchi riyaai

  paadaash e amal ki tama e khaam bahut hai

  Ghalib, more than any other Urdu poet, is sceptical about the promised joys of paradise:

  I know the truth regarding Paradise, but all the same

  Since it gives happiness, Ghalib, the thought of it is good.

  hum ko maaloom hai jannat ki haqeeqat, lekin

  dil ko khush rakhne ko, Ghalib, ye khayaal achcha hai

  And if it does exist, it cannot compensate for all the troubles one has to undergo in this world:

  They offer paradise to make up for our life below.

  It needs a stronger wine than this to cure our hangover.

  dete hai jannat hayaat e dahr ke badle

  nasha baa-andaaza e khumaar nahin hai

  Even its pleasures are no match for the joys of this world. He tells his mistress paradise will please him only if she is there:

  The radiance that lights your lane lights paradise as well.

  The scene is just the same, but where’s the joy in living there?

  kam nahin jalvaagari mein tere kooche se bahisht

  yehi naqsha hai, vale is qadar aabaad nahin

  I will not cry for more if I may only look at you

  But there among the houris let me look upon your face.

  taskeen ko hum na royein jo zauq e nazar mile

  hooraan e khuld mein teri soorat magar mile

  Mir has many verses attacking the ‘shaikh’—the personification in the ghazal of an orthodox, bigoted religious leader:

  Shaikh says his prayers? Don’t be deceived by that.

  Prayer is a load he lowers from his head.

  shaikh ki tu namaaz par mat ja

  bojh sar ka sa daal aata hai

  Sometimes he adds the honoroific ‘ji’—normally a mark of respect, but here clearly sarcastic:

  If pilgrimage could make a man, then all the world might make the pilgrimage.

  But shaikh ji is just back, and look at him—an ass he went: an ass he has returned.

  haj se koi aadmi ho to saara aalam haj hi kare

  makke se aaye shaikh ji lekin ve to vohi hain khar ke khar

  You’re going to make the Pilgrimage? Then take the shaikh along;

  If you’re to reach the Kaba you must take an ass with you.

  qasd e haj hai to shaikh ko le chal

  kaaba jaane ko ye bhi khar hai shart

  He went to Mecca, and Medina, and to Karbala

  And what he was, he still remains now that he has returned.

  makke gaya, madeene gaya, karbala gaya

  jaisa gaya tha vaisa hi chal phir ke aa gaya

  His attitude towards the shaikh and the preacher is nearly always bitterly contemptuous:

  I grant you, sir, the preacher is an angel

  To be a man, now—that’s more difficult.

  hum ne ye maana ke vaaiz hai malak aadmi

  hona bahut mushkil hai, miyaan

  I worked at it for years, and only then

  Could trace his lineage back to Father Adam.

  barson taeen jab hum ne taraddud kiye hain tab

  pahunchaaya hai aadam taeen vaaiz ke nasab ko

  He ridicules the shaikh’s claim to understand serious poetry:

  Mir’s every word has meaning beyond meaning—

  More than a worthless shaikh can understand.

  Mir sahib ka har sukhan hai ramz

  be-haqeeqat hai shaikh—kya samjhe?

  Yes, shaikh, you understand Mir perfectly!

  Bravo! You worthless dolt. Bravo! Bravo!

  shaikh tu ne khoob samjha Mir ko

  vah va, ai be-haqeeqat, vah vah!

  Ghalib is usually more light-hearted, and dismisses such people with mockery rather than with loathing. He sees the shaikh as one who simply repeats traditional beliefs that have no real religious validity—as in this verse, about the supposed gardens of Paradise, tended by the keeper Rizvan:

  The shaikh sings loud the praises of the gardens of Rizvan; to us

  They lie, a bunch of faded flowers, upon oblivion’s shelf.

  sitaaish gar hai zaahid is qadar jis baagh e razvaan ka

  vo ik guldasta hai hum bekhudon ke taaq e nasiyaan ka

  He ridicules the shaikh’s love of honey and abhorrence of wine, sugg
esting that he would do better to reverse his attitudes:

  Abstemious one, why do you push the cup away?

  It’s wine! It’s not the vomit of the bee!

  kyon rad e qadah kare hai zaahid?

  mai hai ye, magas ki qai nahin hai

  And what does he know about wine anyway? Without knowing what wine tastes like, how can he sing the praises of the ‘wine of purity’ promised to the faithful in paradise?

  Preacher, you cannot drink it, nor can you give us to drink

  What then is all this talk about your ‘wine of purity’?

  vaaiz na tum peeo na kisi ko pila sako

  kya baat hai tumhaari sharaab e tuhoor ki?

  ~

  For the poet lover of the Divine Beloved, his love, like his earthly loves, is something that liberates him from all the cramping restrictions that orthodox Islam and strong social convention alike impose upon his natural feelings. So also do wine and music—wine which orthodox Islam entirely forbids and music, of which it strongly disapproves. The poet will have none of these prohibitions and restrictions, and if violating them brings drastic consequences, so be it. The consequences are frequently painful.

  In a series of thematically linked couplets, Ghalib warns those who are just embarking on this experience:

  Newcomers to the assembly of the heart’s desires,

  Beware, if it is wine and music that you seek!

  Look well at me, if only you have eyes to see;

  Listen to me, if you have ears to hear me speak.

  The saki’s* charm will steal away your faith, your wits.

  The minstrel’s song will rob you of your sense, your powers.

  At night you see the carpet laden all with bloom—

  A gardener’s apron, filled with fresh, sweet-scented flowers.

  The saki walks, the flute plays on enchantingly,

  Heaven to the eyes, paradise to the ears of all.

  Come in the morning: Look at the assembly then,

  Life, joy, wine, music—all are gone beyond recall.

  Bearing the scar of parting from its erstwhile friends,

  One candle stands, burnt out. Know: this is how it ends.

  e taaza vaaridaan e bisaat e hava e dil

  zinhaar! agar tumhein havas e nai o nosh hai

  dekho mujhe jo deeda e ibrat nigaah ho

  meri suno jo gosh e naseehat niyosh hai