Here’s another example of Shahryar’s use of alliteration and repetition:
Kaaghaz ki kashti par dariya paar kiya
Dekho! Humko kya kya kartab aatein hain
(We crossed the river in a paper boat
Look! Such are the tricks we know)
Virtually from his first collection, Shahryar embarked on new experiments in not merely prosody but also poetic vocabulary, experiments that he continued over a poetic career spanning over four decades. Given his output and his presence on the poetry scene by virtue of his near-mandatory attendance at most major mushairas in India and abroad and the near-constant appearance of his poetry in Urdu literary journals of any repute, it might not be an exaggeration to say that he was single-handedly responsible for bringing in vividly contemporary words into the ghazal. At the same time, as we find after a close reading of his oeuvre, introducing a new and astonishing word or image merely for the sake of experimentation was never an option; experimentation, for Shahryar, was never the goal; it was always the means to express new thoughts and ideas.
The Ghazal: A Series of Climaxes
Raja Ram Narain Mauzu wrote on the killing of Siraj-ud Daulah by the British in the Battle of Plassey in the year 1757:
Ghazala tum to waaqif ho kaho Majnu ke marne ki
Diwaana mar gaya aakhir ko viraane pe kya guzri
(O gazelles, you know how Majnu was killed
The mad lover died, but what happened to the wilderness?)
Here, in this much-quoted sher, Majnun, the legendary lover of Laila-Majnun fame, becomes a metaphor for Siraj-ud Daulah who fired the imagination of many Indians by his heroic resistance to the British. While one might be hard-pressed to remember anything else that Mauzu wrote, this one verse has made him immortal. Then there is Mir who was extremely prolific; yet from his vast oeuvre, Ghalib is said to have plucked just one verse and said that this one sher was far superior to his (Ghalib’s) entire corpus. And that one sher was:
Tum mere paas hotey ho goya
Jab koi doosra nahi hota
(You are with me as it were
When there is no one else)
There is also another sher, wrongly attributed to Mir, but actually written by Taish Marairahvi that is still recited by forlorn lovers down the ages while the rest of Taish’s no-doubt excellent kalaam is lost from popular memory:
Woh aaye bazm mein itna to Taish ne dekha
Phir uske baad chiraghon mein roshni na rahi
(He came to the assembly and that is all Taish could see
For afterwards there was no light left in the lamps)
The point here being the very nature of the ghazal; Firaq Gorakhpuri called it intehaon ka silsisla (‘a series of climaxes’). Every single sher in a ghazal cannot be outstanding, remarkable or memorable. The finest ghazals by the finest exponents of the form bear witness to this. The ghazal is a thing of fragile beauty, tremulous and, by its very nature, uneven. A reader or listener considers himself fortunate if even one sher in a ghazal lodges itself in one’s memory and speaks, time and again, to one’s heart and one’s mind. There is plenty among Shahryar’s ghazals, spread across six collections of poetry, that can stay lodged in one’s mind and heart. Reproduced below is a sampling, subjective like most samplings are, but hopefully enough to whet the appetite for more.
Justuju jis ki thi us ko to na paya hum ne
Is bahane se magar dekh li duniya hum ne11
(What I hankered for has forever eluded me
Though it opened my eyes to the world and its ways)
*
Maana ke dhoop sakht hai, main sar barahna hoon
Be-his shajr ke saaye mein kaise panaah loon12
(While indeed the sun is strong and my head is uncovered
But how can I take shelter in the shade of the
unfeeling tree)
*
Zindagi bhes naye shaam-o sahr badla kii
Aankh ka kaam tha dekhna so dekha kii13
(Life kept changing its guise every eve and morn
The task of the eye was to see and it kept seeing)
*
Pahle nahai ose mein phir aansuon mein raat
Yun boond-boond utri humare gharon mein raat14
(The night bathed first in dew then in tears
Thus it did descend in our homes drop by drop)
*
Aankh ki yeh ik hasrat thi ke bas poori hui
Aansuon mein bheeg jaane ki hawas poori hui15
(The eye had this one desire that has been fulfilled
Its greed to be drenched in tears has been fulfilled)
*
Mahaul mere shahr ka haan pur-sukoon na tha
Lekin bata huwa qabilon mein yun na tha16
(Yes, my city was never very peaceful
But neither was it divided into camps like this)
*
Guzre thay Husain Ibn-e Ali raat idhar se
Hum mein se magar koi bhi nikla nahin ghar se17
(Husain, son of Ali, passed this way last night
But none of us stepped out of our homes)
*
Har khwaab ke makaan ko mismaar kar diya
Behtar dinon ka aana dushwaar kar diya18
(Having destroyed the house of every dream
The coming of better days has become difficult)
*
Jo kehte thay darya nahin hai
Suna hai unse koi pyaasa nahin hai19
(Those who said that there is no river
I have heard no one is thirsting for them)
The random sampling above, chosen from his five major collections, amply demonstrates an inescapable fact about the ghazal, one that Shahryar himself admitted, namely its ‘generality’, its inability to say exact things precisely or with any degree of elaboration. The two-line couplet allows no scope for details; the sher comes through a foliage of words. This verbiage can be both its strength and weakness. The way a poet can elaborate, explain, put forth an idea or a concept in a nazm, he simply cannot in a ghazal. And, yet, in a mushaira, Shahryar only ever recited his ghazals, never his nazms. In the popular imagination, he remained – despite the large numbers of excellent nazms he wrote – a poet of the ghazal.
Writing for Cinema
Zindagi roz naye rang badlati kyun hai
(Why does Life change colours every day)
Shahryar’s film lyrics have caused him as much harm as the fame they brought his way. There is no denying that his songs made him a household name and enabled his words to reach those nooks and crannies of the popular imagination that an Urdu poet – no matter how popular – in this day and age could not hope to reach merely through his poetry being read in books and journals or heard at mushairas. Yet, it must also be acknowledged that in the popular imagination he became etched as a lyricist and not a poet of gravitas and merit. It seems especially ironic for two reasons: one, Shahryar was an academic. His entire professional life was played out at the much-respected Urdu department of the Aligarh Muslim University and his frame of reference was always the world of letters, not sounds alone. Secondly, his fame as a lyricist rests on a body of work that is far slimmer than his output as a poet.
The bulk of Shahryar’s songs are for films made by Muzaffar Ali: starting with Gaman (1978), Umrao Jaan(1981) and Anjuman (1986), followed by his songs for three incomplete films that are still in the nature of ‘works in progress’, namely Daman, Zooni and Noorjahan aur Jahangir. Shahryar also wrote some hauntingly lilting numbers for the Yash Chopra film Faasle (1985); by all accounts, Yash Chopra offered him a three-film deal but Shahryar refused as he didn’t want to become a ‘song shop’.20 That four films should cast such a long shadow over a poet who produced six highly regarded volumes of poetry and two different editions of critically acclaimed collected works is, to my mind, an injustice to a poet of Shahryar’s calibre. What is more, in interviews to the press, light journalistic pieces as well as features and profiles on Shahryar, the tilt is almost always towards
his film songs. Few interviewers take the trouble to put his film songs in perspective, namely, that though they are beautifully written and much loved for all the right reasons, they do not define Shahryar the poet. While comparisons are odious and film lyrics and poetry serve two vastly different purposes, few have made any attempt to delineate the differences – not merely in terms of output – but also of content.
Kaifi Azmi had once memorably summed up a film lyricist’s job as first digging a grave and then finding a corpse to fit in it! The lyricist writes to a given situation and more often than not also to a tune that has been set to the mood and setting of a given situation. The poet has no such compulsions. While it is true that Muzaffar Ali used some ghazals Shahryar had written long before Gaman was made, it is also true that he asked Shahryar to tweak some of the ghazals and got him to write others afresh for the films. The near-iconic song shot on Farooq Shaikh as he drives his taxi in the urban jungle that is Bombay, ‘Seene mein jalan, ankhon mein toofan sa kyun hai…’ first appeared in Ism-e Azam in 1965; so did ‘Yeh kya jageh hai doston, yeh kaun sa dayaar hai…’ that was used to such poignant effect in Umrao Jaan. ‘Justuju jis ki thi us ko to na paya hum ne’ from Umrao Jaan was first published in Saatwan Dar; its film version, immortalized by Asha Bhosle in her haunting voice, is a substantially tweaked one, showing us yet again the distance between the printed page and the silver screen. Only the opening sher, the matla, is retained and the remaining four are replaced by completely new ones. The three written especially for the film are in a totally different ‘mood’, one that is more suited to the context and to the courtesan’s character played by Rekha who is herself a poet using the nom de plume ‘Ada’. Also, though Shahryar himself never used a takhallus, in the maqta here, he has added ‘Ada’.
Justuju jis ki thi us ko to na paya hum ne
Is bahane se magar dekh li duniya hum ne
Tujh ko ruswa na kiya, khud bhi pasheman na huye
Ishq ki rasm ko is tarah nibhaya hum ne
Kab mili thi kahan bichhdi thi humein yaad nahin
Zindagi tujh ko to bas khwaab mein dekha hum ne
Ai Ada aur sunayein bhi to kya haal apna
Umr ka lamba safar tai kiya tanha hum ne
(What I hankered for has forever eluded me
Though it opened my eyes to the world and its ways
Neither did I dishonour you nor bring shame on myself
Thus did I remain true to the tradition of love
I don’t remember when I met her, where we
parted ways
I only ever met Life in a dream, that’s all
O Ada, what else can I tell you about myself
Alone have I traversed the long journey of life)
Two verses from a previous ghazal published in Hijr ke Mausam are studded, like jewels, in another altogether new ghazal and the order ‘scrambled’ in the plaintive number ‘Jab bhi milti hai mujhe ajnabi lagti kyun hai…’ written especially for the film:
Tujhse bichhde hain to ab kis se milati hai humein
Zindagi dekhiye kya rang dikhati hai humein
Gardish-e waqt ka kitna bada ehsaan hai aaj
Yeh zameen chand se behtar nazar aati hai humein
(Now that I have parted from you, let’s see who I meet
Wonder what other colours life has to show me
What a great favour the turning of Time has done to me
This earth appears better than the moon to me)
Unlike ‘serious’ Urdu poets, Shahryar professed no disdain for films or film lyrics. In fact, he considered cinema an excellent medium for reaching out to ordinary people. Concerned as he was by the dwindling numbers of readers, it always pleased him that his lyrics for films such as Umrao Jaan reached the masses. In his own mind, he did not make a distinction between ‘lightweight’ filmi poetry and the more serious ghazal or nazm written for highbrow journals. Also, he was willing to experiment with the standard practice among film lyricists to write on an existing dhun or composition. He tried this for Muzaffar Ali’s Zooni and Daman for, as he maintained, ‘After all, the words are still mine, and so is the thought behind them.’
Much has been written about the songs Shahryar wrote for Umrao Jaan, especially the mujra numbers. Perhaps the success of these liltingly beautiful lyrics can be traced to his childhood. The thanas or police posts of rural Uttar Pradesh were known to organize only three major events in a given year: kirtan, milad and mujra. Early exposure to these performances must have left an indelible imprint on his mind. In Bahedi, where his father was posted as thanedar, the courtesan’s quarter was next door to the thana. In an interview with Prem Kumar, Shahryar recalled the long rows of houses that stretched beside the thana. And when his father would go away on tour for days on end, the young Shahryar would go into the homes of the tawaifs or courtesans. Being a thanedar’s son, he was welcomed and allowed entry. This might explain the searing intensity behind songs such as ‘In aankhon ki masti ke mastane hazaron hai…’ and ‘Dil cheez kya hai aap meri jaan lijiye…’
Muzaffar Ali talks of the naayaab (rare) recordings in his possession of songs that Shahryar wrote for his films Daman, Zooni and Noorjahan aur Jahangir, films that have not been released and therefore whose songs, while recorded, have remained unheard. He speaks with especial joy of the songs written in the style of a nauha, an elegy, and the song for Daman where each line ends with the word ‘daman’. Ali also speaks a bit ruefully of Shahryar being temperamental as a person and a poet and says that it is no surprise that he didn’t work for others in the Bombay film industry; he says Shahryar was not cut out to survive or flourish in the film industry.
Muzaffar Ali’s first film, Gaman, had two songs by Shahryar, both ‘based’ on ghazals from Ism-e Azam, the first sung by Suresh Wadkar:
Seene mein jalan aankhon mein toofan sa kyun hai
Is sheher mein har shakhs pareshan sa kyun hai
(Why this fire in my breast and this storm in my eyes
Why does everyone in this city look so troubled)21
And this by Hariharan, who made his debut as a playback singer, first appeared in Hijr ke Mausam; here, the entire ghazal was retained without changes, though its last sher was dropped and the song concludes with the fourth sher:
Ajeeb saaneha mujh par guzar gaya yaaron
Main apne saaye se kal raat dar gaya yaaron
(A strange tragedy came over me my friends
Last night my shadow scared me my friends)
Muzaffar Ali’s second partnership with Shahryar, Anjuman, had five songs in all, all five by Shahryar and all composed by Khayyam. Of the five, three were sung by Shabana Azmi:
Gulab jism ka yuhin nahin khila hoga
Hawa ne pehle tujhe phir mujhe chhuwa hoga
(The rose-body must have bloomed for a reason
The breeze must have touched you before me)
And:
Tujh se hoti bhi to kya hoti shikayat mujhko
Tere milne se mili dard ki daulat mujhko
(Even if I had a complaint against you what could it have been
Meeting you has caused me to find a wealth of pain)
And also:
Aisa nahin ke isko nahin jaante ho tum
Aankhon mein meri khwaab ki surat basey ho tum
(It isn’t as though you don’t know that
You are settled in my eyes like a dream)
The fact that Anjuman, a film about the plight of chikan workers in the Lucknow region, never had a commercial release, yet its songs are still remembered, is in no small part due to Shahryar’s evocative lyrics.
With his characteristic insight, Gulzar says that Shahryar did not have a long innings in the film industry because he wasn’t entirely comfortable there and possibly did not try very hard to fit in or to proactively seek work. Gulzar uses the word ‘sehal’ (meaning ‘simple’) to describe Shahryar’s lehja as a lyricist; such a lehja suited the temperament of a film-maker such as Muzaffar Ali and may not have suited others, so
mething that possibly Shahryar sensed. Like Narang, Gulzar too believes that Shahryar could only write in his own lehja, he could only be true to his own voice. For his non-film poetry, Gulzar believes that Shahryar had the singular ability to speak of profound things in a simple, or light, manner (‘badi baat kehna halke se’).22
To come back to the distinction (an artificial one to my mind, I might add) that literary critics have made between ‘high’ poetry and film lyrics, Narang provides a refreshingly different perspective. Literary contributions, he writes:
…cannot be divided into neat parts and one part preferred over the other. Creativity is an organic whole. Shahryar’s contribution to contemporary ghazal and nazm is unique. But first it was his nazm that caught the popular imagination of the lay reader and later it was the ghazal. Maybe it was because of the films Gaman and Umrao Jaan. The subject matter suited Shahryar’s temperament. Muzaffar Ali was careful in his selection from Shahryar’s existing oeuvre but the poetry and creative essence were the same. This is where film is film and poetry is poetry: poetry is the creation of an individual soul, singular and no one else. In a film there is a collective effort; there is the music, the direction, the situation, the beauty and a whole lot of persons lending charm and blending, empowering the poetry. Remember, the ghazal lends itself well to music. After Rashid, Miraji, Akhtarul Iman and Faiz, the ghazal has gained in popularity and uprooted and usurped the space for the nazm. What Sohrab Modi and later Gulzar and Jagjit Singh did for Ghalib, or K.L. Saigal or Begum Akhtar, Naushad, Mehdi Hasan and many others did for the ghazal, Khayyam and Asha Bhosle did for Shahryar. His inner creativity remained the same whether he was writing for films or not; rather, the film blended itself with Shahryar.23
It is curious, though, that none of Shahryar’s film lyrics reflect the progressive outlook he was known for, given his proximity to the Janwadi Lekhak Sangh and the Aligarh branch of the Progressive Writers’ Association. The current of progressivism that rippled in the cinematic oeuvre of the highly prolific Sahir Ludhianvi and coursed through Hindi cinema in a virtually unbroken line from Kaifi Azmi to Javed Akhtar, is missing in Shahryar’s film lyrics. The reasons could be Shahryar’s relatively short stint in the film industry and his reluctance to work with those outside his comfort zone. In hindsight, it seems hard to imagine Shahryar lending his voice to the gritty realism of the so-called parallel cinema. Could it be that Shahryar’s poetic voice with its subtle, complex, nuanced allusions to social, political and contemporary events was not suitable for the requirements of arthouse cinema?
Shahryar Page 7
