One of the greatest masters of muse, Mirza Asadullah Khan surnamed
Ghalib was a born poet who not only wrote thoughtful poetry but also thought
poetically. Known for its exceptional tenderness and sensibility, Ghalib rose
above the poets of his age and thought ahead of his times. Ghalib believed that
the ideals of culture did not lie in the isolation of freedom, but on the
inter-dependence of individuals and societies in all spheres of thought and
action. ‘My creed is oneness, my belief renunciation of rituals’. He stood for
a learning society where the mind is free and the head is held high. His poetry
reflects a deep philosophy based on beauty and truth and has been universally
accepted as great poetry.
Born
on December 27, 1797 at Agra in a well-to-do family of army officers who traced
their descent from Seljuk kings of Central Asia, his father Mirza Abdullah died
fighting when the child Asad was hardly five. He was thus entrusted to the care
of his uncle Mirza Nasrulla Beg, a Risaldar in the British army who too died
when the child was 9. He was, therefore, brought up in his maternal grand
uncle’s spacious house, his childhood spent in the company of female cousins,
kite-flying, swimming across the Yamuna doing all kinds of pranks. Agra left an
indelible mark on the young mind of the boy. Although he never went back, the
nostalgia of his Agra days gripped him forever.
Ghalib
considered poetry as an accomplishment necessary for the nobility of which he
was always proud. He wrote his first Urdu Ghazal at 9 and his first Persian
‘Masnavi’, at 11. Among his early influences were Shaikh Muuzzam, an eminent
teacher of Agra in those days, a Persian scholar named Hurmuz who named himself
as Abdul Samad on conversion from Parsi religion to Islam. He first visited
Delhi at the age of 7 but after his marriage at 13 with Umroa Begum, daughter
of Mirza Ilahi Baksh Khan ‘Maruf’, he settled in Delhi where he remained till
he died on 15 February, 1869, at 71. In Delhi,
he changed many residences till he came to his Ballimaran house in Galli
Qasim Jan, recently renovated and included in the heritage list. It is here he
composed his immortal verses, it’s here he had love escapades, he drank to his
fill, gambled, went to jail. He was a suspect in 1857 revolt, his pension was
stopped, his end was pathetic. The poet who had defied all Gods in his youth
and challenged the angels, realized in old age, that Ghazal was a narrow genre
for him, he wanted wider vistas to express himself.
In
his youth, Ghalib was a very handsome man. ‘When I met him for the first time’, wrote Altaf Hussain Haali,
his best biographer in ‘Yaadgar-e-Ghalib’, ‘One could easily see what a
handsome man he must have been; tall, broadly built, powerful limbs, of
charming disposition and ready wit, he appeared even then a fresher from
Turan’. A pagan to the core, he stood for the life of pleasure. Commenting on
the poet’s hedonistic nature, Prof. Muhammad Sadiq, in his ‘History of Urdu
Literture’ says : ‘Ghalib had no conscious theory of life to offer, he was more
intent on living his life than theorizing about it; but there is one thing more
than another that his life and poetry substantiate, and to which ample
testimony is borne by those who knew him personally, it is that he yearned to
have more and more of it and explore its possibilities for personal enjoyment.
His attitude about the hereafter, as is well known, was skeptical, and even if,
occasionally he was led to think of rewards promised to the righteous, a class
to which he emphatically did not belong, he decided to have the cash and let
the credit go’.
Jismein lakhon baras ki hoorain
hon
Aiyasi jannat ko kaya kare koyi
(What will one do with a paradise
where there are million-year old Hoories (beautiful maids)
At an other place he declares: ‘I have inherited the
nature of Adam and I am his descendant. I openly declare that I indulge in sin.
I am not a theologian, I am a poet. I am Persian by nature, although my
religion is that of Arabs’.
Strangely
enough, he considered his Persian poetry far superior to that of Urdu verse.
Even in volume it is less than one-third of his total output. ‘My Persian
poetry is full of colours, my Urdu verse is colourless’. But little did he know
that in India he would be remembered by posterity and would achieve immortality
through his Urdu writings and not his Persian poetry on which he prided
himself. Although some experts consider his Persian poems also of a high order
and can be compared with the best of Persia’s own poets, but the fact remains
that he is not recognized in Persia, nor is very much known there. His Urdu
poems total no more than 1,800 lines and there also some of them that are laced
with Persian idiom and metaphor, but whatever remains needs to be weighed in
gold. He raised the status of the ‘Ghazal’ to the dizziest heights. ‘I wash my
words with milk’, he often said.
Ganjina-emaani Ka Tallism usko
Samajhiye
Jo Lafs Key Ghalib tere Ashar mein
Avey
(Every word I use in my couplets
creates a magic, I weave them in my thought process and charge them with the
magic of meaning)
Ghalib’s poetry, therefore, is not mere magic of
words or a sheer picture gallery of diction, behind every word there is a magic
of thought, every word is raised to the status of a concept. Ghalib was an
original mind, a keen intellect, a deep thinker. More often than not, his
poetry acquired the status of philosophy, a new humanism.
Bus key dushwar hai har kaam ka
aasan hone
Admi ko bhi muyassar nahi insane hona
(It’s not easy for every task to
be easy as it’s difficult for man to be human )
Pessimist
Some critics believe that Ghalib was
essentially a poet of sorrow and that happiness was only an occasional episode
in the general drama of pain, that life was not worth living. Haali does not
agree with this theory. Nor does Iqbal who himself was a poet of sorrow. But
there are utterances which are very powerful and one cannot resist the feeling
that his last-phase poetry is full of gloom.
I am Earth’s Extinguished Echo
My wail its Phoenix
In
one of his undying poem he says:
Gham-e-Hasti ka Asad Kis sey ho Juz-Marg Ilaj
Shama Har Rang mein Jalti hai Sahar hone Tak
(There
is no cure for the life’s sorrow, O Asad except death,
The
Lamp burns in all its hues till dawn)
And
again : Sorrow ceases to be sorrow in its surfeit
So numerous have been my difficulties
that they themselves withered away.
During the later years, the tone of
Ghalib’s poetry had become rather bitter as is evident in the following verse:
Rakhiyo Ghalib Mujhe is Talkh-Nawai mein Muaf
Aaj ik dard mere dil mein siva hota hai
(Forgive
me, O Ghalib if my narrative is bitter
Today
I feel the pain pulsating in my heart)
Pir-I-Kharif
In one of his letters dated 1867, he
opens up: ‘I am about to die now. I eat
hardly anything at present. All kinds of diseases have overtaken me. From God
we come and to God we return. I am Pir-I-Kharif, an old man, decrepit par excellence.
My memory has failed me. It seems I never had any memory. For long, I have been
hard of hearing. Those who come to see me, write down what they have to say. My
food amounts to nothing, A piece of
sugar candy peeled, powdered almonds in syrup in the morning, four dried kababs
early in the evening. Wine, 5 tolas in weight mixed with equal quantity of rose
water before going to bed, is my diet. I am decrepit, defeated, physically
imbecile, sinner and a lechar’.
Only a few years before he wrote to
Mir Mehdi Majruh : ‘I read throught the day and drink throughout the night’.
According to Prof. Mujeeb, ‘The poetic
tradition which Ghalib represents was more than literature, more than culture.
It expressed vigorously and coherently, the response of human nature to the
problem of human existence. It was a fusion of elements that were philosophical,
mystical and aesthetic, also elements that were essentially trivial and euphemeral.
The fusion took place in man, and could not take place outside him, in a system
of philosophy, mysticism and aesthetics, certainly not in religious dogma’.
Ghalib as man, therefore, could not have been superior to Ghalib as poet.
As a man, he was a man of the world wanting to live in sumptuous ease. As
a poet, he transcends the boundaries of time and space.
Ghalib & the English
Ghalib’s relations with the
Englishman were generally cordial except during the 1857 rebellion and the
Macpherson episode. Macpherson, an Englishman, had opened a wine shop in
Chandni Chowk and Ghalib was a regular who purchased the stuff called Old Tom
on credit. The Englishman being basically a businessman, waited for some time,
but when he could wait no more, dragged him to the court and recovered his
dues. Legend has it that the Qazi who fined him was a great admirer of Ghalib
and paid the fine from his own pocket. The same night there was a ‘Mushaira’ at
the Qazi’s house where Ghalib was the chief guest. Returning home late night,
when a water-carrier near Jama Masjid asked him to write a poem on him, Mirza
Ghalib became sad and said : ‘You quench the thirst of the thousands, I only
mine, what will you do with a poem’?
Ghalib welcomed Western learning and
Western innovations and institutions such as steam engine, railways, post
offices, wireless. He even wanted to learn English language. He had a number of
English friends, prominent among them were Sir John Frazer and Sir William
Rattigan, the Vice Chancellor of Punjab University. ‘I met Rattigan Sahib. He is writing in English a
Tazkira of Urdu poets. I have sent him seven books’. When Ghalib died, it
appears through his letters that a fairly large number of English words were
introduced in Urdu language. When he fell seriously ill, a British doctor was
sent for his treatment.
Ghalib was an eternal bachelor, a
perennial Don Juan even in old age. During the 57 rebellion, when an English
Officer asked him whether he was a Muslim, Mirza Ghalib replied: ‘Only One
half’. Asked to elaborate the half he was not, he snapped back, : ‘Because I
take only wine, not pork’. Ghalib’s wit was axiomatic, his satire was urbane.
When a Moulvi told him that a drunkard’s prayers will not be accepted in
heavens, Ghalib replied that ‘what’s there to pray for when one has enough to drink here. An apt
illustration of his own verse he could drink anywhere, anytime but not with
anybody: ‘When the tavern is no more, it does not matter where I drink : A
Mosque, A School, may be a monastery’. When a devout Muslim complained to him
for non-observance of ‘Roza’ (Fast) in the sacred month of Ramazan, he replied
‘It’s one thing not to observe the fast, but quite another to fondle it’.
Elsewhere, he challenged the divine
distribution on the plea that no human being was present at the time of recording of divine will, it was an all
angels’ affair. His principle was ‘Live like fly, not a bee’. A free thinker,
he stood for the freedom of the individual, some passion for an ideal, whether patriotism, religion, humanity, love
of a woman or of nature.
During his last days, he turned to
mysticism. In his famous letter to Hargopal Tufta, his most trusted friend, he
says:
‘You are cultivating the art of
poetry and I am cultivating the art of immersion in the divine spirit. I
consider the scholarship of Avicenna and the poetry of Nizami as useless. To
live, we require little happiness. As for philosophy, kingship, poetry, magic
all are absurd. If someone was an Avtar among the Hindus, what then? If you
make a name in the world, what then. We are good poets and may be as famous as
Saadi and Hafiz. What did they gain by their renown, and what shall we gain.
What did Urfi gain by his Qasidas and what did Saadi gain by his Bostan ….
Nothing exists but God’.
Yet the fact remains that tens of
thousands of people recite Ghalib’s poems every day in their moments of agony
and ecstasy. People still exchange Ghalib’s verses as gifts. His poetry
transcends the boundaries of history, geography, calendar, tradition and
modernity, thought and belief.
He died on 15th February 1869 in the same
house at Ballimaran. He lies buried in Nizamuddin near the tomb of Hazrat
Nizamuddin Auliya. A large number of mourners joined the funeral procession,
both Hindus and Muslims, and among Muslims both Sunnis and Shias. For about
a year, articles on Ghalib appeared in Urdu papers every day, every week,
every month special supplements were carried out by Delhi papers. Death makes
no conquest of this conquerer for he now lives in fame, he belongs not to
one country, but to all the ages. A universal poet, his appeal was universal.
(PIB Features)
*A noted Historian
** 210th
Birth Anniversary Celebrations
Disclaimer:
The views expressed by the author in this feature are entirely his own and
not necessarily reflect the views of PIB.
SC/VN
SS-217/SF-217/29.12.2006
(Release ID :23695)