Mir Taqi Mir
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
Remember the words I utter— you won’t hear such
words ever again
And if you hear someone read from them you’ll
remain overwhelmed with the passions of pain and
pleasure for a long, long moment
You’ll make much effort, and search to find how to
write in this my style
You’ll cultivate the company of the erudite, the
accomplished
and read with them and try to acquire skills that
were mine
And when your heart won’t find solace in
exchange of words and ideas
The fire of grief will blow in your body and you’ll
burn and roast in it
Mir’s poems charged with the fire of emotion will
pack your inner self to the full with burns and
bruises
Pale and wan you’ll wander in the city, collecting
fresh scars
W
here did I hear these words? Who wrote them? He prophesied that whoever heard them would be overwhelmed with passions of pleasure and pain. My single state of man is certainly shaken to its foundations. Am I destined to flagrate inwardly and wander in the city just because I wrote these words, or heard those words? Did I hear them recited? By whom? I don’t remember ever reading them, or composing them. So how have those words sprung from the eternal chaos that is my brain? All right, let’s postpone consideration of this point. Wander in what city? Which city am I talking about? What place is this? I don’t remember this sky, I don’t remember this earth.
But wait, just wait for a second. Who is this Mir? Is he the putative author of these lines? If it is I, then the city could be Delhi, or maybe even Lucknow. No, not Lucknow. I (that is, Mir Muhammad Taqi Mir) hated Lucknow most cordially. So the city must be Delhi. Oh, I remember someone say (was it I, that is Muhammad Taqi Mir, or was it this I who am speaking these lines?) Anyway someone said:
The land of Delhi, laid to waste, was
a hundred times better than Lucknow
How I wish I’d died there, witless
and not come here at all.
Well, if it was Mir Muhammad Taqi Mir who wrote that heart rending, pain-and-hate filled verse, then it is I, no less, who am speaking to you who wrote the verse.
Did I not say that you will, when I am gone, wander endlessly, trying to acquire that special tone of voice, that passion, that wisdom that my poems are brimming with? Can you, insensitive dolt that you are, can you ever reach or even look at the height where I spoke from? I remember he said:
Although all my poems
are liked by and in fact suited
to the elitist taste,
I talk only to the commoners.
You think it’s easy to understand Mir?
Each word, each poem that he utters
Is from a certain station.
Two verses, four short lines, short even by Rekhta standards—Do you know what Rekhta is, young fellow? Rekhta is the language that I wrote in…Anywise, the total number of words in the two verses is just twenty-five; the first verse has 12 words, the second, 13. Can you see how much meaning I have packed, stuffed, jammed, pressed, forced, squeezed into those small words which total just a quarter of a hundred?
Sorry, I don’t have the time to expatiate on their meanings, or on anything at this time. I am quite sure this is not Delhi. Nor Lucknow. So where am I? I am lost? Surely not, after having lived around here for more than two and a half hundred years. More like three in fact.
I was talking about the sky, the earth, they seem so different here from the places that I’ve known, or lived in. I and my forefathers used ‘sky’ as the symbol of tyranny, inequity, injustice. And the earth was the symbol of death, of rest. But the earth was cold. Dusty, hard and cold. But these things had meaning for us. We could talk to them, speak to them. I have stood here for I don’t know how many hours, days, weeks, but I have found no one whom I could talk or even speak to. They are there, in their hundreds, in vehicles that frighten me because it seems they have no time. No time to stop, or stand, and stare. Staring was so important in my days. Glimpsing, gazing, staring—like one deranged. Deranged I was, just as all poets are deranged one way or another. I of course was moonstruck, lunatic, if you prefer, at a certain time of my life. I would gaze at the moon and discern a beautiful face gazing at me. Me? Yes, expatriate me, struggling, hating, trying to love and live, and that face in the moon was gazing at me! I gazed, and stared. Was it lunacy? If you say so. But then I was much taken by thoughts of love. Love in the physical sense. Love of a face in the moon. Sometime the face would grow as I stared. It sat above a neck, long and slender like a carafe of wine. Then the body, the breasts, the belly, the thighs, the calves, delicate, white but painted shoes. They were made of paper, do you know that? The shoes, I mean. But her dress was so tight, meant to reveal more than conceal. I wrote (then, or later, or never, I can’t say):
How nicely are the pleasures of her body
hidden! She whose dress is tight, ever so tight
Her body seems to be bubbling forth from
her clothes.
Was I complaining, or gloating, or using my mind’s eye to see what was just there below the surface somewhere? Don’t ask me. And once I imagined her, NO! I saw her. Wearing a dress, tight and sulphur coloured and with a profusion of gold work on it. I was speechless with agony, with the agony of pleasure, of anger and frustration. Her golden sulphur dress seemed to burn me, with envy, with desire. Much after the event, I could write:
How lovingly it clings to her golden body!
Someone’s sulphur coloured dress inflames
and wounds my soul
Enough of all that. Stranded, in the darkling I stand and listen. But no one is talking. I talk only to the commoners. My mount—horse, or camel, or mule—has deserted me.
[Shamefaced, abashed.] Actually, I too came in one of those hellish fiery engines which now don’t seem to stop, though mine did stop once and I got out to stretch my legs and drink a draught of the blushful flower—phūl in Rekhta means ‘flower’, but also ‘wine’. Someone said (it wasn’t I, let me assure you, sir. Poets in my time don’t speak so openly and so forcefully of such ‘unorthodox’ things). Well, it was someone who said:
It’s my longing, my most powerful desire to die
holding a brimful wine cup
In a wine house which should be redolent
with the scent of the wine of flowery fragrance
Do you see, young fellow? People hope and long to die in a holy place, or least not in an ‘unclean’ place like the wine-house, and that too a wine-house redolent with the fragrance of the phūl, which is both wine and flower. And, my hand should have a full cup of wine when I die. So what is his religion? What his faith? Could such a poet be other than Indian where there’s a whole school of philosophy devoted to atheism, where atheism could almost be a religion?
You can ask, fella, how I came to be on this vast and dark road when I was actually travelling on one of those hellish driverless horses? Shhhh…! Don’t ask. Some questions better remain unanswered.
Have you heard of Ghalib, that whippersnapper of a boy from my own city of Akbarabad who was so enamoured of the advances in philosophy and science made by the English race that he welcomed them as a boon to mankind? Did you hear him say these verses in his elegant Persian?
What a spell have they struck on water
That a vapour drives the boat in water!
Sometimes the vapour takes the boat down the sea
Sometimes the vapour brings down the sky to the plains.
Vapour makes the sky-wheel go round and round
Vapour is now like bullocks, or horses.
Vapour makes the ship speed
Making wind and wave redundant.
Their instruments make music without the bow
They make words fly high like birds:
Oh don’t you see that these wise people
Get news from thousands of miles in a couple of breaths?
They inject fire into air
And the air glows like embers!
Poor young man. In spite of all his admiration for the English and their laws and their science, he got nothing from them that he didn’t already have. But times were a changing, my boy, and Asadullah Khan was more aware than anyone else of the old order doddering, quickly falling down and giving place to the new. Only the new that came about was not in the least like anything that had gone before. We lost our past, our history, our memory. The Firangi had forgotten and cancelled much of his own past too. And that’s what nobody realized until it was too late.
Going back to young Asadullah Khan, someone spread a canard about him and me to the effect that his poems were brought to me when he was very little and I was very old. The story goes on to say that seeing those poems I said: If by chance this boy can avail himself of a kamil ustad (a master perfect in the art and science of poetry and also capable of imparting perfect instruction), he shall be a great poet. If not, he’ll spout nonsense all his life.
The story is false, though I wouldn’t mind admitting that a bit of madness, a bit of fine excess is good for a poet. And Asadullah was a great poet indeed. He delivered more than he promised—for he delivered almost as much through his letters as through his poetry. I wrote few letters, unfortunately. There weren’t many people who expected letters from me and all of them had died and run away from the land where one kept one’s vows, the battlefield of life. So…where was I? Yes, I travelled in one of those hell-carts, then got down somewhere to stretch my legs and … pardon my sinfulness…to drink a bit of my favourite phūl. Also (I don’t mind admitting before you) I greatly needed to go. Just a bit of water out of my system. I am an old man and have a weak, shrunken bladder.
Delhi in my time was a enormously big city with men and women of all races, from Firangi to Habashi to Arab and Iranian to the Chini to Armani, I mean Armenian, thronging the markets, manning the civil and military offices, guarding their masters or making war on their behalf. Armenians, beautiful, saucy, slim. Armenians full of the pranks of life and love. Some were wine sellers, most as intoxicating as wine itself. In my ripe old age, moping in lonely Lucknow, I remembered the Armenians:
How pink and white it turned out to be!
Wine, you’d say, was an Armenian’s daughter
There is an Armani cemetery in Delhi, somewhere behind the Pahari. Pahari, that is now known as Ridge–as if a whole long series of hill and forest could be just a ridge. Do you know it? I mean the Armani graveyard. No? How sad. Then the Armenian cemetery and its dead would have been swallowed up twice over. Once by the graves, and then by the rubble.
But where did that fiery cart go? And who are you with whom I have been gabbing away? No, I am NOT Mir, though I love him like a father (but my father was a strict cudgel wielder, I hope I’ll find Mir to be softer when I meet him in hell). Surely, all poets go to hell? You didn’t know that? Strange. Mir didn’t confess that he was sentenced to an eternity in hell, but he got what surely was the prologue to that mighty event. He said:
For my poetry I was punished on the Day of Judgment:
My own book of poems was hurled hard at my head!
The resounding, fiery mace and the ten thousand flames of infernal fire would not be too far, surely. Anyway, here I am in a sort of hell myself. I have been standing here…for how long? Days? Weeks? Months? Well, actually, had I been standing here for twenty-four hours even, the whole blood of my body would have drained into my legs, down from the thighs to the calves, then from the calves to my ankles and feet. My legs, heavy to start with, would become like those of one who suffered from elephantiasis. Legs so heavy that they couldn’t move. My blood pressure would gradually diminish, until my heart would be unable to pump blood into my arteries, and in fact its own arteries. I should collapse, unconscious, well before my heart shut sown, or burst, unable to cope. The blood pressure is always greater when one is supine. So my falling down would be nature’s—or evolution’s first remedy against a blood pressure which was nearing extinction. But even though I was supine, the heart wouldn’t have the power to call back all that blood accumulated in my arteries, bringing them to bursting point. So…
Was I giving some sort of medical disquisition? Sorry. But it’s clear that I haven’t been standing still all this while. Had that been the case, the symptoms of acute coronary insufficiency would have supervened. But I have been walking about, moving this way and that, crossing the road a number of times even at the serious risk of being run over. So possibly I have been on this road, one side or another, for an unconscionably long time. But I, sorry, Mir has been dead for a long time too. The earth here, or the land itself, is inhospitable, hard and unsympathetic. There’s nothing here but those dark satanic machines roaring away to God knows where. Not the kind of land where roses can blow and where beautiful people pass by every now and then. There aren’t many birds and animals either. That’s one good thing for me, perhaps. To be safe from the maraud of wild animals. Do you know Mir, the poet, was extremely fond of animals? He wrote some of his most moving and exquisite poetry when he wrote about animals. He wrote lovingly, angrily, joyfully, sadly. Take a look at these nasty, naughty, notorious, fearless canines:
There was ingress for the dogs from all four sides—
One would say, none dwelt there but the dogs
Two on their feet here, another two lie down there
Four others rush into someone else’s quarters
One of them cracked open a few pots, others
Dug up every nook and corner
Some glare at you, some bark noisily
Waking up even the deepest drowsers.
Evenfall is the dawn of Doom
Woofs and wuffs and yelps, a calamity of noises—
Wandering the homes in their packs,
Let them get a whiff of food, they’ll plunge and tumble there
One licked the cooking pot clean
Another came and gulped down the dough
One rushed in and broke the oil lamp
Then, he soaked up any oil that was left from it.
Having doused the lights, some of them glared,
Another of them made yet another round and
Broke any string nets that were hung above to
keep the food fresh–
Brought down the pots and plates from their shelves and broke
them
People sleep; dogs prowl.
They fight, they leap and bound, they fall
No less than four fight over one bone
They hurtle after meat like the wolves
Chasing one another nightly and daily
Never a moment when a whole pack of them wasn’t lined up.
This was writ when I, I mean Mir, of course, went on a journey to a place called Tisang. It is in the modern district of Merath in western Uttar Pradesh. I haven’t been there since, but I suppose the dogs are still there. Morning seems to be near. I seem to see a little bit of rose in the eastern sky. Or is it the western sky? I can’t decide. My brain is addled:
Majnun was of unsound mind
In everything, he acted just as I do
But certainly, now there are people about, on the road. I can see them. some of them, though young, seem all right to me. I can speak to them.
‘Say, my young sir, where am I?’
‘You’re on the road, geezer.
Sorry, that doesn’t help and before I can pursue my inquiry further with him, he has disappeared from sight. But there’s another one now, apparently more sharif.
‘Young scion of a noble family, could you tell me where I am at present?’
He looks puzzled. As if somebody should be somewhere and not know where that somewhere was. Perhaps the old man is a little…a little soft in the head? I should be wary of him, he seems to say to himself. He steps back to a safe distance.
‘Where do you want to go?’ He asks.
‘I am not sure, but perhaps I was bound for a place called Chandigarh when I lost my way. Is it far from Lucknow?’
‘Far enough, I should say, though I don’t quite know where Lucknow is. But you are certainly far from Chandigarh, bare mian. In fact, you’ve just passed Faridabad.’
He turns to go. I seem to sense that he could help me, though it’s clear that he isn’t overly keen to do so. Before he passes out of conversational distance, I raise my voice a little and say:
‘Please. Can you have word sent to this Chandi…Chandigarh about me?’
‘Well, I could.’ But he’s clearly doubtful. ‘Whom do you want to send word to? Do you have a phone number?’
I ransack my tired and hazy brain. Yes, I have a paper on which certain things are written. I cannot read it because it’s in the language of the Firangi—apparently they’re still here—but there some numbers written on its back in Urdu, as they call it now. I would say Rekhta, or Hindi. My jamah has no pockets, nor my neema, but my tunic has a small pocket in which I have stuffed some useful papers. My other clothes and effects are in a cloth bag that hangs by my shoulder. I rummage in the pocket and finally extract the paper and show it to my noble helper. He looks at it with knitted brow.
‘What language is this?’ He finally asks. ‘It seems like Urdu, but I can’t read Urdu. Do you have any other paper, some letter, or email, perhaps?’
‘Can’t read Urdu?’ I am not sure I heard correctly. None know Urdu in the land of Hind, where almost every second person was an Urdu poet? Perhaps a larger number of people spoke Persian now? In my Delhi even the artisans and menial workers spoke fluent Persian though some of them were illiterate. So what has happened to Urdu, or Rekhta, or Hindi, as we called it then? But there’s no time for such cogitations now. I must satisfy my benefactor’s query. I am loath to produce the paper in the Firangi language, lest someone believe that I was a friend of the loathed Firangi. ‘Email’ I didn’t understand at all. But most grudgingly, I produce the paper, written by someone called Barnali Adhya— but there is a number that I can show to my young friend in need:
950-154-9380
‘Humm,’ he says, again in doubt somewhat. ‘And your name?’
‘My name?’ As if someone touched me with a burning stick. I seem to come awake. I have a strange desire to sit down, anywhere, somewhere. I espy a sort of stone seat a few yards away at the edge of the road. Driven by some impulse, I dash past the young helpful and almost collapse on the seat. For some reason that I can’t fathom, I am out of breath. I wipe the sweat and dust from my face with my hand and speak haltingly:
‘My name? Yes, noble sir, my name is Shamsur Rahman Faruqi.’ I can see that he is clearly at a loss to understand the words that constitute my name. So I blurt, ‘Some people call me Ka’i Chand wala Faruqi.’
He is somewhat reassured now. He cannot pronounce my real name but can manage my other one, though he’s not sure that it could be real.
‘Right, bare mian. I will phone Ms Barnali as soon as possible.’
He takes his leave. I don’t know if I have lost my mind. The image, or rather the person of Mir keeps slipping in and out of my entelechy, my informing spirit. Will Barnali come? Will my helper young man send her information about me? Was it he who told me that I was past Faridabad? Faridabad, where Mir Qamaruddin Minnat belonged? He rose to be Prime Minister of Emperor Shah Alam II. His aspirations to be a poet in Rekhta led him to me. He summoned me once and requested that I enter his employ as poet and mentor in residence and help with his Rekhta compositions and also improve his poetic capacities in general.
‘Where is Your Exalted Presence’s original house-of-wealth situated?’ I asked. Little did I know that he would say, ‘Faridabad.’ But when he said this word, I was suddenly filled with doubt and not a little anxiety. Rekhta, as I wrote long ago, was poetry in the language of the Exalted Portal of Shahjahanabad, and in the manner of the Persian ghazal. How could anyone, but anyone, who wasn’t born and brought up within the four walls of the Exalted City pretend to compose poetry in Rekhta?
I didn’t know how to answer the Prime Minister. My head bowed, in a flurry of anxiety, I spoke more curtly than I intended:
‘Patron and Preserver of this slave, you are not fit to compose in Rekhta. You should stick to your Persian-versian. Noblemen like you should write in the language of Hafiz and Khusrau.’
I was dismissed with some gifts. I mumbled khana abad daulat ziada –‘Your House may ever prosper, Your wealth may increase’ and crept off. Since then, Mir and Minnat avoided each other. Mir like a runaway slave, Minnat like a debtor before his money-lender.
Did she come on a flying carpet? Or did she come riding a simurgh? But she was before me and I hadn’t noticed her.
‘Faruqi sahib, I am very sorry. But what happened? Were you robbed on the way? We sent a car to fetch you from Delhi to Chandigarh. Did the car not arrive?’
Young and comely as she is, she pauses, realizing that she was firing off more questions than I could handle. Also, she could see that I was looking somewhat blank. Has the old man suffered some head injury, she seemed to be speculating fearfully. Has he lost his memory somehow? And where is Baran, his daughter? Was she not expected to accompany him and take care of him? In spite of herself, she bursts out with another question:
‘And where is Baran ji, your daughter?’
I had no daughter when I came to Lucknow from Delhi. My one daughter was married in Delhi and died there, poor soul. In Lucknow, a son was born to me. But Baran? This name is not familiar. I think I am about to fall down in a faint. Barnali notices my confusion and physical exhaustion. ‘Come,’ she says in kindly tones. ‘I have a car here. A nice, big car. You sit in the back and relax. In fact, why not catch a couple of hours’ sleep? The back seat is large enough. You seem to be on the edge of something. But I’ll take care of everything.’
She’s very helpful, very kind. Her bright eyes are full of concern.
Edge of sleep, dead-beat sleep, certainly. The figure of Mir which had been overpowering my mind and frightening me into incoherence seemed to have dropped off the edge of my assimilative or esemplastic imagination. I realize that ‘esemplastic’ is a word that Coleridge used, to signify the imagination’s power to unify disparate things. Perhaps I am the only one to use this word after Coleridge. It never became current, certainly. But the way I seem to be conflating time and space and the personality of Mir with somebody else’s and … so on, is certainly the action of esemplasticity.
‘My name is Mitul. I am the founder of Adab Foundation. It has its headquarters here in Chandigarh where we celebrate the beauty and elegance of Indian literature. We hope to make our celebration as elegant as our literature.’
I smile and mumble something in reply. Perhaps I am hallucinating again? I try to shush the hallucination away by concentrating on the word adab—a beautiful word, a word with many meanings. An Urdu word, chosen because of its many meanings perhaps. Originally it meant ‘respect, deference’; ‘regard (for someone’s rank, or beliefs, or advanced age)’; ‘instruction’; ‘politeness, the science of politeness’; ‘civility’; ‘learning’ and many others. ‘Adab’ didn’t mean ‘literature’ originally. There was no word in Arabic or Persian for the thing we call ‘literature’, just as there was no word in Greek to signify ‘literature’. The French and the English borrowed from Greek through Latin to make Littérature (French) and Literature (English). So also in Urdu, we borrowed from Arabic-Persian the word adab (from ‘learning, ‘education’) to mean the same as the English word Literature. The word doesn’t occur in premodern Urdu except in the sense of ‘respect’, ‘regard (for someone’s rank, or beliefs, or advanced age)’. Mir has a marvellous moment with adab:
One of these days, sometime you should love Mir
for he loves you
And as for all of us here, we treat him
with great deference.
Sorry, I went astray, as usual; though I don’t yet know how I found myself stranded somewhere beyond Faridabad on the road to Chandigarh. Barnali, tactful and gentle as she is, doesn’t bring up the matter at all. Mitul, perhaps unaware of my mental signing off, looks at me with keen interest.
‘Baran ji arrived a few hours ago, just as you wished. She has satisfied herself that your hotel room will be to your liking and all conveniences and facilities would be available to you. Oh, there she is. Baran, your father arrived just now.’
I raise my eye to a radiant being, her beautiful face reminds me equally of my wife Jamila and my mother. ‘Bhai, salam alaikum. I hope your journey was comfortable?’
I have been somewhat vacant since Mitul informed me that it was my idea that Baran precede me. As far as I know, I never wished it. But I should give it my best face. I hug Baran and kiss her forehead.
‘Yes, beta, I came here okay.’ A sudden thought strikes me. Perhaps she too encountered Mir in some wise on the way here? I don’t know if it would be a good thing for me or bad. I decide not to take any chance with it. She obviously doesn’t know of the travails of my progress to Chandigarh and I hope it’ll remain that way.
‘Where are the children?’ I ask.
‘Oh they are enjoying themselves! The variety and the richness of the desserts here has bowled both of them over.’ By both she means Tazmeen, the daughter, and Tamin, the niece.
I want to seclude myself in my room for some time. But no one’s willing, apparently.
‘Your foundation is charged with the spirit of adab in all its senses. I must congratulate you.’ I say to Mitul. He smiles deprecatingly and says, ‘It’s an entirely cooperative and nonprofit effort, credit should go to all my colleagues, not just me.’
Altaf Tyrewala, the Festival Director, youthful, slim, almost willowy, but his English has nothing willowy about it. It is hard and unsentimental and has strong rhythms. His little daughter, precocious, Puckish in her liveliness and her hyperactive ways. She is utterly unafraid of strangers. I met her mother but briefly so I can’t say whose genes are dominant in the little one. Altaf has made things very easy for me. I am a late starter, though not a late riser. All my appearances are scheduled for late in the day, or in the afternoon, thankfully.
‘What are you doing here, young fellow?’
I don’t need to turn and see. I know whose voice it is. It’s a typical Delhi voice, somewhat harsh, but the consonants are extremely clearly enunciated. A drop or two of the rather sour wine of superiority, of patronage, drips from each word. And why not, is Delhi not the capital of the country, the only city in the world which is often referred to as ‘Delhi, the Presence’ or hazarat-e dihli as no less a poet than Khusrau designated it? The city whose precincts and even suburbs are known popularly as ‘having the looks of paradise’ Shahjahanabad minu suwad. He said mian sahib zade. Used alone, sahib zade or sahib zada are words of deference, even subservience (‘the master’s son’). It can also be spoken in a variety of ways from patronizing, satirical, jeering to servile. But mian sahibzade can have only one meaning: patronizing, mocking, even hectoring. Funny, isn’t it, the addition of another respectful word mian (‘master’) should make it insolent, presumptuous, even abusive. An old man’s voice, but plummy and husky as it should be. He is masterful, as usual.
I look back, I almost rise, but I check myself and speak with assumed and hypocritical surprise and pleasure:
‘Why, Mir sahib, it’s you! How do you happen to be…?’
He doesn’t let me finish. ‘I found no Urdu speakers in Faridabad so I thought Chandigarh might be better. It’s nearly half way between Delhi and Lahore, I was given to understand.’
‘Honoured Master, you are right. There are plenty of Urdu speakers here.’ I almost said, even you are known here. What a marvelous faux pas that would be, and that too before Mir sahib who never put one foot wrong. It is impossible to find a redundant word in his tightly knit verses. He looked at me expectantly, as if he wished me to go on. So I said, making a feeble attempt at levity:
‘The number of poets here, Excellent Presence, would not exceed two and three quarters (2¾) even today.’
A half smile appeared on his lips. Now I noticed that he was pale and wan, as if some weight was crushing him. I invited him to come and sit, oblivious of all who were around me.
‘So you remember that silly tale?’ Actually, I remembered many tales about him, true or false (mostly false, I must in all honesty, say), but this was not the time—if ever there could be the time—to indulge in a conversation with him such as if I was equal to him.
‘Presence, that story is nearly as famous and your own excellent self.’ And indeed, it must rank among the deadliest put-downs in the history of literature. Someone asked him about who were the poets in his eye today. He said, 2½. Asked to elaborate, he commanded, I, and Mirza Sauda and Mir Dard, the latter being only half a poet. And what about Mir Soz, Honoured Presence? Soz, who is Soz? He asked. Presence, he comes from a good family of Delhi, he is the mentor in poetry to the Wazir-ul Mamalik Navab Asifuddaulah of Awadh.
‘All right,’ the Presence commanded. ‘So let the number be two and three quarters.’
So I said, ‘Can I be of any service to the Presence?’ I gestured to Mitul, my daughter Baran, Barnali, Sabeena Sharma (who had been in constant touch with Baran on email), Tazmeen and Tamin to come forward in respectful file and kiss the old tyrant’s hand. That was the best way, I thought, to keep him from mischief. But while the respectful salaaming and hand kissing was going on, he spoke, or rather growled:
‘There is some sort of festival here, I understand. A festival of letters.’ He paused, and my heart quailed. Suppose he wants to participate? Who in the world could stand up to his imperious ways? Thankfully, he took another tack, on later thought, I realized that it was the only tack that he would take. Frostily, he said:
‘I thought letters, poetry particularly were things to be viewed with a worshipful and not a frivolous or flippant eye. Festivals are occasions of merry making for the children. For the older, dignified people, occasions for seeing the sights and…’ He almost winked, by all that is holy, he did. And continued, ‘seeing the sights and stealing and occasionally colliding a glance with the eye of the fair ones.’
From my heart, the taste and desire for a comely face
never went away
Gazing, peeping from behind the curtain
never went away
He spoke the verse in a grave-sad-mocking manner. I don’t know if anyone could combine all this in one voice. But he did. And the verse also was of the same intensity: grave, sad, mocking. Only he and Ghalib knew the hellishly difficult art of mocking at oneself.
Altaf Tyrewala came and bent low and spoke in his engaging voice: ‘Mir sahib…’ I dug my elbow into his side furiously. He checked himself and began again: ‘Exalted Presence, we have among us a novelist, critic and poet whose novel has been chosen by three different judges as the best novel of the year—in Urdu, Hindi, and English. Two of the three nominators are here at this Festival: Ashok Vajpeyi who chose it for Hindi, and Asaduddin who chose it for the Urdu. They are interdisciplinary luminaries…’ (Quietly, I translated ‘interdisciplinary’ as bain-ul ulumi for the wizened and un-English ears of Mir sahib.) They will discuss the novel and will also engage in Q&A…’(sawal o jawab, I whisper to Mir sahib) with the audience. We will miss Bilal Tanvir, of Pakistan, who nominated the English version of the novel. But may I request you, Elevated and Honourable Sir, to enhance the beauty and brilliance of the assembly by your radiant presence.’
The speech, mellifluous and properly respectful, went down well with him. He cast a comprehensive gaze on us with his eyes, though tired and dim looking, still hawk-like, overbearing and somewhat terrible, and said:
‘It would be an honour for me, but I can’t be here for too long. I’ll say a few words by way of my parting message and benediction. I am happy that you love to talk about letters and poetry. That was the way it was in my days. We talked about poetry, we said it in the market place, in the fields of life and death. We made love in poetry, we fought in poetry. And almost everyone was a poet, or lover of poetry. Poetry was not so much in our books as in our lives. I heard someone say that an admirer has written four volumes on my poetry. I thank him, but I want to tell him, and tell all of you. Talking about poetry …’
It seemed that someone or something hurled me down from a great height. I fell, suddenly at top speed. I said to myself somewhere in my heart, surely not one piece of flesh or bone will survive when I hit the earth. But I slowed suddenly, floating down gently to my sumptuous bed. I heard a huge rumble outside.
A peal of thunder as if a thousand elephants were trumpeting together, marching upon the land of Hind. Squalls upon squalls of wind and shower, sending an ominous chill down my spine. It ended in just a few minutes. I was fully awake. Through the window I could dimly discern a drooping, deserted sky, billowy-bosomed, over-bowed with the weight of the water from the heavens. The first session of the Chandigarh Festival of Letters should get under way shortly, I should get ready quickly, I said to myself, I hope I’m not late. But behind me I heard Mir’s sombre voice:
Survive in the world somehow
merry or stricken by sorrow,
Depart, but do some such before you go
That they remember you long and intensely.
(Charlottesville, VA, July 1-2, 2014.)
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Shamsur Rahman Faruqi Urdu poet literary critic, novelist, in short a polymath whose contribution to Urdu literature and to Indian letters has been immeasurable. His historical novel Mirror of Beauty, self-translated from Urdu original sheds light on a historical period much abused by conventional (colonial) historiography.
Also read:
Urdu Writing Over Two Centuries On Nation, History, Culture
CONVERSATION WITHOUT MAPS
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