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·ETERNAL FLAMC (Aspects of GHALIB'S Life and Works)

·By the same Author
IQBAL AND HIS POEMS
(A Reappraisal)

·ETERNAL FLAME
(Aspects of GHALIB'S Life and Works)
Ву
KN SUD
STERLING PUBLISHERS (P) Ltd,
DELHI 6
JULLUNDUR CITY

·ETERNAL PLANT
(Aspects of GHALIB S Life and Ilorks)
© 1969 by A N Sud
STERLING PUBLISHERS (P) LTD
Jullundur City 695, Model Town
Delhi 6
3640 Mor Gate
First Edition
1969
Price R$ 15 00
PRINTED IN INDIA
PUBLISHED BY SH SK GHAI MANAGING DIRECTOR STERLING PUBLISHERS
(P) LTD, AND PRINTED AT KAPUR PRINTING PRESS, DELHI 6

·PREFACE Quite a good deal has been written on Mirza Ghalib in Urdu but not enough in English or any other language Besides dozens of critical appraisals by Urdu scholars, the poets own collection of verses Diwan : Ghalıb which in fact made him immortal, has passed through scores of editions Many of those who have dealt with Ghalıb s life and works have brought much scholarship and painstaking study to bear on their effort and the present book has profited by that in no small measure But the thirst for more and more about Ghalib is never really quenched especially among the non Urdu knowing public in India and abroad His death centenary has only whetted it And no amount of brick and mortar can be as rewarding as a contemplation of the poets moods and mind inspired by the study of his life and works Eternal Flame has been written for the benefit of readers not versed in Urdu yet whose admiration and love of this language and its luminaries remains none the less for their ignorance of its idiom and script An added attraction for such is the reproduction in Roman, with a literal translation into English of some of the most popular Ghalib couplets The book does not purport to be a biography of the Mirza or a chronicle in the accepted sense of the term its aim being to acquaint the reader with the different aspects of the poet s life and activities- his domestic tragedy, his fight for pension his relations with the (Moghal) King and the British officers the im mediate effect of the sepoy Mutiny on his life his wit and humour, his love of wine his letters to friends and pupils-all of course that went to contribute to the uniqueness of his style of ghazal writing and his place among the poets of Urdu and Persian One more feature of the present attempt is a chapter on the Mirza s biographer, Maulana Hali, who wrote from first hand

·ETERNAL FLAME
(Aspects of GHALIB S Life and Works)
© 1969 by KN Sud
STERLING PUBLISHERS (P) LTD
Jullundur City
695, Model Town
Delks 6
3640, Mori Gate
First Edition
1969
Price
Rs 15 00
PRINTED IN INDIA
PUBLISHED BY $ SK GHAT MANAGING DIRECTOR STERLING PUBLISHERS
(P) LTD, AND PRETED AT KAPUR PRINTING PRESS, DELHI 6

·PREFACE Quite a good deal has been written on Mirza Ghalıb in Urdu but not enough in English or any other languige Besides dozens of critical appraisals by Urdu scholars, the poet s own collection of verses Diwan i Ghalıb which in fact made him immortal, has passed through scores of editions Many of those who have dealt with Ghalib s life and works have brought much scholarship and painstaking study to bear on their effort and the present book has profited by that in no small measure But the thirst for more and more about Ghalib is never really quenched, especially among the non Urdu knowing public in India and abroad His death centenary has only whetted it And no amount of brick and mortar can be as rewarding as a contemplation of the poet s moods and mind inspired by the study of his life and works Eternal Flame has been written for the benefit of readers not versed in Urdu yet whose admiration and love of this language and its luminaries remains none the less for their ignorance of its idiom and script An added attraction for such is the reproduction in Roman, with a literal translation into English of some of the most popular Ghalib couplets The book does not purport to be a biography of the Mirza or a chronicle in the accepted sense of the term its aim being to acquaint the reader with the different aspects of the poet s life and activities-his domestic tragedy his fight for pensjon his relations with the (Moghal) King and the British officers, the im mediate effect of the sepoy Mutiny on his life his wit and humour his love of wine his letters to friends and pupils-all of course that went to contribute to the uniqueness of his style of ghazal writing and his place among the poets of Urdu and Persian One more feature of the present attempt is a chapter on the Mirza s biographer, Maulana Hali, who wrote from first hand

·VI
personal knowledge of the poet particularly written to see how
Ghalib looked to his contemporaries—and to us in a reflected
light
KN Sud
C 17 Hauz Khas
New Delhi 16

·CONTENTS
Page
5
1
9
19
35
57
78
Preface
The Man and His Manner
2 Fight for Pension
3 The Mutiny and After
4 Ghalib s Ghazals
5 A3 Prose Writer
6 Persian Works
7 Wit and Humour
8 Love of Wine
9 Friends Pupils and Contemporaries
10 The Biographer
Bibliography
89
96
109
116
128
136

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·IE MIN AND HIS MANNER ·innita Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalb ·THE MAN AND HIS MANNER MIRZA ASADULLAH KHAN GHALIB traces bus genealogy back to Iran's legendary dynasty known as Peshdadians or the "Early Law Givers" They belonged to one of the four sects of that country s first royal family called Gulshai The other thrce sects were the Keraniaas the Ashkanians and the Sassanians The Peshdadian group s founder was Keiomarz the Zoroastrian Adam who is said to have laid the foundation of civilisation in Iran This period is considered by the Iranians as their heroic age and has been immortalız ed by Firdaust in his great epic Shahnama (History of Kings) The best known ruler in the line of Keromars was Jamshid who is credited with the introduction of the solar year and the invention of wine which has inspired most poets of the Orient down the ages It is said that he had preserved some grapes which fermented and were believed to be dangerous to life One of his queens who was suffering from an ailment drank the fermented beverage with a view to ending her life but, on the contrary, she fell into a delight ful sleep and was cured! The Iranians since that day have termed wine as sweet poison Jamshid, after ruling the country for several years became vain glorious and declared himself a god He was put ·10 ETERNAL FLAME to a barbarous death by Zobak, a Syrian prince, who in turn was overthrown by Jamshid s grandson Feridun On Feridun s death there was a struggle for succession among his three sons--Tur Selm and Erij Ery was assassinated but his son Manuchehr drove Tur and Selm out of Iran They entered Turkey with their followers and there founded a neu dynasty by the name of Turin It brought about a fusion of the Turkish and Iranian rices and that is why Ghalib declared that he was 1 Turk of the Aibal commu mity The Turanians had a rough time and were involved in internecine wars Finally the house of Seljuks headed by Toghrii Beg (1037 1063) emerged victorious and ruled over an arej stretching from Turkestan 10 the Mediterranean Sca for nearly thrce hundred years It was during this period that the famous master of rubat, Omar Khayyam (Tent Maker) brought immortal fame to Iran just as centuries later the great ghazal writer Ghalib brought immortal famc to his country India The house of Scijuls too ultimately broke up and some of its scions took to looting and killing while others armed with swords, fanned out in search of aducnturc Among the latter was Tursam Khan who settled in Samarkand He was the great grandfather of Ghalib Tursam hans son, Lolan khan quarrelled with him and in protest left hom- for India around the year 1750 in the company or Qasim Jan, Alam Jan and Arif Jan who were the carliest forbears of the princely family of Loharu State He was employed by Nawab Moinul Mulk of Lahore On the Nawabs death holan khan moved down to Dlhi and through th- good offires of Nawab Zuliqar ul Daula joined the forces of Moghal Prince Ali Guhar (later | nown as hing Shah Alam) The Prince at that time was busy qu-lling resolts in the eastem parts of the empire He fase hokan Khan the charge of cavalry 1716 But the fortunes of the Moghal dynasty #ere on the decline with large areas slipping ·The Man and His Manner 11 out of its control one by one Kokan Khan shifted his loyalty to the Maharaja of Jaipur He also left Delhi and settled permanently at Agra Kokan Khan had four sons and three daughters Ghalıbs father, Mirza Abdullah Beg Khan, took service in the court of Nawab Asif ul Daula of Lucknow but soon went over to the Nizam of Hyderabad After several years' service he lost his job as a result of family quarrels There after he joined the forces of Raja Bakhtawar Singh of Alwar The Raja sent him to put down a revolt by one of his chief tains and Abdullah Beg was killed in action in the year 1802 His two sons were assigned revenue from two villages and a modest pension for their upbringing Their uncle Nasrullah Beg took up the responsibility of looking after them After the British had by and large established their authority in India, Ghalib s uncle was taken as a Risaldar in the army He was allotted two revenue circles for meeting the expenses of the unit under him When he died his British employers arranged pensions for his descendants from the revenues of Firozepur Jhırka The martial tradition of the family ended with the death of Ghalib s father and uncle Neither the poet nor his brother, Yousaf Khan showed any inclination for military service The latter died as a lunatic in 1857 Ghalıb, how ever, was very proud of the warlıke actions of his forbears He says Sau pusht se hai paisha i gaba sipagari (Soldiering has been the vocation of my family for a hundred generations) Nothing is known about Ghalib s other uncles and their descendants Probably there were none His mother, Begum Izzat ul Nisa, was the daughter of Mirza Ghulam Husain Khan Kamidan a commandant in the army and a leading citizen of Agra who was very wealthy and owned a number of buildings in the city The biggest of these, known as ·12 MONAL VAN Kala Mahal, #25 once the insidence of Raja Oa) Stagh, son of Raja Surs) Singh of Jodhpur, who accompanied Niag Albar during his campaign in Gujarat Is 10 kala Mahal that Gaalb was born on the is caly seventh of Decem ber 1797 Begum Izzatul Niss Issed in her fathers house until the end Mirza Abdullah Bce also stayed with his in lass most of the sime and *33 nicknamed Mira Dulbs (bridegroom) Ghalib writes feclingly of his curly days in Agra where the Muse first inspired him At night he used to sit the rooms right over the portico of hals Maha) playing chess fossiping and discussing love affairs in the morning he would fly kiles with young Binant Singh son of Rss Chet Singh of Banaras Balwant Singh was also a distingui shed Urdu and Persian poet There are a number of other houses ta Agra to which Ghalib has referred in his letters and which still exist Two mohallas are named after him Bara Ghalibpura and Chhoir Ghalibpura Doch are thickly populaico Noiding cract is known about Ghalib s carly schooling It is, however taken for granted that since he spent his childhood at his maternal grandparents house he must have rcccnscd adequate instruction from competent teachers be causc Mirza hamıdan was onc of the richest men of the fou According to Ghalb s brographer, Maulana Altaf Husain Hali the poct remained under the quiclage of Sheikh Musz zam an eminent cacher of Agra in ihose days When Ghalib was fourteen years old in Iranian scholar Mulla Abdul Samad by name came to Agra, in the course of Biss peregrina tions Originally he belonged to a Parsi family and before his conversion to Islam was known as Hurmuzd He stayed with Ghalib for two years in Agra and then for sometime in Delhi Ghalib says that he ones bis command of the Persian language to this Iranian traveller and has paid him rich tributes in his writiðgs Mulla Abdul Somad was also very fond of his pupil and gave him the full beacfit ·of his learning The two maintained contact through correspondence even after the Iranian had left India At the age of thirteen, Ghalib married Umrao Begum, the eleven year old daughter of Mirza Ilabı Baksh Khan, who was the younger brother of Nawab Ahmed Baksh Khan Relationship with the Nawab's family bad already been estab lished through the marriage of his sister to Ghalıb s uncle Though Ghalib had visited Delhi a few times from his seventh year on, his visits to the Moghal capital became more fre quent after his marriage for his father in law was a resident of Delht After another two years (in 1812) Ghalıb took a house of his own and settled here for good Association with the Nawab family enabled him to move among the elite of the city and get acquainted with the leading litteratcurs of the day Mirza Ilabı Baksh Khan Maruf was also a poet and bas left behind a collection of ghazals in Urdu, cntitled Diwan : Maruf Maruf too seems to have influenced to some extent the natural bent of his son in law Though the palmy days of Moghal splendour were a thing of the past when Ghalib came and settled in Delhi, in the literary world there was still a good deal of activity going on Eminent poets of this period included the great court poet Sheikh Ibrahim Khan Zauq, Momin Khan Momin, Shah Nasir and the King him self who wrote ghazals under the nom de plume of Zafar Another man of letters who deeply influenced Ghalib's carly life was Maulvi Fazal Huq Khairabadı He not only enjoyed great moral stature but also was a giant among intellectuals He dissuaded Ghalıb from following the much beaten track of writing cheap love lyrics and put him on thc road that set him apart as a poet of distinction Though devoted to the study of literature and writing of poctry from a very young age, Ghalib could not altogether escape from the enticements of the affluent society to which he belonged After the death of his father and uncle, tberc was nobody to exercise restraint on his youthful escapades The atmosphere in the house of his maternal grandfather ·14 ETERNAL FLAME where he was brought up had been one of indulgence towards him and his brother on account of their having been orphaned at a tender age With plenty of money and nobody to ask questions, it was only natural that the young poet should try to get a kick out of life the way sons of unusually rich families did Besides he had a tall handsome figure and robust health with the princely garments adding to the charm of his personality In a letter to Munshi Shiv Narain whose father was a friend of Ghalib the poet writes that when he was about twenty years old they stayed awake late into the night, playing chess and indulging in scandal talk In another letter he confesses that as a young man he was under the spell of a dancing girl of low caste (Doman!) Consoling Mirza Hatım Ali Mehr, on the death of his beloved Ghalib writes 'A poct achieves perfection when he becomes Firdausi The greatest mendicant is one who rubs shoulders with Hasan Basri The proof of being a lover is that one should behave like a Majnu Larla died before Majnu Your beloved also died before you In fact you are greater than Majnu inas much as Laila died in her house whereas your beloved died in your house Brother the sons of Moghals are a dreadful lot They 'kill the person for whom they would die I too am a Moghal s son In my life I also 'killed a terribly cruel Domani May God bestow peace on both of them May He also pardon the two of us who have been hurt by the death of our beloveds Ghalib also alludes to the death of his beloved in one of his early ghazals Sharm i rusuar se ja chhupna naqab i khak men Khatam hat ulfat ki tujh par pardadars hae hae (Fear of disgrace has made you hide behind the veil of dust Ah the limit to love s secrecy!) The couplet gives credence to the belief that the girl con cemed had committed suicide and left the poet heartbroken This honeser had beca only a brief interlude in Ghalib $ ·The Man and His Manner 15 life There is nothing on record to show that he had any other affair Ghalıb s domestic life was not at all happy For one thing he was married at an age when he had no say in the matter of choosing his partner On top of it, while he had a penchant for licentious living, his wife was an extremely reli gious woman strictly following the tenets of the faith, eg fasting and praying the ways of the two had been so diffe rent that they were never known to have sat at one table, or together, for a meal In fact they even hept two different sets of utensils which they did not share with each other Unfor tunately, Umrao Begum had no taste for literary values and could not appreciate her husband s poetical talent or the subtleties of his expression Their marriage therefore, seems to have remained at best a tie of duty and convention It only added to the feeling of solitude in the poet s heart Ghalib could sometimes be extremely uncharitable when referring to his wife About his marriage he says "On Rajab 7 1225 (Islamic calendar) I was ordered to undergo life sentence A chun that is my wife was tied round my feet and I was thrown into the city of Delhi declared a prison About his unhappiness in wedded life there are in his writings a few allusions half cynical and half humorous Consoling a friend on the loss of his wife, Ghalib is on record to have written that he envied those whose wives died in their lifetime and then goes on to say that in his own case far from there being any prospect of his release from the yoke, his mate for life had never had so much as a headachet All this does not, however mean that Ghalib actually hated his wife It was in his nature to make fun of everything and everybody and in this he did not spare even his wife his relatives and intimate friends or even the king wbo enjoyed the poet s digs Nobody minded his witticisms whose object was more to amuse thin to disparage their targets Quite frequently he aimed his remarks at himself His only lament was that his life partner, being illiterate lached the.

·16 TORNAL FLAME Intelligence to appreciaic his sorscs or his talent Tien so he shoncd her and her relaines the utmost courtesy Though he mostly passed his time in the men s apartment where he sat slept and took his meils he mide it a point to suit the ladies of the house at least once in a day Besides this incompatibility of temperament between the husband and wife there was another reason for Ghalib to feel unharry in the domestic sphere This was the death of all the scien children to which his wife fase birth They all died in their infancy leasing the parents foncly and heart broken Writing to a friend who had sustained the loss of a child Ghalb says *I have leam with great sorrow that you huic lost your recently born son Ask me what it is to losc a child During the 74 curs (1ccording to the Islamic calendar) of my life I had seven children boys as well as girls nonc or whom losed to he older than 15 months You are still young and need not despair May God grant you the paticnce to bear this loss and favour you with something better A few years before the Mutiny had died at a young age Umrao Begum s nephew Zainul Abdin Khan Arif, Icaving behind 180 minor sons Baqar Ali and Husain Al Ghalıb and his wife took upon themselies the responsibility or bringing up the orphans They loved them as though they were their own flesh and spired no effort or expense to make them comfortable The poct took them with him in his palanquin wherever he went Unfortunately, both of them dicd young not long after the poet s dcath About his fond ness for them he writes to Munshi Har Gopal Tafta one of his best pupils as thus "You know Zainul Abdin was like a son to me He has left two children who are my grandsons They often come to me and trouble me in various ways but I do not mind the trouble God knows that I regard you as my son and your poems the children of your genius as my spiritual grandsons When I do not get tired of my grandsons carthly, who come ard interrupt my ·The Man and His Manner 17 dinner and interfere with my sleep at noon and step on to my bed with their dusty bare feet and spill water here and raise a cloud of dust there, why should I get tired of my grandsons spiritual that give me no trouble at all ? Tafta was a remarkable man completely devoted to his mentor He admired Ghalib so much that he called himself Mirza Tafta He too has left behind a big diwan of his Persian poems Ghalib had a very large circle of friends among whom were many Nawabs and the elite of Delhi His congenial nature and habit of cutting jokes made him so popular that everybody sought his company A person who met him once would pine to see him again and again To Ghalib it gave immense pleasure to entertain visiting friends He shared their joys and sorrows like an intimate His pupils submitted their verses to him for correction and improvement as was the time honoured custom among poets in the East He never disappointed them by not attending to their requests Even 10 his old age when he was troubled by various infirmities, he took pains over this labour of love and retouched every piece sent to him with a regularity and punctuality which could not be expected even of a paid teacher No one ever informed Ghalıb of his difficulties without eliciting from him a sympathetic response He helped several of his needy friends with money even though he himself was not financially well off He did not mind if anybody sent him a letter with no postage on it but protested if some one enclosed a stamp for the reply In his dealings with friends, and others who came to see him Ghalib was a model of humility But side by side he had a gitar 307130 vi sef 1t3pert and love of independence, in the tradition of a true Oriental of noble birth Ghalib was completely free from any religious bigotry or racial prejudice He believed in God and bad faith in Islam though he rarely followed the rituals prescribed by it Never ·18 ETERVAL FLAUF prayed, never fasted IIc hnd brond sympathics and respect for all pcopic to whichescr cistc or creed they belonged in 1 letter to Taſt? hc says I hold all human heings whether Musalmın Hindu or Christian dear to me and regard them 15 my brothers Ghalib also sailed cicir of the Shi Sunni controversy among the Muslims in onc of his ghazais he says llant mint ahid hain hamara kesh hal tark i rasum Villaten jab mit Sacen aj a i cenian ho gaeen (We are balicsers in the unity of God Our religion 15 the Tenunciation of convention When they disappear sects become parts of futh become one ) Ghalib had no doctrinaire philosophy Hc had an open mind He believed in unfcttered freedom for the mind and unflinching reverence for life Though he believed in the final dny of Judgement (Muhshar) not infrequently he would make fun of ideas likc heaven and hell There is n very popular couplet on this Ham ho maaloom hal Jannat ki haqiqat lehın Dil ke bhush rakhne ho Ghalib ye khaj al achha hal (We know the reality about Paradise but it is a cood idea to humour the mind ) However Ghalib was fully conscious of his personal shortcomings and made no attempt to hide them On the contrary, very often he alludes to them in his writings in prose as well as verse He does so in 7 way that shows that he is sorry for these deficiencies While describing his negli gence of religious practices he is often inclined to paint him self darker than he really is This may be due to his latitudi narianism weighing heavily on his mind or his inclination to be emphatic in expressions of humour according to the peculiar needs of the occasion inspiring such remarks Then there was this common heritage of Oriental poets to resort to exaggeration without rhyme or reason ·The Man and His Manner 19 Ghalib relished good food and ate well, ercept in old age when most of the time he remained unwell He was parti cularly fond of meat grapes and mangoes He could not do without meat even for a day in the morning he took pounded almonds mixed in candy juice The lunch consisted of two or three meat dishes with lot of gravy, eggs yolk a little curd and one chapati Sometimes he preferred rice to chapati In the evening he took a few pieces of kabab He generally missed the night meal A fancy hubble bubble was a constant companion It was emptied and refilled three or four times in a day Strangely he avoided chewing a pan Ghalib dressed like an aristocrat Though himself by no means rich he generally moved among nobles and Nawabs At home he remained in loose kurta of fine mulmul and cotton pyjamas and an embroidered round cap on the head In winter he changed over to tight woollen trousers and murzai (quilted jacket) Moving out he would put on an expensive gown pointed shoes and a pointed fourcornered cap in hand he carried a sturdy stick He would also throw a big scarf around the shoulders Sometimes he tied the Moghal style turban round a kulah (conic cap) He once wrote to a friend (Munshi Jawahar Singh) to send a silken lungi (a length of cloth which can be worn both as a turban and dhoti) as was used in Multan and Peshawar, giving a detailed description of his requirements In his young days, Ghalib had his face shaved but sported long cut hair on the head In old age he grew a beard but had it regularly cut to prevent it from giving him the appearance of a maulvi He also developed a stoop on account of his tallness and ill health Ghalib did not stick to one house throughout his stay in Delhi nor did he buy or build one When he moved to Delbı from Agra after marriage he stayed at his father in law s place but soon shifted to a rented house He changed huis residence as soon as he got tired of one place but mostly remained in Gali Qasım Jan of Mohalla Ballimaran near ·20 ETERNAL FLAME Chandni Chowk The rent ranged from four to six rupees & month The last house he occupied and where he died was adjacent to a mosque He wrote a verse on this Mfasjid he zer i saja ghar bana lija hoi Ye banda i kameena hamsaja i Khuda hai (Ghalib has taken residence under the shadow of a mosque This humble man is now a neighbour of God) At no time Ghalib had fewer than five servants including a maid who helped the ladies with their chores One of the servants was a Hindu Their total wages came to twenty five Tupees a month The male attendants accompanied him when he went on a journey He always travelled in 7 palanquin carried on shoulders by four men He was very generous to his attendants and others who needed to be tipped Nobody who approached him with a request cver went back empty handed Many needy persons among whom quite a few were blind and cripple, were regular visitors to his house After the Mutiny his income had considerably fallen and he was meeting his expenses by borrowing money from various sources at times on heavy rates of interest Even so, he continued his largessc When his pension from the Govern ment treasury had been restored he was presented a seven piece dress and three gold mohurs at a durbar by the Licule nant Governor The Governor s peons and other petty officials as was the custom, came to Ghalib for tips Since he had no money at the moment he asked them to wait in a room and meanwhile sent th- gifts he had reccured to the bazar to be sold from the sale proceeds he tipped the Gosernment officials A once nich friend who too had suffered in the Mutiny came to Ghalib caring a coat made from scry cheap cloth The poct was oseru Helmed by sympathy but hiding his feeling ushed Where did you buy this cloth? It is an cicellen! dinand I would like to have a jacket made of 11 for me TE-111 or 101d him that he had won it for the first one and ·The Man and His Manner 21 offered to spare it if Ghalib was so keen to have it Ghalıb said "I wish I could take it from you but as it is very cold, how will you go back without a coat? Then he looked about the room and took his new woollen gown off the hook and exchanged it for the friend s coat In a letter Ghalib laments bis not being rich enough to wipe out poverty and misery at least from the city in which he lived, if not from the world as a whole 'I am that beggar going from door to door who cannot tolerate the sight of anybody asking for alms he says Ghalib kept a number of pet animals and birds-a horse, a cat a peacock pigeous turtles sheep and goats In old age Ghalib often wished for death, probably because his life had been a hard struggle agaiost suffering and sorrow and also because he was weighed down by various ailments Ho chukın Ghalıb balaen sab tamam Ek marg i nagahanı aur hai (Ghalıb has suffered all possible troubles The only thing that now remains to come is sudden death ) And when he was despaired of waiting, he would recite this line Ai marg i nagahanı tujhe intezar kya hai (Wherefore, O sudden death you wait and wish?) One of his most popular ghazals contains verses which show how unhappy he had become in later life Koyee umeed bar nahin dati Kayee soorat nazar nahin, agt Aage aan thi haal 1 dil par hansi Ab kisi baat par nahin aatı Maut ka ek din moyayyan hai Neend kyon raat bhar nahin aati Marie hain aarzoo men marne ki Maut aati hai par nahin aatı ·2. 171 AL STAVI way out do hope assain to be fulfillců and three scens to be no I used to louch at the state of my mind but row no thing miles me smile A day is tres ocably fired for death then why should I not h11c a u mfortahi. stop in the night I am pining for dorth but death though round the corn! mirnages to cluc's) Ghalb remained ill for a long tim Ile suffered from constipation cier since adolescence In 1959 hic had a scsere allack of colic punand continud 10 suffer from this dis 150 for the rest of his life The 11scivious living of the younger JIS niso hind its cffect on fuis fierith ffis tranic return journcy from a visit to Rampur in 1865 when duc to a mishap he had to piss 1 cold night of the month of D ccmber without adequate Hoolicns finally broke down his resistance to physical ail monts In a letter dated 25th of August 1867, to a friend, Ghalib tells a pathetic tale about his growing disabilities and apologises for being unable to u site to his friends as fic used to i gor both your letters but could not reply to them Upul now I was used to writing while izing in bed but it is not possible to do that any more My hands tremblc and my sieht is failing There is no scribc in my employ I can only get letters written by a friend from dictation You must tilc mc for onc on thc cic of departure from this world How can newspapermcn realise what I have been reduced to ? The two local papers Ahmalul Alhlar and Ashraful Alhbar know something about my present condition and I have asked them to publish a full statement about my difficulties and to request my correspondents not to expect from me cither replies to their fetters or suggestions on their excrcises in poctry They did publish thus but no one secms to laic paid any heed to my request Letters are still pouring in from all directions followed by reminders for replies Verses are also still being sent to me for correction I cannot cope with this work and I feel ashamed Old and decrepit totally deaf and half blind I am lying in the bed like a block day and night In this letter, Ghalıb also refers to the persistent demand He says ·The Man and His Manner 23 of his admirers for a copy of his photograph but expresses his inability to visit a studio He says An Indian photographer who was my friend has left this place There is an English man who takes photographs but where is the strength in me to get down from the upper storey of my house and to get into the palanquip to go to his studio to sit and wait in a chair for an hour or more and to return home alive after this tor ture ? He could not, however, resist the friends request and was photographed before his death In another letter dated 15th February, 1867, Ghalib gives a similar description of his old age "In Urdu they speak of the age of seventy or seventy two as an equivalent of dotage I am now seventy three and therefore more than a dotard My memory now, well--as if it had never been there! My hearing had drummed long ago but now the sense of if too has disappeared like my memory For more than a month it has been usual for friends, who come to see me to write down on paper whatever they have got to say after the usual salutations My food remains now next to nothing in the morn ing I take a little milk of powdered almonds mixed with sugar at noon some soup, in the evening four fried kababs and at bed time a little wine (equivalent to the weight of five rupees) mixed with rose water of equal quantity Thus you will see I am an absolutely useless old fogey being crushed to death by sins Maulana Halı, who visited Ghalib a day before his death, found him unconscious Yet regaining consciousness after a long interval he dictated the following reply to a letter from Nawab Allaudın Ahmed Khan 'Why do you inquire from me about my condition? Wait for a day or so and then ask these neighbours, they will give you the news Ghalib had stopped moving out of his residence for two years before his death Most of the time he lay in bed His hands trembled Several times in the day he would fall un conscious At long last arrived the day for which he had been waiting so impatiently and for which he had composed ·24 ETERNAL LLAVE 1 the following couplet Dam / wapsin har sar i rak hal Ainab Allah ni Allah hal (The last breath is waiting on the road O dear ones now see nothing but God) A few hours before he passed away Ghalib expressed a desire to cat something Then he asked the servant to bring to his bed Baqar Ali Khan s daughter (Ghalib s grandniece) whom he used to fondle As she has asiccp the servant did not bring her and told Ghalib about it I shall take food when she comes so saying he turned on his side and entered a state of coma The hakims attending on him declared that there had been brain hacmorrhage All cfforts to rcure him proved futile In the afternoon, next day on February 15th 1869 the greatest of ghazal masters breathed his last When the body was taken out for burial there dei cloped a controversy as to how it should be donc-according to the Shia rites or to Sunni? Nawab Ziaudin Ahmed Khan and Hakim Mahmud Khan ruled that Ghalib 135 a Sunni and hence all rites were performed in keeping with the Sunni tradı tion All Delhi had turned out to join the funeral procession and tcars streamed down the cheeks of many The heavens seemed to sigh as the body was laid to rest near the sacred shrine of Sultan ul Aulia Hazrat Nizamudin sharing that pri vilege with Amir Khusro For a whole year Delhi s Urdu newspapers and other journals hept publisbing elegies and culogies in which Ghalıb s numerous admirers from all over the country expressed their feelings about the irreparable loss which Urdu literature had suffered by his death Ghalıb s passing away was a bolt from the blue for his wife The pension from the British Government as well as the stipend from Rampur stopped Some of the debts the poet had incurred remained to be cleared There was no source from which the household expenses could be met ·The Man and His Manner 25 Umrao Begum made frantic efforts for a maintenance allowance from the Government which agreed to give her a monthly pension of tea rupees on condition that she receive it personally in the court To this she did not agree All this had an unsettling effect on her already weak health Exactly one year after the poet s death, on the day when the people were preparing to observe his death anniversary, she passed away and was buried by his side ·2 FIGHT FOR PENSION Poets in the past particularly those of the Orient, depended for their livelihood on the munificeace of their patrons or pensions and grants from the royal court They did not work for a living in the modern sense of the word If someone was a poet he was a wholetime poet and would do no more than write poetry He thought it an unbecoming act to be a trader, a farmer or a physician along with being a poet He would rather suffer and starve than serve a master except by eulogizing his virtues or satirizing his rivals in verse The only work a poet gladly accepted to do was to correct or improve the compositions of noblemen who sometimes included the king or his heirs For this he was handsomely paid But not all deserving poets were fortunate to be so commissioned Only the top notchers with strings to pull could win such favours The day had not dawned yet when good literary work could find a market for itself and when special patronage could be replaced by general support of the public The publishing trade a hundred years ago was not even a fraction of what it is today and the authors however high their rank got little by way of royalty or profits from the sale of their books As a result most Oriental poets passed their days in ·Fight for Pension 27 penury, living in the filthiest surroundings and suffering priva tions, yet not trying to supplement their ipcome by doing some work that would bring them adequate remuneration Mirza Ghalib, besides writing verses and letters, which are as good literary gems as his ghazals spent most of his time and energy fighting his pension battle At this distant date it looks rather preposterous that such a talented poet should have to go from one nobleman to another, from one obdurate official to another, pleading his case for a sum that seems so insignificant to us However, the fact remains that Ghalıb was obsessed with the idea of collecting lots of money through pensions grants and stipends It is difficult to agree with most of the criticism that Dr Syed Abdul Latif has made of Ghalib s compositions in his book, "Ghalib A Critical Appreciation of His Life And Urdu Poetry but one the feels like echoing his view that Ghalib "had great gifts vouch safed to him which he threw away in his search for the He neither enjoyed the peace of mind be so much longed for nor attained distinction commensurate with his high abilities Ghalib began receiving a pension from the Goveroment not because he was a poet but on account of the services his uncle Mirza Nasrullah Beg Khan, had rendered to the British rulers Nasrullah Beg was the Subedar of Akbarabad on be half of the Mahrattas under the command of French General Perron lo 1803, the British forces under General Lahe attack ed this territory and Nasrullah Beg surrendered the city without a fight Nasrullah Beg s brother in law, Nawab Ahmed Baksh Khan also exercised a good deal of influence with the British He had helped General Lake in several expeditions and enjoyed his confidence it is therefore believed that the surrender of Akbarabad without a battle was a pre arranged affair In 1806 the Akbarabad Subedar's jurisdiction changed into that of a Commissioner appointed by the British authori ties under General Lake The General asked Ghalıb s uncle mamman

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·Fight for Pension 29 or another One of the beneficiaries of the pension agreement on the death of Nasrullah Beg was Khwaja Haji, who received Rs 2,000 per annum out of the total amount of Rs 5,000 distributed among the deceased s heirs He was an officer in the British army and a descendant of Tursam Khan s family Tursam Khan, a scion of the famous seljuk dynasty of Turkcy, was the great grandfather of Ghalib Ghalib, however denied any relationship between Khawja Haji and Nasrullah Beg Since Nawab Ahmed Baksh Khan had accepted the fact of the relationship and was also responsible for apportioning the shares of the various claimants to the pension Ghalb did not press his point He was however, assured that on the death of Khwaja Haji, the sum of Rs 2,000 would pass on to him and his brother Another reason which held back Ghalib from pursuing his protest against the 'inequitable' distribu tion of the pension was that his father in law, Mirza Ilahi Baksh Khan Maruf was brother of Nawab Ahmed Baksh His action would have created all will between the two brothers which Ghalib wanted to avoid Khwaja Haji died in 1825 and Ghalib s father in law pass. ed away a year later But contrary to the oral understanding given to the poet Haji s Rs 2,000 was given to his two sons This naturally upset Ghalib The dilatory tactics of Nawab Shamsudin further embittered him To add to his troubles Yousaf Khan became insane at the prime of his age Ghalib s creditors, noticing his deteriorating financial condition also began to harass him Consequently, he decided to send a formal petition to the British Government in the matter of his pension rights but before doing so he wanted to make a last attempt to persuade Nawab Ahmed Baksh Khan to set matters right by using his influence He went to Loharu for this purpose of his meeting with the Nawab, Ghalib writes I said to Nawab Ahmed Baksh Khan 'you should now fulfil your promise and the right to pension should go to the true heirs Or permit me to take my case to the ·30 ETERNAL FLAME (British) authorities in Calcutt? Those days the Nawab Sahib had suffered several blows He had just got up from his sick bed Besides, he had lost his attorneyship of the State of Alwar This had made him extremely sad and depressed He started crying even hiccupping before me and said, 'you are my child and the light of my eyes You see what blows I have suffered and what hardships I am facing I have been deprived of my right Above all my friendship with Gencral Ochterlony (British Resi dent at Delhi) has broken up Be patient for some time more You will get your full right 'General Ochterlony died shortly thereafter It was announced that Sir Charles Metcalfe would fill his post Nawab Sahib assured me that as soon as Sir Charles arrived he would introduce me to him and also would tell him about the relations between my uncle and the British authorities so that the right person got his claim Not only that he would get separate sanads (certificates) for each of the five claimants so that after his (Nawab s) death they might have no difficulty in getting the money from his descendants "After Sir Charles Metcalfes arrival Bharatpur tangle He got busy in saving Raja Baldev Singh and punishing the rebels Nawab Ahmed Baksh Khan too was going there He asked me to accompany him I was worried in those days on account of my brother sillness Moreover the creditors were harassing me with their persistent demands I was therefore unwill ing to undertake the journey However in the hope that I shall get an opportunity to pay my respects to Metcalfe Sahib I left my brother who was running high fever and was in a delirium in the care of four persons Making all sorts of promises to some of the creditors eluding others under a disguise and carrying nothing with me I accom panied the Nawab to Bharatpur But in spite of my re peated requests he did not introduce me to Sir Charles arose the ·Fight for Pension 31 Metcalfe in the meantime, the Nawab suffered a stroke of paralysis in the face Following a treatment given him by Dr Duncan he recovered and returned to Ferozepore Sir Charles too stayed at Ferozepore for three days Nawab Sahib did not present me before him though I was daily requesting him to do so When Sir Charles returned to Delhi, I became thoroughly disgusted with Ahmed Baksh Khan I then thought that justice loving officers were always mindful of their Own men Why should I seek the good offices of Abmed Baksh Khan? Why should I not personally explain all my difficulties to Sir Charles without anybody s recommendation? But it was impossible for me to go to Delhi for fear of the hue and cry that my creditors would raise I was concerned about my honour Hence I gave up the idea "Meanwhile, news spread of the arrival of the Gover nor General Undoubtedly Sir Charles Metcalfe would go receive him I therefore decided to go to Kanpur and return from there in his company On the way I might get a chance to see him and relate my plight, my helplessness and my troubles on account of my debts and then ask for justice With this object in mind I left for Farrukhabad and Kanpur As soon as I reached Kanpur, I fell ill so that I could not even move out of the bed There was no competent physician in this town and I had to go to Lucknow across the Ganga in a hired palanquin Here I remained bed ridden for more than five months I heard the news of the arrival of the Governor General and of the Shah of Oudh going to receive him but I was not fit to leave my bed In short Lucknow s climate did not suit me at all From Lucknow Ghalib went to Banda where he stayed with Nawab Zulfiqar Ali for six months They were related to each other from Ghalib's mother s side The Nawab took good care of the poet and arranged for his medical treatment * ·32 ETERNAL FLAME Ghalib soon recovered from his illness He writes "The raios had now ended and the Governor General also had returned to Calcutta I did not have the courage to go to Delhi from Ferozeporc Then how dare I go there from Banda? Moreover, I thought the law is the same in Delhi and Calcutta and I better leave the whole matter to the good sense of the authorities As his health did not permit a journey by boat Ghalıb left for Calcutta on horseback When he reached Murshidabad he received the news of the death of Nawab Ahmed Baksh Khan This dampened his spirits because he thought that if and when he won his pension case he would not be able to boast before his friends of having inflicted the humiliation of defeat on a powerful adversary Ghalıb reached Calcutta on February 21 1828, and took a house on rent in the Simla Bazar area (this bazar no longer exists) On April 28 of the same year he submitted his petition to the Governor General in Council He was told that it should first be filed with the Resident at Delhi It was impossible for Ghalib to go back to Delhi for this purpose and then return to Calcutta to pursue the application He therefore continued to stay in Calcutta and engaged a lawyer to take up his case in Delhi He also managed to have himself recommended to the Resident by an English army officer posted at Calcutta The Resident (now Sir Edward Cool brooke) supported Ghalıb s claim and returned the file to the head office after 10 months All this wbile the poet continued to stay in Calcutta unfortunately for him Sir Edward was removed from service on a charge of corruption and defalcation of money His place was taken by Francis Hawkins who was a friend of Nawab Shamsudin Ahmed Khan At the Nawabsinstance a second report was sent !o the head office with the observation that Ghalib was not entitled to more than Rs 750 per annum which he was getting Gbalıb was however confident of winning the case because he thought it was based on truth ·Fight for Pension 33 This belief was further strengthened by the extremely nice treatment he received at the hands of the English officers in Calcutta particularly from the Secretary of the Persian Langu age Department, Mr Andrew Sterling, in whose praise the poet bad written a qasida Ghalib s high spirits in Calcutta were in sharp contrast to the state of his mind when he had left Delhi At that time he was so disgusted that he wanted to leave India and spend the rest of his life in the taverns of Shiraz But now no such thought crossed his mind About Calcutta he writes "There is no other city like this on the surface of the earth To lie on bare land here is much better than be the ruler of some other place By God, had I been a bachelor and free from domestic worries and responsibilities I would have renounced everything and settled here for good" Ghalib waited and waited but when he saw no sigo of a decision on his petition he willy nilly decided to return to Delhı so that with his influence there he could have a more favourable report sent to the head office He engaged a lawyer to watch his interests in Calcutta and after a stay of nearly three years left the city on 29th November, 1829 Ghalib s case in brief was like this The present pension was inadequate and had not been properly distributed, Khwaja Haji or his heirs should not get a share out of this pension Originally the amount of pension stipulated was Rs 10 000 per annum and not Rs 5 000 as had actually been distributed all these years after deducting the amount already pard the balance should be made over to Nasrullah Beg s descendants (three sisters and two nephews, namely, Ghalib and Yousaf), each descendants share should be determined de novo each recipient should be given a separate document, and in future the amounts of pensions should be disbursed through the British treasury at Delhi and not through the Nawab Since Nawab Ahmed Baksh Khan was dead the case on his behalf was being contested by his son Nawab Shamsudin ·34 ETERNAL FLAVE Ahmed Khan In his reply to Ghalib's petition, the defendent produced a letter dated 7th June 1806 and purported to have been written by Lord Lake to Nawab Ahmed Baksh Khan in which the total amount of the pension to Nasrullah Beg s descendants was given as Rs 5000 This letter came to Ghalib as a bolt from the blue He had no knowledge of the existence of such a letter and therefore challenged its authenti city He alleged that it was a forged document and the signature was not in Lord Lake's handwriting Moroever there was no copy or any mention of this letter in the Govern ment records Sir John Malcolm who was now the Goveror of Bombay was Lord Lale s secretary during the period when the above letter was said to have been written Hence it was sent to him for verification Unfortunately for Ghalib Sir John Malcolm replied that the signature on the letter was of Lord Lake He added that Nawab Ahmed Baksh Khan was a very respectable person and Lord Lake had fully trusted him It was therefore most unlikely that the Nawab would forge a letter Had he done this there would have been some more simlar complaints against him On the basis of Sir John Malcolm s evidence the decision in the case went against Ghalib and on 27th January 1831 he was told that the Governor General in Council was not prepared to make any changes in the existing pension arrangement In brief, his petition was dismissed Ghalıb made several appeals and also brought pressure to bear upon the Government to get its decision revised but all his attempts proved of no avail In the meantime a dispute arose between Nawab Shamsu din Ahmed Khan and his two younger brothers Aminudin and Riazudin over the distribution of their father s estate ie Ferozepore Jhirha and Loharu The matter was referred by the Resident at Delhi Mr William Frazer, to the head office in Calcutta Ghalibs sympathies were with the younger brothers and he gave them letters of introduction when they went to Calcutta to press their claims The issue was decided ·Fight for Pension 35 in their favour Nawab Shamsudin resented Ghalib s action and stopped payment of his pension in April 1831 On March 22 1835, Mr William Frazer was shot dead while returning from a dinner at Raja Kishangırh s residence in Daryagunj Delhi In this connection two servants of Nawab Shamsudin were arrested The Nawab himself was summoned to Delhi and placed under house arrest In the course of the trial it was discovered that he had a hand in the murder He nursed a grudge against Mr Frazer for having deprived him of part of his estate by siding with his younger brothers Mr Frazer was also very friendly towards Ghalib Nawab Shamsudin and one of his servants (the other had turned approver) were sentenced to death and hanged outside Kashmere Gate In the meantime due to the stoppage of his pension by Nawab Shamsudin, Ghalib had run into heavy debts which he could not repay He was sued by two of his creditors and a decree for Rs 5000 was passed against him in February 1835 According to the prevailing practice if a debtor happened to be a man of status, he could not be arrested except from outside his residence for non payment of the decreed amount The result was that Ghalib stayed indoors throughout the day At night however he would move out to meet his friends among whom was the City Magistrate This was also the magistrate who was trying the accused in the Frazer murder Some people suspected that Ghalıb was acting as an informer on behalf of the magistrate The accusation was, however unjustified as the poet and the magistrate were old friends whereas the murder was a recent event Ghalıb had several friends among the English officers who held him in high esteem on account of his eminence as a man of letters After Nawab Shamsudin s execution and the forfeiture of his estate Ghalib began getting his pension directly from the Delhi Collector s office He however, continued to press his claim for raising its value The Lieutenant Governor of North West India rejected his latest appeal and told him that case ·36 ETERNAL FLAME and again there could be no addition to the sum of Rs 750 which he was receiving Another revision petition met the same fate But Ghalıb was not to be silenced While wondering at his avidity-a thing least expected from a poet-one must admire him for his doggedness and courage of conviction On the one hand Ghalib was a spendthrift always ready to part with the last pice in bis pocket, while on the other hand his behavi our appears to be highly parsimonious and unrelenting when it came to realising his own dues Any other person in his place would have thought of some alternative source of income rather than suffer the ignominy of a claim being rejected again In fact, when Ghalib returned from Calcutta in 1833, he was in so dire need of money that he seriously consi dered taking employment in some Princely State but his sense of pride ultimately prevailed and he gave up the idea what he desired was that a patron who appreciated his art should himself come to him and offer assistance Such patrons were as rare in those days as they are today In November 1836 Ghalıb submitted a new application demanding that his pension case be referred to the Directors of the East India Company in England and pending their decision he should be given Rs 3 000 per annum He calculat cd his arrears of pension from 1806 to 1836 at Rs 2 03 000 and demanded that the same might be paid to him from the amount of Rs 2,60 000 which Nawab Shamsudın had deposited in the British treasury All his applications were summarily rejected The Directors of the Company in England also gave their ruling against him and declared that the decision talent in India by the Governor General in Council was the right decision In a final bid Ghalıb sent A petition to Queen Victoria but this too brought him no relief and in 1844 after having been disappointed from all sides he called it a day The case took allogeibes surteen years (1828 to 1844) During this period Ghalıb incurred heavy debts to pay his Jawyers and to m-et other expenses in connection with his ·Fight for Pension 37 petitions He did not hesitate to borrow money at high rates of interest In 1835, when a decree for Rs 5,000 was passed against him, his total debt stood at Rs 40,000 He was absolutely confident that in the end he would come out victorious and receive a huge amount as arrears of pension with which he would easily clear his debts But this was not to be In the process, however, he was given certain positions and privileges which were more in the nature of a sop to his pride than of any material benefit to him He was entitled to a seat in the tenth position at all durbars, be sides the gift of a seven piece dress and a three piece jewellery Ghalib s difficulties were not limited to money matters He had a weakness for gambling Probably it too stemmed from the financial stringency as is often the case His friends gathered at his house and played chess and chausar Money was generally perhaps generously too, staked at these games The officials in charge of law and order ordinarily overlooked such activities if responsible and influential citizens were involved in them However, in 1841 the city got a police superintendent who was serious and unsparing in his duties One night he raided Ghalib s house and arrested the poet and his friends on a charge of gambling The court fined them all Ghalıb was asked to pay a fine of Rs 100 or in the alternative to undergo four months imprisonment Apparently he chose to pay up But worse was yet to come The poet and his friends continued to indulge in gambling despite their unpleasant experience In this connection Maulana Abul Kalam Azad writes in his book Naqsh i Azad "In those days Ghalb s residence had become a regular gambling den Certain Jewellers of Chandni Chowk were habitual gamblers Ghalib too was fond of chausar from the very beginning All of them gathered at his house and indulged in gambling As long as Mohamed ·38 ETERNAL FLAME Mirza Khan alias Mirza Khani was the city kotwal these people had nothing to be afraid of since he was a close friend and admirer of Ghalib He was succeeded by Faizul Hasan Khan who was not only unacquainted with these people but also was somewhat of a stern nature God alone knows why he developed enmity towards Ghalıb Besides, the authorities were keen to check the growing evil of gambling in the city One day the Kotwal accompanied by a posse of armed police in a horse drawn carriage, arrived at Ghalib s house The word was sent in that there were some lady visitors As a result nobody stopped them from entering the house When the reality dawned on the gamblers they offered some resistance and the police had to use force and beat up a few of them Ghalib was hauled up for running the gambling den The case came before Magistrate Kanwar Wazır Ali Khan King Bahadur Shah wrote a personal letter to the Resident Many noblemen also interceded with the authorities in a determined bid to save Ghalib from the disgrace of punishment but all these appeals and efforts proved of no avau The Sessions Judge who heard the appeal upheld the judgment of the subordinate court sentencing the accused to six months rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 200 He ruled that in the event of Ghalıb s failure to pay the fine he was to remain in jail for another six months but the rigour of this additional sentence would be condoned if the accused paid an extra Rs 50 as fine However Ghalib was released at the expiry of three months on the report of Delbi s Civil Surgeon Referring to this episode, Ghalıb writes 10 a Persian letter (translated by Maulana Halı into Urdu) 'The Kotwal was my enemy and the Magistrate did not know me In spite of the fact that the Magistrate was an officer above the Kotwal, he became his sub ·Fight for Pension 39 ordinate in my case and passed the order for my imprisonment The Sessions Judge too, despite the fact that he was a friend and always treated me in a friendly and kindly manner and was informal at several get to gethers connived at and showed indifference in the matter An appeal was filed with the central authori ties but nobody paid any heed and the sertence was up held Then for some reason an order came for my release from the head office after I had undergone half the sentence Every effort was made to make Ghalib s life in jail as comfortable as possible Food clothes and all other neces sary articles were carried to him from his house There were no restrictions on visits by relatives and friends Nawab Mustafa Khan Shefta spent long hours with Ghalıb in jail every alternate day He also met the entire cost of the case on his behalf The Nawab exerted all his influence to get him released Ghalib has made touching references to Shefta s help and sympathy in his verses The detention had a deep effect on Ghalib's mind apart from the big jolt it gave to his honour and esteem The Persian verses he composed in prison carry the imprint of his chastened and melancholy mood On release, he wrote 'I consider that everything that happens is ordained by God and one cannot fight against the Almighty 1 am now free from the ignominy of what has happened and ready to accept what is yet to come But to desire is not against the service of God I now wish to leave this world but if I am to live any more I do not want to live in Hindustan There is Rome there is Egypt, there is Iran and there is Baghdad Leave alonc even these There is the ha aba itself a shelter for the free and the abode of hermits May the mercy of God be upon it Let us see when I am released from the curse of penury which is worse than the jail term that I have served Before deciding upon a destination, I would ·40 ETERNAL FLAME like to walk into the wilderness This is what has passed and this is what I wish The outbreak of the Mutiny in May 1857 interrupted the payment of even the meagre pension which Ghalib was getting from the Delhi Collectors office When peace was restored Ghalib made frantic efforts to get it revived but the Government at that time had more important matters to attend to than bother about the pension of a poet It was however, decided in March 1859 that all those persons who had been receiving pensions and stipends from the Govern ment before the Mutiny should be paid money equivalent to their one year s claim as a special help The balance would be paid after all inquiries had been completed Ghalıb however, was given only Rs 100 instead of his yearly pension of Rs 750 When he protested against this, he was told that in the case of others it might take a long time to settle their claims but he was very shortly to get all his accumulated pension since May 1857 The promise and the expectation, however, did not materialize Nawab Yousaf Al Khan had invited Ghalib to Rampur soon after the British reoccupied Delhi but the poet delayed his departure from the city in the hope of getting his pension resumed The Nawab waited until April 1859 and then renewed his invitation to Ghalıb The latter replied I understand that the Governor General Lord Canning who is in Calcutta has sent for my pension file The papers have been seat to the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab who will forward them to Calcutta The order sanctioning the pension will come from there via Punjab and I shall get The moment I receive the money I shall request you for transport Today arrives the transport tomorrow I start for Rampur The year passed and there was no sign of the money Ghalıb had so keenly been hoping to receive But he did bot give up hope When in the beginning of 1860 Lord Canning camped in Delhi after holding a durbar at Meerut, the money ·Fight for Pension 41 Ghalib requested for an audience but the Governor General declined to receive him This blow put him out completely and he left for Rampur on 19th January The Nawab made all arrangements for his comfortable stay in Rampur He not only increased his monthly stipend from Rs 100 to Rs 200 but also brought his influence to bear upon the British Government for the restoration of his pension Ghalib s pension from the Delhi Collector s office was finally restored in May 1860 He had returned to Delhi only a month earlier His arrears totalled Rs 2,150 All this went towards repayment of his debts and he was again left penniless In a letter to Mir Mahdi Majruh, he writes The money has come from the treasury May I lose my eyes of I have seen it Only my honour has been saved, my enemies have been silenced, my friends have become happy I shall continue to be as naked and hungry as I am so long as I live On further representations the Government restored Ghalib s position in the durbar and his claim to a seven prece dress to which he attached considerable importance Originally the honour of a seat had been bestowed upon him in 1828 by Lord William Bentinck The dress was first given him during the reign of Lord Ellenborough (1842 44) In 1856 Ghalib had tried through the good offices of Lord Ellenborough who was particularly kind to him, to get a title from Queen Victoria, and have himself appointed a court poet No decision had been taken on his request when the Mutiny broke out He renewed his plea in 1865 The Government turned it down Ghalib's frequent efforts to curry favour with the alien rulers in the hope of receiving honours and monetary benefits from thern do little credit to a poet of his emin ence particularly when there were other avenues open to him to augment his income The native Princes like the Maharaja of Patiala would have generously helped him if he had approached them instead of running after the 4 ·42 ETERNAL FLAME British officials Proud as he was of his noble ancestory and position as the leading most poct it is amazing to find that he should have degraded himself by petitioning for small mercies a Government that was held in contempt by the Indian masses But we must concede that those were different times and, though there had been a rcvolt (mainly confined to the northern region) against the alien rule, the Indians had not by then developed the conscious ness of being one nation They acted more as individuals or regional groups vis a vis the British than as people of one country fighting against an lavader Each group or clan that rose in revolt against the forces of the East India Company had a reason different from that of most others Quite a large number of Indians sided with the British What impelled Ghalib to go out of his way to profess loyalty to the foreigners is difficult to guess All that can be said 's that whatever the reasons they must have been entirely personal and, of course weighty ·در THE MUTINY AND AFTER The middle of the nineteenth century was an extremely turbu lent period in Indian history The placid currents of the country s life had been rudely disturbed by the rapid expan $ion of the British power, attended as it was by changes in the administrative system and modes of existence to which the people had been accustomed down the ages There was an unusual commotion in different parts of the country The writ of the Moghal Emperor at Delhi did not run beyond the silent stone walls of the Red Fort For the Urdu language, however it was an epoch making era in its march to the pinnacle of glory and grandeur Some of the best Urdu poets and writers wielded their pen in the decades immediately preceding as well as following the Mutiny of 1857 During these years this hotch potch of a spoken language of the Moghal army camps blossomed out into a highly stylish literary medium Writers are considered as links between the past and the present and in Urdu veterans like Zavq Momin and Ghalıb of Delhi and Nasıkh, Atish, Anis and Dabır of Luck now truly made up the confluence wbich rang out the expres sions that were coarse and cumbersome and rang in a style that was henceforth to fire the imagination of most men of ·44 ETERNAL FLAME letters Even the last Moghal king Bahadur Shah Zafar though weighed down by age and cares of the State, could not remain uninfuenced by the new trend in Urdu versification He was a poet of no mean merit but who could have expected an emperor to say melancholy couplets like these Na kısı ki aankh ha noor hun na kısı ke dil ka qarar kun Jo hist ke kaam na aasake men woh eh mushte ghubar hun (I am neither the glow of anybody s eyes nor the calm of anybody s heart I am that handful of dust which is of no use to anyone ) Na to men kısı ka habib hun na to men kist ha raqib hun Jo bigar gaya noh nasib hun jo ujar gaja noh djar hun (Nobody calls me a friend nor am I a rival to anyone am the one who is all fated and whose abode has been wrecked) heh do in hasraton se hain aur ja basen Iimi jagah kahan hai dil i daghdar men (Tell these desires to go and dwell somewhere else Where is the space in my bruised heart to accommodate them Uomindful of the empire that had pracuscally slipped out of his hands Babadur Shah applied his mind almost exclusi cly to the enrichment of Urdu But he paid the price of his own and of his predecessors neglect of matters of State and spent the last years of his life in exile in Burma In one of his couplets he says Har dina badnasıb Zafar he dafan he like Do go. zamın bhi mil na sall koo i jaar men (How unluchy us Zafar not to get cien tho yards of land for his bural in the beloved s lane' On his account or for being associated with she poetic ousts in his court some luminaries of the Urdu language also suffered heavily in the aralanche that swept the city of Delhi Among these was Ghalıb whom aducrstly would not let pass a single day in peace Though his relations with some of ibc English officers were quite cordial his association with in 1857 ·The Mutiny and After 45 Bahadur Shah's court made him a suspect in the British eyes The argument ran that since he had been on friendly terms with the Moghal king who became the symbol of unity for the heterogenous rebel factions he must be regarded as one of his partisans A few years before the Mutiny, Ghalib s financial condition had become extremely difficult His repeated petitions for raising his pension had been rejected Creditors knocked at his door day and night Some of them filed suits against him for the realisation of their dues These included a well known English wine merchant, Mr MacPherson, from whom the poet bought liquor on credit How long could Ghalıb manage with a pension of only Rs 62 50 a month? There was no other source of income No more help was coming from bis maternal grandfather s family On the other hand he was in the habit of spending money freely without giving thought to the consequences Though Ghalib was one of the distinguished visitors to Bahadur Shah s court and was held in high esteem both by the King and his courtiers, he had not so far asked for help or patronage from this quarter His rival poet Zauq corrected Bahadur Shah s poems and therefore there was no question of Ghalib being engaged for this work and anything less than that he would not accept However on the recommendation of the court physician, Hakim Ahsanullah Khan and the hings spiritual mentor, Pır Kale Khan who was also a friend and well wisher of Ghalib, Bahadur Shah agreed to entrust the poet with the task of writing in Persian the history of the Timur dynasty on a monthly salary of Rs 50 He also bestowed on Ghalib the title of "Najam ul Daula Dabir ul Mulk Nazam i Jang besides honouring him with six dresses and three pieces of jewellery The court salaries were paid half yearly Ghalb was hard pressed for money One third of the amount he received for the first six months was accounted by interest he had to pay on his loans On an appeal, accordingly, the court ·46 ETERNAL FLAME directed that his salary be paid every month As was the practice in the Orient, a poet would write a qasıda (ode) or a gat a (stanza) in praise of his patron if he wished a favour The request was indirectly conveyed in the course of the verses To get his salary paid on a monthly basis Ghalib too wrote a qat a in which he said Baske leta hun har maheene qaraz Aur rehti har sood ki taqrar Meri tankhuah men tehaee ka Ho gaya hai shreek sahukar Aap ka banda aur phirun nanga Aap ka naukar aur khaun udhar (I borrow money every month and there is a regular demand on me for interest A third of my salary goes to the share of the money lender Is it not a shame that your servant should go about naked and live on credit) In 1854 the heir apparent to the throne, Mirza Mohamed Sultan Ghulam Fakhrudin Ranz alias Mirza Fakhroo, also became Ghalıb s pupıl and the poet began to receive an addı tional Rs 400 a year The same year Zauq died and the King began to send his poems for correction to Ghalib Bahadur Shah s youngest son Mirza Khızr Sultan too took up Ghalib s tutelage Besides the ruler of Oudh Nawab Wajid Ali Shah began sending him Rs 500 a year But all this was too good to last very long Oudh was merged in the British ruled territory in February 1856 and Wajid Ali was taken to Calcutta for detention there In July the same year Mirza Falhroo died of cholera The final blow fell in May 1857 with the breaking out of the Mutiny Indian sepoys from Meerut stormed Delhi and went on the rampage They not only looted and massacred the English residents of the city but also harassed the noble and rich among the Indians and pillaged their houses As soon as the trouble started Ghalib shut himself in his house in Mohalla Ballimaran in Chandni Chond Luckily in this locality also ·The Mufiny and After 47 lived Hakim Mahmud Khan who was the Mabaraja of Patiala s personal physician The Maharaja posted his troops outside the mohalla so that the mutineers could be prevented from entering it and molesting the residents The people were so scared that they would not stir out even to fetch water Fortunately for them, one day it rained very heavily and they could store water to last them for many days However, it was a perod of great stress and privation for Ghalib as for most other people in the city Without consulting him, Ghalib s wife sent her entire Ornaments and costly clothes for safe custody in Kale Khan s house thinking that, the Pır being a respected religious leader, the mutineers would not touch at least him and his residence But it turned out to be a false hope Kale Khan s house was plundered by the rioters and Ghalib lost whatever valuables he possessed The second phase of Delbis nightmare began after the British recaptured the city and the palace in September 1857 The alien soldiers who had been thirsting all these days for revenge of the atrocities committed on English men women and children by the mutineers sacked the city in a manner that perhaps surpassed the butchery committed by Nadir Shah in 1739 A report on the massacre in the Bombay Telegraph from its correspondent said "All the city people within the walls when our troops entered were bayoneted on the spot and the number was considerable as you may suppose when I tell you that in some houses forty or fifty persons were hiding' A fierce British cavalry officer, Lieutenant Hodson arrested Babadur Shah who had hid himself in Humayun s tomb, about $18 miles away from the Red Fort The King was tried on charges of instigating and inspiring the mutineers and was deported to Rangoon where he spent the last years of his life until he died on 7th November, 1862, at the age of 87 His (wo sons and a grandson were shot down by Hodson without even the formality of a trial Thus came to an end the Moghal ·48 ETERNAL FLAME imperial dynasty that had ruled India for well oser three centuries Describing the fall of Delhi, the renowned historian Dr RC Majumdar uites in his book Sepoy Mfutins "Babadur Shah sursendered 10 Hodson on the sole condition that his life should be spared Thereupon he along esth his favourite Begum Zinnat Mahal and her son, was taken to the Palace within the Red Fort, on 21st September Nove day Hodson again rode to Humayun's tomb and arrested to sons of the Ling and one of his grandsons Sending them in a bullockcart to the city, Hodson remained behind to deal with the crowd of about 6000 men who had gathered round the princes He sternly ordered them to surrender their arms, and they obeyed Hodson then rode tonards the city and found that the cart carrying the princes was surrounded by a huge crowd According to his own version, the crowd menac ed the escort and he felt that unless he killed the princes the mob would rescue them So he ordered the three princes to strip off their upper garments and seizing a carbine from one of his men shot them all dead The British believed that in the main it was the Muslims who were to blame for organising the natre revolt This belief as shared by most chroniclers of the events of the Mutiny Dr Majumdar says Those who look upon the outbreak of 1857 as a national revolt advance as a strong argument in support of their view that it was a joint endeav out of the two great communities 11. Hindus and Musa! maus But though the sepoys and the common people of both the communities fought together against the English we miss that real communal amity which characterises a national effort It is a significant fact that the contemporary Englisks men generally viewed upon the outbreak mainly as a bandı work of the Muslims Ds Majumdar cites the opinions of some English officers who took part in the suppression of the rebellion Sir Charles Raikes wrote "They (the Muslims) have behaved in the part 1 ·The Mutiny and After 49 of India (North Westtta fronuncis) where I had jurisdiction, very ill, so ill indeed that if the rest of the population had sympathised with them instead of antagonised, I should despair of governing India for the future A young lieutenant Frederick Roberts, afterwards Field Marshal Earl Roberts, the hero of the Afghan war, wrote to his father back home "I will show these rascally Musalmans that, with God s help, Englishmen will still be masters of India Mrs Coopland a clergyman's widow, wrote "As this is completely a Mohammadan rising, there is not much to be feared from the Hindus of Banaras A military officer, who took part in the siege of Delhi wrote "The Mohammadans were generally hostile to us, the Hindus much less This feeling persisted in the official British circles long after the fall of Delhi Referring to the city's recapture the same writer observed "It was not till the end of November that the Hindu portion of the population was allowed to return No Mohammadans could get in at the gate without a special order, and a mark was set upon their houses and they were required to prove their loyalty before getting back again In view of the strong antı Muslim feeling among the English it is not surprising that Muslims became the special target of attack of the victorious troops and administrators Even persons who had remained neutral during the fighting or who had little to do with the ruling elite of the Red Fort were not spared Ghalib continued to confine himself to his residence for fear of being manhandled by English brasshats very trying period for him All his sources of income had dried up There was no question of his getting the pension from the Government resumed until the situation had cleared up and normalcy returned In this hour of distress Ghalib's Ilindu friends stood by him They visited him regularly and attended to his needs His pupıl, Munshi Has Gopal Tafta It was a ·SO ETERNAL FLASTE He says sent him money from Meerut Lala Mahesh Dass supplied him liquor Others who took good care of him included his disciple, Munshs Hiri Singh Dard, Pandit Shivji Rim and his son Balmukind All thus Ghalib has thankfully acknowledged in his book Dastanbo (in Persian) which he wrote during this period and in which he has described the conditions then prevailing in the city 'I mention these gentlemen (Mahesh Dass Hira Singh Shiva Ram and Balmuland) because besides being duty bound to acknowledge there help, I want my other friends to Anow hos Ghalib who has a very large circle of acquaintances and has a welluisher in every house and every lane pissed his time during these days these four persons had not been living 10 the city there would have been no witness to his misery and helplessness In 2 letter written in 1860 to Nawab Sa adullah Khan, Ghalb describes the sack of Delhi as follows Five lashkars (armies) savaded Delhi They came one after the other First was the army of the mutineers they looted the confidence of the citizens The second was the army of the khakis (British troops in Khaki) In this intasion life and property, prestige and respect houses and their inmates--all signs of ufe were looted or destroyed The thurd invasion was that of famine in which thousands died of hunger Next came cholera which took away the lives of those who did not have anything to eat Finally came the invasion by malaria in which the loss of life might not have been very high but whoever got an attack lost all energy and his limbs became lıfeless Delhi is still in its grip A British chronicler of the Mutiny, TR Holmes des cribing the state of affairs atter the fall of Delhi writes "The British soldiers showed no mercy to the men Harmless citizens were shot, claspiag their hands for mercy Trembling old men were cut down The people of Delhi expiated many times over, the crimes of the mutineers Tens of thousands of men and women and children were wandering for no crime homeless over the country what they had left behind ·The Mutiny and After 5L was lost to them for ever for the soldiers, going from house to house and from street to street, ferreted out every article of value, and smashed to pieces whatever they could not carry away A military Governor had been appointed but he could do little to restrain the passions of those who surrounded bim Natives were brought forward in batches to be tried by a military commissioner or by special commissioners each one of whom had been invested by the Supreme Government with full powers of life and death These judges were in no mood to show mercy Almost all who were condemned were sentenced to death A four square gallows was erected in a conspicuous place in the city, and five or six culprits were hanged every day English officers used to sit by, puffing at their cigars and look on at the convulsive struggles of the victims An event that caused much distress and anxiety to Ghalıb in the aftermath of the Mutiny was the death of his brother Yousaf The latter, who was mentally deranged lived in a lane called Saras near Farashkhana An old maid servant looked after him and an aged watchman guarded his house Ghalıb wanted Yousaf to stay with him but the latter would not agree The distance between their houses was about a thousand yards After the sepoy revolt had been suppressed the Muslims continued to be hounded out of their bomes Ghalib became worried on Yousaf s account He could not visit him for fear of being mauled by the Firanghees who in the flush of victory had almost run amuck and suspected every native to be a sympathiser of the mutineers One day Yousaf s watchman brought to Ghalib the news that the soldiers had ransacked his house Soon after he reported that following an attack of high fever Yousaf had died in the middle of the night One chronicler of the events of the Mutiny, however, writes that Yousaf was shot dead when he came out of his house on hearing the sound of gunfire The problem that now faced Ghalib was how to bury ·52 ETERNAL FLAME Yousaf s body Even a shroud would not be procured as the bazars were closed There was no burial ground nearby Ghalib s neighbours volunteered to help him Some of them took a couple of bedsheets from the poet and guarded by 4 soldier of the Patiala army went to Yousaf's house They performed the most essential rites and buried the body in the courtyard of a nearby mosque The discontinuance of pension and the loss of all orna ments and other precious things during the Mutiny had left Ghalib absolutely destitute Whatever articles remained in the house--his clothes, bedding utensils etc were sold out one by one to meet his expenses He could not even carry on the uriting of his book Dastando and ended it abruptly by saying How long can I go on rubbing my reed (pen) in the writing of this children s play, that is Dastando' The situation which I am facing will clearly result either in my death or my turning into a beggar In the event of my death, this story will remain incomplete In the second alternative, what else can be there except that I am shooed off from a shop or get a dime at some doorstep? Hence there remains nothing to be written save my own disgrace and shame Even if the old pension is restored it will not solve my problems and if it is not restored then that will be my end The difficulty is that in both events I shall have to leave this city and pass the rest of my life in some other place because the climate of this place no longer appears to suit the heartbroken As his difficulties grew Ghalib became more and more restive with his wife and other relaties He blamed them for his predicament Had he been free from domestic responsi billies, he thought, be could have gone away anywhere It was suggested that he should send his wife and adopted sons to lic under the care of the Manab of Loharu and himself go to Patsala where he should seek the patronage of the Maharaja through the good offices of Hakim Mahmud Xhan He cren sent 3 qasida in praise of the Maharaja but on recon sideration changed his mind ·The Mutiny and After 53 This sudden abandonment of his plan for a visit to Patiala had something to do with his recently developed relationship with Rampur s ruling family A few months before the autbreak of the Mutiny, Ghalib had sent to Nawab Yousaf Ali Khan of Rampur a panegyric In his school days the Nawab had learnt Persian from Ghalib After he ascended the musnad (throne) in 1855 he tried his hand at writing poetry as it was considered a sine qua non for the Indian Muslim rulers of those days in early 1857, he sent to Ghalib a few verses for retouching and advice and enclosed in the letter a sum of Rs 250 He did not fix a regular salary for the poet but occasionally sent him varied amounts These came very bandy to Ghalib whose resources could never keep pace with his requirements However the Mutiny had disrupted this new source of his income as well Now that things were settling down Ghalib thought that it would be far better to get paid for correcting the Rampur ruler s verses than to depend on the Patiala Maharaja s charity Accordingly, he wrote to the Nawab to sanction for him a monthly stipend The latter readily agreed to the request and Ghalib began to receive from him Rs 100 every month The restoration of bis pension from the British treasury took a much longer time and a far greater effort Although he had not taken sides in the Mutiny or shown any sympathy to the mutineers or even antipathy towards the English all the same he came under a cloud of misapprehensions, not a few To clear himself of all suspicions, Ghalib sept copies of his new book Dastanbo to several officers The idea was that a perusal of the book would convince them that he was quite innocent and had nothing to do with the Mutiny He also wrote several letters seeking interviews with officers but all his efforts to re establish rapport with them proved un successful Ghalıb was not the only member of the educated elite who remained aloof from the violent happenings The intellectuals as a class showed no interest in the progress of ·54 ETERNAL FLAME dar says the Mutiny On the contrary, they wished and prayed for the return of the British administration so that they could pursue their literary pastimes in an atmosphere of peace Analysing the causes of the failure of the sepoy movement, Dr Majum The lack of interest shown by the intellectuals was a serious drawback the full extent of which will perhaps never be known History of modern times shows that all great political movements bave an intellectual background and draw their nourishment largely from that source The outbreak of 1857 not only lacked any such intellectual back ground but ran counter to the views of the intellectual classes who never looked upon it with sympathy Therefore it would be unjust to say that Ghalıb stayed away from the movement out of cowardice An enemy of Ghalib attributed to him the writing of two verses hailing the proclamation of Bahadur Shah as the Emperor of India Ghalıb vehemently denied this charge In fact he was ignorant of the real authorship of these verses When he went to pay his courtesies to the Commissioner, the latter asked him about the matter Ghalib replied “He (the accuser) is wrong The King himself was a poet His sons were poets His servants were poets God knows who com posed these couplets The newspaper scribe has attributed them to me Had these lines been from me that paper in the office would have been in my handwriting Later on somebody told Ghalib that the couplets bad actually been composed by Zauq at the time of Babadur Shah s coronation on 30th September, 1837, an that they had been published in the Urdu newspapers of that day Ghalib tried to ferret out the old issues of the newspapers but could not spot them To cut short, however he was completely successful in dispelling the suspicions that had been aroused against him of being hostile to the British Government For quite some time after the Mutiny, Ghalib s mainstay for meeting his expenses was the stipend of Rs 100 per month he received from the Nawab of Rampur For the few months ·The Mutiny and After 55 he stayed in that State, in 1860 the amount was doubled The Nawab also made bım additional ad hoc payments from time to time On April 31, 1865, Nawab Yousif Ali Khan expired and his eldest son Nawab kalab Ali Khan, ascended the musnad Ghalib undertook another trip to the State to pay homage to the old ruler and respects to the new He was received warmly by Nawab Kalab Ali and given a special bungalow for his stay On his return journey from Rampur the poet met with an unfortunate accident Due to heavy rains, the Ramganga was in spate It had to be crossed over a temporary boat bridge Ghalib s palanquin had just crossed it when the bridge collapsed and was washed away by the current all his servants and the luggage being left on the opposite bank With great difficulty the poet reached Moradabad and passed the night in an ion with just one blanket to protect him against the bitter December cold It rained the whole night He could not stand the strain and fell all Next morning he was taken to the house of a local maulvi who provided him com fort and arranged for his treatment When the Nawab learnt of the mishap he sent a special messenger to Ghalib asking him to return to Rampur the moment he was fit to travel But before the messenger could arrive, the poet had left for Delhi Ghalib had gone to Rampur with great expectations He was under heavy debts and thought that the Nawab alone could solve his financial difficulties the latter gave him no more than Rs 1,200 which was too little to meet the cri Back home, unwarily he wrote a sarcastic letter to the Nawab and this led to a rupture of their relations Later on second thoughts, he tried to clear the misunderstandings but the Nawab could not be won over again Ghalib s debts and difficulties continued as ever, even increased His humour too that had stood him in good stead all along-at least at home with an uninspiring wife-seemed now on the point of deserting him What suffered most dur- SIS ·56 ETERNAL FLAME ing these last four years of his life (he died on February 15, 1869) was his Muse and the tragedy is that he never realised it His false sense of pride failed to revive and inspire it The Mutiny in which his aloofness from politics let him play no part thus had had its vengeance on him finally but slowly, steadily depriving him of his talent for creation as well as existence But for his Urdu ghazals written over the years, history would have recorded Ghalib as one more casualty of the 1857 holocaust ·4 GHALIB'S GHAZALS Ham aur bhi duniya men sukhanwar bahut achhe kehte hain ke Ghalıb ka hai anda? 1 biyan aur (In the world are poets good galore But different they say is Ghalib s style ) The ghazal has not only taken pride of place in Urdu poetry but has also overshadowed all forms of versifica tion in other Indian languages At the mushairas, it is the ghazal that draws the longest and loudest applause and leaves the listener in a state of transcendental bliss Lven the Westerners have paid it a compliment by trying to imitate this style of poetry What is a ghazal ? Briefly stated it is the medium of expression of a man s love for his beloved The word ghazal, in Arabic, means talking to women or talking love The ghazal as originally composed, was a song consisting of the stray thoughts of a lover complaining of separation, longing for union and giving expression to sensations of pain and pleasure that characterise the experiences of love A ghazal starts with a verse called the matla which contains two lines the last but one word of which in the first line known as qafia rhymes with the last but one ·58 ETERNAL FLAVE word in the second line It closes with a verse called magta in which the poet introduces his name or nom de plume All the verses from the maila to the magia are written in the same metre, and endings of the second lioc of each verse known as radis must rhyme together The traditional ghazal contains between six and eleven couplets but nowadays some poets write ghazals containing up to twenty five verses Each verse gives full meaning to a thought and can stand by itself There are usually three actors who make up the cast of a conventional ghazal the lover (aashiq) the beloved (mashooq) and the lovers rival (raqceb) The lover with whom the ghazal writer identifics himself, is the one who has been sinned against most He is shown as luckless restless grief strichen given to drisking unjustifiably defamed un mindful of the cruelties of the beloved and a victim of the intrigues of his mals Though he is sick and weak he is faithful and ever ready to barter away his life for d smile of the beloved On the other hand the beloved though 1 paragon of beauty is boastful unfaithful callous of heart careless of manner and bitter of tongue She is like an idol who is in different towards her worshippers and their sufferings being also likened to a hangman (qatıl) and a non believer (hafir) The rival (raqeeb) supposedly gets preferential treatment at the hands of the beloved He is always plotting to pre Vent a conciliation be seen the cashiq and the mashooq Thc forrer treats him with contempt while the latter shows hım consideration for the most part to spite the lover Shah Wal ullah a renos ned poet who welded his pen during the reign of King Mohamed Shah in the early decades of the cighteenth century was the first man write an Urdu ghaza! He was a native of Aurangabad but shi-d to Delhi 19 1722 Urdu 17 those days w3s a curious misture of Hindi and Persian words and had yet to develo7 lo ·Ghalib s Gha-als 59 1 syntax and grammar of its own Most Muslim poets yrote verses in Persian The credit for making Urdu the anguage of the nobility and giving it the same status as was enjoyed by Persian goes to Wali He occupies the same place in Urdu as Amir Khusro does in Hindi and Chaucer in English Walis verses have a peculiar charm and flow, for example Dekhna har suboh tujh rukhsar ka Hai mutala matla i anwar ka Yad karna har gharı tujh yar ka Hai sa fa mujh dil : beemar ka (To see your rosy cheeks in the morning is like having a good look at the rising sun To think of you every minute has become a duty of mine-a lovesick heart) The next great writer of Urdu ghazals, Mir Mohamed Taqı Mir was born at Agra in 1700 and lived a life of full one hundred years He too shifted to Delhi and became so popular that travellers from Delhi used to recite his ghazals before gatherings of men in the cities they visited When Nawab Asaf ud Daula of Oudh heard of Mir's fame he sent for the poet and granted him a handsome pension Mirs verses are liked for their spontaneity facile expression and touching imagery Mark the following lines Patta patta boota boota haal hamara jane hai Jane na jane gul hi na jane bagh to sara jane hai Aashiq sa sada to koee na hoga duniya men Ju ke zian ko ishq men uske apna wara jane hai (Every leaf and every plant knows my condition The whole garden 15 familiar with it If there is one who does not know it it 15 the rose In the whole world you cannot find a person as trustful as a lover who regards even his death for his beloved as his own gain) A wellknown contemporary of Mir was Mirza Rafi Sauda who was born at Delhi in 1713 He was the son of an Afghan trader and that perhaps explains why be chose the ·60 ETERNAL FLAME Siop word "Sauda' (transaction) for his nom de plume He became so popular in a few days that his ghazals began to be recited in every street and corner of Delhi The Moghal King, Shah Alam, got his own compositions revised by Sauda Sauda s ghazals are marked by elegance and bold expres He was always on the look out for new words, but avoided the pedantic style employed by court poets like Mushafi, Insha and Jurrat, whose attachment to the kings and nawabs reduced their poetry to sycophancy and pleasure songs for their patrons In the use of poetic symbols, there is none to beat Sauda For example Barabari ka teri gul ne jab khayal kıya Saba ne mar thapera munh uska lal kıya (When the rose made a claim of equality with you-the beloved the morning breeze slapped it so hard that its cheeks turned red) After Mır and Sauda further improvements in the ghazal were carried out by Khwaja Mir Dard, Mohamed Mir Soz Nasıkh and Atish, but it was left to Momin Zauq and the greatest of them all Ghalib to introduce new subjects new motifs and new symbols and to chisel the language of this poetic medium During this period, we find Urdu at its best abounding in kings idioms and civilised expressions All these three poets were born in the last decade of the eighteenth century and wielded their pen through the greater part of the nineteenth century The names of the lanes (kuchas) of Chandni Chowk, in Delhi, where they lived have been immor talised through association with them When Zauq received an invitation from the King of Deccan he declined it by saying Aajkal garche Deccan men har bari qaår i sukhan Laun jae Zauq par Dilli kt galian chhor kar (These days there is high appreciation of poetry in Deccan but O Zauq who has the heart to leave the bylapes of Delhi?)

·Ghalib s Ghazals 61 Though Ghalib s output of ghazals in Urdu is much smaller than that in Persian it is his Urdu Diwan containing a little over 200 pieces (about 1500 couplets) that has rocketed him into immortal fame And no other style of verse except the ghazal could have caught aesthetically better the deep emotional tension of his mind and the flights of his imagina tion of which Iqbal said Fikr 1 insan par terı hasti se je roshen hua Hai par i murgh 1 tahheyyul ki rasaee ta kuja (Your existence has made man realise what heights the wings of imagination can reach) But to Ghalıb even the ghazal did not appear adequate for a full employment of his high soaring genius He observes Baqadr 1 shauq nahn sahne tangna 1 ghazal Kuchh aur chahiye wusaat mire bıyan ke liye (The expanse of ghazal is not large enough to fulfil my desires I need sometbing with bigger dimensions to express my thoughts ) Ghalib transformed the entire spirit of ghazal writing He broadened its sphere from a mere love prattle to encompass the whole gamut of man s life and experiences He began composing verses before he had completed eleven years of his ago When he showed his first poem in Persian to his teacher, Sheikh Muazzam, the latter commented that it had a meaning less radif This silenced the boy Shortly afterwards how ever, Ghalib spotted a verse having the same radif in the wellknown poet, Mulla Zaburis collection of ghazals He showed the book to the teacher who was taken aback on sec ins the particular couplet He then told the young pupil "You have God given aptitude for the Persian language You must practise verse writing and never mind any criticism When Mir Taqı saw the young poet's compositions he commented "If this boy gets a competent teacher who sets him on the right road he will become a pectless poet Other ·62 ETERNAL FLAME wisc, he will rattle oft meaningless stuff Hou prophetic was Mir! He was proxed right on both counts Ghalib did start on a wrong notc but since he was gentle and understanding by naturc he thoughtfully listened to the duscc of his teachers and well wishers and soon came on to the right path llc wecded out from his carly compositions such verscs as the critics regarded improper and not in good taste And having finally found his moorings, he never looked back What distinguishes Ghalb s ghazals from those of many other pocts is that in his case it is the words that follow the thoughts whereas the method gencrally cmployed by others is to think of a number of rhyming words for the gafia and then to think of suitable ideas for their use This accounts for the fact that most of Ghalıb s ghazals consist of no more than ten ar lielve lines Others who preceded as well as those who followed him wrote lengthy ghazals thinking that by reeling off a large number of verses in the same radil and gafia they could display their power of versification Most such verses are nothing but efforts at rhyming Their claim to literary merit is at best limited The thought contained in Ghalib s verses is for the most part expressed in a strikingly original manner For instance in his love poems he ivoided the line taken by most others, that is, giving expression to the pangs of love by using the metaphor of the beloved causing injury to the lover A common theme is to describe the kind of dagger used, the force with which it is thrust and the extent and depth of the wound inflicted Ghalib s way of alluding to the injuries caused by the indifference or heartlessness of the beloved is peculiarly his own For example Nazr lage na kahun unke dast o baroo ho Ye log kton mere zakhm 1 jigar ko dekhte hain (Why do the people stare at the injuries in my heart ? May the strong hand and arm of my beloved not catch the evil eye') Nothing else could have described better the intensity of ·Ghalıb s Gharals 63 the pain suffered by a lover as a result of the beloved s callous ness By implying that the wounds are such as will show the strength of her arm, Ghalıb leaves the whole description of the manner in which they have been caused to the imagination of the reader Besides he tells us of his concern for the slightest harm that may be done to the beloved by the evil eye of the beholder The subtlety of Ghalibs thought can be judged from another verse Samajh ke karte hain ba ar men no pursash 2 haal Ke ye kene ke sar i rahguzar hai kya kehiye (The beloved enquires about my condition only in the bazar knowing full well that, being in the market place, I wont make a complaint against her indifference) What the poet actually wants to say is that there is no sincerity in the beloved s inquiry about his health or wellbeing She is only feigning concern about it When he wants to say that he would rather be killed at the hands of the beloved than die a slow death he alludes to the excuses made by the latter for pot obliging him, like there not being a dagger at hand or the non avail ability of a shroud Aaj u an tegh o kafan bandhe hue jata hun main Uzr mere qatl karne men wo ab laenge kya (Today I am going to my beloved armed with the sword and shroud What excuse will she now offer for refusing to behead me?) The same sentiment is found in another couplet Sar urane ke jo naide lo mukarrar chaha Hans ke bole tere sar ki qasm har hamko (When I requested her to repeat her promise to behead me she smiled and said I swear by your head ) The beloved s reply has a double meaning (i) that I swear I shall behead you and (ii) that your head is so dear to me that I swear by it ·64 ETERNAL FLAVIE A few more specimens of Ghalb s couplets on the theme of love Gada samajh he ho chup tha meni jo shamot aact Utha aur uth ke qadam men ne pasban ke liye (The beloved took me for a beggar and kept silent But as ill luck would have it I made the mistake of falling at the fect of the sentry) The idea is that had he (the lover) not requested the sentry for help in letting him in he might have escaped the wrath of the beloved when he appeared at the latter s door by being mistaken for a beggar Is sadag! pe kaun na mar jae ai Asad Larte hain aur hath men talkar bhi nahin (Who will not give his life for the beloved s naisely? She has no sword in her hand and yet she fights !) Ishq mujh ko nahın nehshat hi sahi Mert wehshal terl shohrat hi sahi Ham bhi tasleem ki khu dalenge Benia"ı ieri aadat hi sahi (You say I am not in love with you and that it is only madness on my part But you can t deny that my madness is the cause of your fame Besides I shall develop the habit of bowing my head even though you are habitually indifferent towards me ) Jab tak dahn i akhm na paida kare koee Mfushkıl tha tujh se rah i sukhan kare hoet (Until I took injury on my lips it was difficult to establish communion with you) Chhora na rashk ne ke tere ghar ka nam lun Harik se poochhta hun ke jaun kidhar ko main (Envy has made me unfit to think of going to your house Hence I ask everybody where I should go ) ·Ghalıb s Ghazals 65 Ham rashk ko apne bhi gavara nahin karte Marte hain magar unkı tamanna nehin karte (I cannot tolerate even my own envy of her I am dying iet I would not wish for her-lest I should appear jealous) Unhe dekhe se jo aajati munh par raunaq Wo samajhte hain ke beemar ka haal achha hat (When I see the beloved my face displays rapture, but she takes it to be a sign of improvement in my sickness) Dekhiye paate hain ushaaq bufon se kya faiz Ik Brahmın ne kaha hai ke ye saal achha hai (Let us see what benefit the lovers get from their beloveds A Brahmin has predicted that this is a hopeful year) Ek eh qatre ka mujhe dena para hisab Xhoon 1 jigr wadiyat 1 mizghan 1 yar tha (I had to account for each drop of blood of my heart which I held in trust for the eyelashes of my beloved ) All the blood in the lover's heart is the property of the beloved which he is holding in trust He is returning it drop by drop through tears of blood Ye kahan hi dost hai ke bane hain dost naseh Koee charasa, hota koee ghamgusar hota (It is no friendship if a companion turns a counsellor he had better be a healer or a confidant) Marne ki ai dil aur hi tadbir kar ke main Shayaan : dast o bazoo i qatıl nahın raha (O my heart think of some other manner of death I am no longer fit to be beheaded by the beautiful hand of the assassin--the beloved ) Dil se mitna teri angusht hinayee ha khayal Hogaja gosht se nakhun ka juda ho jana (To erase from mind the thought of your hand s colour is like detaching the nail from the flesh) ·66 ETERNAL FLAME Rone se aur ishq men bebaak ho gac Dhoe gae ham alse le bas paal ho gae (Tears have made me fearless and desperate in love They have washed me so much that I can hide my love no more) Badguman hota hal no kafir na hota hashke Is qadr zauq i nakal murgh i bustani mujhe (My beloved gets diffident when I go to the garden I wish I did not love so intensely the voice of the nightingale ) The poet says that his beloved gets annoyed when she sees him go to the garden to hear the nightingale (who also like the lover sings sad songs) instead of going into the wilderness as any true lover would do De mujh ko shihayat hi ija al le sitamgar Auchh tujh ho mara bhi mere a.aar men aane (Give me O heartless a cause to complain so that you derive more pleasure from my discomfiture ) The lover asks the beloved who is a tyrant, to make it possible for him to complain (of her callousness) so that she becomes more wrathful and consequently inflicts harsher punishment on him This will according to the lover, bring more joy and satisfaction to the beloved And that is what he secretly desires Maanga karenge ab se du a hijr 1 jar ki Akhir to dushmanı hai asr ko du a ke saath (From now on I shall pray for separation from the beloved After all is not there enmity between the prayer and effect 7) The lovers wish always has the opposite effect He would therefore henceforth pray only for a thing that he does not really want The same sentiment is found in the following verse Khoob tha pahle se hote jo ham apne badkhuah ke bhala chahte hain aur bura hota hai (I should have been an ill wisher from the very beginning as every time I wish something the opposite happens ) ·Ghalb s Gharals 67 Dost ka pardah har beganagi Munh chhupana liam se chhora chahiye (Posing unfamiliarity with the lover will only betray the beloved Hence she should give up the habit of turning away her face ) Ghalib tells the beloved that the latter should not try to convince the people that there is nothing between them by pretending lack of acquaintance with him This only betrays their relationship She should therefore freely meet him Dushmanı ne meri khoya ghair ko Kis qadr dushman hai dekha chahiye (Herenmity has estranged other men too, See how hostile she is towards me!) The beloved is so much cross with the lover that when other people talk of him, she gets angry with them too! Bahut dinon men taghaful ne fere paida kı Work nigah jo bezahir nigah se kam hai (Your prolonged indifference at least turned into a half look a look that cannot be called a full view) After remaining unconcerned for a long time, the beloved shows sight interest in the lover This itself, though not adequate, brings great relief to bim Kare har bada tere lab se kasb i rang 1 firogh Khat i piala sarasar rugal gulchin hat (When you drink the wine acquires colour from your lips while the cup looks at you with the greedy eyes of the gardener) Kion na ho chashmi butan melu i fughafil kion na ho Yaani is beemar ko nazarra se parhez hai (Why should not the eyes of the idol be engrossed in inattention? This patient is forbidden to see anything ) The beloved is compared to an idol of stone which ·68 ETERNAL FLAVE always appears to be too absorbed in thoughts to look at the admirer Doja hai dil agar usko bashr hai kya kehije Hua raqeeb to ho namabar hai kya kehiye (If the go between has given her his heart let him What can I say? He too is a human being If he has turned my Tival let him After all he is my messenger ) The lover's messenger himself turned a lover the moment he saw the beloved and thus became his rival But the poet does not mind it because after all the messenger too is a human being Moreover since he has carried his messages to her, it is not fair to reproach him Hai mujhe abri baharı ka baras kar khulna Rote rote gham 1 furgat men ſana ho jana (It is no more than a cloudburst for me to dissolve my self into tears of separation) To annihilate bimself by crying his heart out over separa tion from the beloved is a small matter for the lover-as small as the burst of a cloud in the rainy season Mund gay ın kholte hi kholte aankhen Ghalib Yar lae meri balin pe use par kis wagat (In vain I looked till the eyes finally shut They brought her to my bedstead only when I could see no more) The lover kept his eyes open in the hope of seeing his beloved one day but when his friends were at last able to persuade her to visit bim the light had gone out of his eyes Sar phorna no Ghalıb : shorida haal ka Yad aagaya mujhe teri deewar dekh kar (The sight of your house reminds me of the days when I used to hit my head against walls hikt mad) Raai mashooq na rusna ho jae 11 arna mar jane men kuchh bhed nahın (Were it not for fear of disgracing the beloved I woulo ·Ghalib s Ghazals 69 me gladly die There is no secret in death as such ) De nous qadr zıllat ham hansı men talenge Baare aashna nikla unha pasban apna (I shall laugh away whatever humiliation she may heap on How nice that her watchman turned out to be an acquain tance of mine') Hamnashn mat keh Le barham kar na bazm i aish i dost Wan to mere nala ko bhi aitbaar I naghma hai (Do not say I am disrupting the happy assembly of the beloved with my wails because there even my lament is enjoyed like a song) Raha bla men bhi main mubtalae afat i rashk Blat jan hai ada teri ik jahan ke liye (The fact that your blandishments are a source of distress to the whole world has kept me a prisoner of jealousy How I wish your coquetry was meant only for me!) Kion jal gaya na taab i rukh 1 yar dekh kar Jalta hun apni taaqat 1 deedar dekh kar (Why didn t I burn with the radiance of the beloved s face? Now I am burning with anger over my strong eyesight which has withstood her glare ) Oljl te ho tum agar dekhte ho aeena Jo tum se shahr men hon ekdo to kionkar ho (You get irritated with your reflexion in the mirror What would happen if there were one or two more like you in town the The beloved becomes jealous even of her own reflexion when she looks into the mirror What would be the condition of her mind if there were a few more beautiful women Wkt ver y tuc town' She woald surely go mad with Jealousy Aronkar us but se rakhun jan aciz Kya nahın hai mujhe eeman a (Why should I value life more than the beloved ? Dont ·70 ETERNAL FLAME I hold dear my faith?) To sacrifice life for the sake of the beloved is the real religion, according to the poet Therefore, if the lover bas any regard for his faith he should not hesitate to die for her Khat likhenge garche matlab kuchh na ho Ham fo aashiq hain tumhare nam ke (I shall continue to write letters even if there is nothing to say because I am a lover of your name) Ishq ne Ghalıb nikamma kar diya Warna ham bhi aadmi the kam he (Love has left Ghalb unfit for anything otherwise, he too was a useful man) Wo aaen ghar men hamare Khuda hi qudrat har Kabhi ham unko kabhi apne ghar ho dekhte hain (How wonderful that she should have graced my house with a visit! Sometimes I look at her and sometimes at the house') The lover is wonderstruck that the beloved should have come to a house like his! Ghalib had varied experiences of life He was a genius without wordly luck But fortunately these things did not cow him down and he did not turn sarcastic like Swift or pessimist like Keats though a feeling of despondency is easily discernible in some of his verses Ranj se khugar hua insan to mit jata hai ranj Mfushkalen itni parın mujh par ke aasan ho gaeen (When man gets used to suffering the suffering disappears I faced so many troubles that it became easy for me to solve them) It is our experience that when we are overwhelmed by difficulties we stop worrying about them any more This was the case with Ghalib as well There was no end to his troub les with the result that he became insensitive to them and therein lay their solution ·Ghalib s Ghazals 71 karte kis munh se ho ghurbat ki shikaat Ghalb Tumho bemehrt i yaraan i vatan yad nahın (How dare you complain O Ghalib against the strangers? Don t you remember the indifference of your own countrymen) Mujhko dyar i ghair men mara watan se door Rakh li mere khuda ne meri bekası ki sharm (Death came to me in a stranger s house far away from my country That way God took care of my helplessness and poverty) Nobody wants to die in a foreign land but Ghalib thanks God for giving him such a death (he is only imagining it) be cause he has no shroud or a tomb and as such can avoid the uncharitable remarks of his countrymen It is an accusation against the poor return for his labours Kehte hain jeete hain umeed pe log Ham ko jeene hr bhi umeed nali (Men they say live on hope As for me, I hope not to live) Munhasr marne pe ho vishi umeed Na umeedı uskı dekha chahiye (It is worth knowing the extent of the dismay of one whose hope rests on his death) Koee neeranı si weeranı har Dasht ko dekh ke ghar jad aja (What desolation' I am reminded of home when I see the desert ) The poet thinks that his home is the most desolate place in the world He is reminded of its solitariness when he sees a desert Darja i ma asi tanah aadr se hua kiusik Mera sar i daman bhi ahbı tar na hua tha (The river of sins dried up for want of water while I had not dipped even the froge of my skirt in it) The poet has exhausted the list of all possible sins and yet ·72 ETERNAL FLAME ie not even a fraction of his desires have been satisfied Ham kahan ke dana the kis hunar men jakta the Besabab hua Ghalib dushman dasman apna (I was neither learned nor a master of any art Why then for nothing did the heaven turn against me?) In sablon se paon ke ghabra gaya tha main Ji khush hua hai rahko purkhar dekh kar (My foot sores had scared me but the sight of the thorny path has put my mind at ease) Zindgi men to wo mehfil se utha dete the Dekhun ab mar gay e par haun uthata hai mujhe (They used to turn me out of the assembly when I was alıve Now that I am about to die let me see who turns me out carries my corpse to the grave) Aur ba ar se le ade agar toot gaya Jam 1 Jam se je mera jam i safal achha hai (My cup of mud is better than the cup of Jamshed If it breaks I can buy a new one from the bazar) The allusion is to Ghalib s rich rivals who enjoyed royal patronage and therefore could afford to keep expensive articles Another couplet on the same subject Tum shahr men ho to hamen hya gham jab uthenge Le agenge barar se jakar dil o jaan aur (1 am not worried if you are in the town je well off When I want a heart and life I shall go to the market and get them) Ghalib s verses are full of deep philosophic truths er pressed with remarkable facility in the language of a mystic For example Hai ghaib 1 ghaib jisko samajhte hain ham shahud Hain Shrab men banus jo jooge howo khuob men (It is the absence of absence which we call manifestation Those who have awakened in a dream are still dreaming ) The eternal conflict to be or not to be was always ·Ghalbs Ghazals 73 there in Ghalib's mind as is evident from this verse Na tha huchh to Khuda tha kuchh na hota to Khuda hota Duboja mujh ko hone ne na hota main to hya hota (When I was not born I was God and had I not been born I would have remained God My being here has been the cause of my ruin What would have happened if I were not born ?) Ghalıb, while trying to convey succinctly the direct awareness of the mystic that there is no being but God and that God is all, laments that his coming into the world has been the cause of his undoing He is inspired by an unexpressed faith in God Almighty and he alludes to Him again and again Milna tera agar nahin aasan to sell hai Dushuar to yaht hat ke dushuar bhi nahın (Were it impossible to reach you it would have simplified matters But the fact is that to find you is also not very diffi cult) The poet would have been content to leave the matter alone if he were convinced that God was beyond his reach Then there would have been no problem before him He would as well have given up all effort But the trouble is that it is not so difficult to find Him Hence he cannot give up the search and must continue to suffer Ishrat 1 qatra hai darya men ſana ho jana Dard ka had se gu_rna har dana ho jana (The drop becomes happy when it merges in the Ocean When pain passes the stage of toteration it turns into a cure ) Just as a drop of water loses its significance or individuality by getting lost in the ocean so also man loses all sense of pain when he dies In other words, death brings him cure and emancipation Qaid i hay al o band i gham asal men dono ek hom Maut se pahle aadmi gham se najat pade kion ·74 LTLRNAL FLAVE (Liſe imprisonment and the sentence of sorrow are the same thing Why should then man find delucrance before death) Life and grief go hand in hand and therefore there is no point in secking deliverance from the difficulties of living until death intervencs Chalia Inın thori door harık ic ro ke saath Pelichanta nahin Irun abhi rahbar ho main (1 join everyone whom I sec walking fast and accompany him up to some distance So fu I have not recognised the right guide ) A man in search of God is too willing to accompany or follow anybody in whom he sees something unusual or who can perform some miracle This process continues in the hope that the seeker might one day find God but it turns out to be an illusion and the right person who can really guide him is seldom found Raat din gardish men hain saat aasman Ho rehega kuchh na kuchh ghabraen hya (The seven skies are rotating day and night Something is bound to happen Why should I then worry ?) Harchand subukdast hue butshakni men Ham hain to abhi ralı men har sang i garan aur (What use if I became proficient in breaking idols? There will always be a heavy stone in my path so long as I live) Life itself is a heavy weight on man and howsoever hard he may try to push it away, it will always be there as long as he is alive Once the destination is reached Ghalıb has no complaint He says Safcena jaoke kinare pe aalaga Ghalsó Miuda se Aya sitam o jor i nakhuda kehiye ·Ghalib's Ghanals 75 (Now that the ship has reached the shore what is the use of complaining against the tyranny of the boatman ?) Although we find Ghalib has devoted much of his time and energy to writing verses on love and wine, he is not altogether lacking in valuable moral teachings The moralist in him finds expression in couplets like these Ibn Mariam lua kare koee Mere dukh hi dawa kare hoee (How am I concerned with the son of Mary? There should be someone who can heil my wounds ) Rok lo gar ghalat chale hoee Baksh do gar khata kare hoee (Check a man if be goes astray Forgive him if he makes a mistake ) Na suno gar bura hahe koee Na kaho gar bura hare koee Hear not if someone speaks all of you Complain not if he acts wrongly) Kon har jo nahın har hajatmand Ais ki hajat rawa kare koee (Who is there who is not needy? How can anyone help him ?) Kya kra Khir ne Sikander se Ab kise ralinuma kare koee (You know what Khizt did to Alexander Whom can we now trust as our guide ?) Jab tawakho li uth gayee Ghalıb kion kisi ha gila kare hoee (When we have lost all hope why should we complain against anyone?) Baske mushkil har har ham ka aasan hong Aadmi ko bhi mujyasar nahın insan hona ·76 HIIYAL FLAME (it is not caly for every tak to te caty Erco a tian cannot casily be a man) In Urdu aadmi and Insan both stand for man The first one is taken from the Persian language and the other from the Arabic Idiomatically, honeser insan has come to mcan all that is good, human and manly in mun The poct therefore means that it is not cosy for a man to be manly Ghalib mainly prided himself on his unique and inımı table stylc Its simplicity and graec raftled his more aMuent rivals and, as if to teise them he said Jarob na no samjhe hain na samjhensen eri taas De aur dil unko jo na de mujhko atan aur (O God they have neither understood me nor will they understand Gre them another heart to follow my poetry rather than giving me another tongue to explain it to them) The allusion is to critics who dubbed Ghalıb s versos as meaningless or beyond comprehension Bil jate hain ham aap mala i Julhon he sagth Lekin ay) ar i raba / Aharidar delh her (1 sell myself also along with my compositions but only alter scrutinizing the crafty nature of the buyer ) Dekhna taqrir Aile zat ke jo us ne kaha Mfain ne se jana ke goja je dhl mere dil mien hal (Sec the charm of his talk We feel as of what he said was also in our heart ) This is quite a common crperience Whenever we are impressed by someonc s speech, wc feel as if he has said just the thing that we wanted to say The way Ghalib recited his verses, particularly at mushai ras had a remarkable ciiect on the listeners Hair writes "Before the Mutiny when the mushairas were held in the Hall of Audience at the Red Fort, I heard him recite a ghazal in the early hours of the morning As he got his turn last of all, he remarked, Gentlemen, let me also now sing my bhairavi ·Ghalb s Ghazals 77 Then he recited one Urdu and one Persian ghazal in such a melancholy voice as would make it appear that he was complaining against lack of appreciation of his verses by the audience' Though Ghalıb wrote a large number of qasıdas and eulogies (mostly in Persian) the rewards he received were too small compared to the effort involved However, he had to resort to writing verses in praise of the King or some other nobleman whenever he needed money But he scru pulously shunned satırısıng anybody to which many other poets resorted either out of malice or as blackmail tactics Ghalib did not write a single lujow (derisive poem) We do not find in Ghalib s compositions studies of nature and natural beauty and lengthy and connected des criptive poems like those written by Wordsworin ana Tennyson This is because the ideals of poetry followed in the East and the West until a few decades back were in some respects quite dissimilar Ghalib s lot was cast in entirely different surroundings and he did not get opportunities that were available to the Western poets Had he been born in the West he would have perhaps done equally well in writing poetry of nature A few Urdu poets like Iqbal, who came on the scene after Ghalıb and wbo had the benefit of an intimate touch with the West wrote some excellent pieces on the objects of nature Evermore poets will compose verses on evermore subjects subjects that seemed unworthy of treatment to the greats of the nineteenth century But the ghazal and the way Ghalib handled it will continue to rule supreme in the realm of Urdu letters A maestro of the art in the fullest sense of the word, Ghalib lived for literature and died serving its cause up to the very last days of his life Just as there has been no second Kali Das in Sanskrit or a second Shakes peare in English though century after century bas rolled by, similarly one cannot visualise a second Gbalib in Urdu in the centuries to come ·5 AS PROSE VRITER FEW LOVERS OF THE Urdu language other than the litterateurs, know that Mirza Ghalib was as great a master of prose as of poerry If his poetry is full of deep thought and meaning, his prose is a model of simplicity combined with elegance of style and purity of diction He writes as he would speak and there is a certain amount of flow and rhythm about his narrative which is spontaneous and highly satisfying to the mind However his fame as a poet bas all but eclipsed his work as a prase writer This is because of the existence of a curious feature in the growih of almost al languages--the progress in poetry preceding advancement in prose But in the final analysis the real strength of a literature is by and large judged from the quality of its prose To begin with, Urdu prose, like Urdu poetry, followed the pattern of Persian prose which or the most part was ornamental and superficial and lached in sincerity and depth of feeling The Darrative consisted more or less of rhymed sentences because the emphasis in those days was on versi fication which was the hallmark of an intellectual s status Moscover it was mostly the poet who sometimes wrote prose as well A majority of the educated persons carried on their correspondence in verse form The result was that na m ·As Pose Writer 79 (poetry) left nasr (prose) far behind in the race for winning popular approbation It was not until the establishment of the Fort William College in Calcutta by the East India Company in 1800 that a serious effort could be made at writing simple Urdu prose The English officers of the Company found it difficult to carry on the administration, especially at the lower level, in English which the Indians with a few exceptions did not follow The need arose for translating statute books and various other docum®nts into a language that could be understood by the largest number of people of the subject race A special department was opened in the college for this purpose As many as fifty books were written and translated into Urdu in the first twenty years of the college s existence under the guidance of an Urdu knowing Englishman Dr John Gilchrist Indian authors and translators were given the honorific of "munshi They, in reality were the pioneers of Urdu prose that was genuinely free from the encumbrances of poetry Among those who made a name in the college were Lallu Lal Mir Aman Sved Haider Baksh and Nihal Chand Lahori Mir Aman s greatest service to Urdu prose was his translation of Amir Khusto s book Chahar Dervesh which became extre mely popular among the people The Christian missionaries working in India had the Bible translated into Urdu and other native languages in order to draw more and more adherents to their faith A Muslim scholar Shah Rafi ud Din for the first time translated the Quran into Urdu Some Sanskrit books, like Shakuntla , were also translated But curiously it was a European hailing from Holland, who compiled the first Urdu grammar and dictionary Urdu prose received 1 further impetus witb the opening of the Delhi College in 1827 and the formation of a literary society there in 1842 A number of books were written and translated into Urdu under the auspices of this society As a result of these efforts Urdu prose achieved respectability ·80 ETERNAL FLAME and found an abiding niche in the people s hearts Its most glorious hour, however, came in 1832 when the Government of the day declared Urdu to be an official and court language of the country It is on record that Queen Victoria after she took over the administration of the country from the East India Company showed keen interest in learning Urdu Munshi Abdul Karim, a renowned teacher of Agra, was taken to England to teach her Urdu Simultaneously with the work that was being done at Delhi and Calcutta, Urdu prose was taking rapid strides in Lucknow where it received valuable support and encourage ment from the rulers of Oudh, especially Nawab Asaf ul Daula (1775 1797) Among the wellknown authors of this region were Faqir Mohammed Goya, (Publication Bustani Hikmat) Rajab Ali Beg Saroor (Publication Fasana 1 Ajaib), and Rattan Nath Sarshar (Publication Fasana i A ad) It was, however left to Mirza Ghalib to rid Urdu prose of much of its dispensable wordage, artificiality and embellish ments He initiated a simple, natural and fascinating style of prose which became a model for other writers and laid the foundation of chaste modern Urdu Ghalib did not write books in prose on any particular subject but his Urdu letters (before 1850 he wrote in Persian only) to his friends, pupils and the ruling elite are samples of bis offhand and effortless writing They shine with the lustre of his towering personality and unmatched wit The conversational touch which he introduced made them highly readable and aesthetically satisfying In their letters, Ghalib and his correspondents frequently discussed each other s problems in a letter to Tafta, Ghalıb tells us how greatly he enjoyed his correspondence He says 'Well sit yould you continue to be cross or would you male peace with me? (probably a reference to something Tafta bad mentioned) If you cannot get reconciled to me you should at least tell me the reason why you are angry In my solitude I live chiefly on letters from friends When I ·As Prose Writer 81 receive a communication from a friend, I regard it as a visit from him There is not a day on which I do not receive several letters from various places In fact, on several days the postman brings letters more than once, a few in the morning and a few in the evening This keeps me busy as well as amused and I easily pass my day in perusing them and in having the pleasure of writing replies Ghalib used simple and matter of fact epithets for addressing his correspondents He discarded the use of verbiage and unnecessary appellations in vogue in Persian letter writing He would call the addressee in the most intrmate and informal manner to make it appear as if the two are engaged in a friendly chat Mian, Maharaj brother, friend and dear were the expressions he mainly employed depending on the status of the person addressed After a word or two of greetings, he would straightaway broach the subject matter of his letter He disliked circumlocution Humour and frankness mark his style throughout He conveys his senti ments freely and fearlessly and calls for similar candidness in reply Ghalıb's best contemporaries tried to imitate his prose style and some of them did succeed in doing so to a consider able extent This he acknowledges in a letter he wrote to Mir Mehd: Majruh Ghalib observes "May you live long, Mır Mehdi Well done! A hundred thousand compliments What a nice style of Urdu writing you have evolved! I have begun to feel jealous Now listen All the wealth of Delhi in gold and pearls and jewellery has flowed into an area of Punjab as a result of the loot that followed the Mutiny But this style of writing was my peculiar property It has been looted by a cruel man who resides in Ansari Mohalla of Panipat However I bear him no grudge May God bless him The allusion is to the addressee himself and Mır Majrub could not but take it as a compliment The ideal of prose writing set by Ghalib became the most popular and fashionable style of his period and has ·82 ETERNAL FLAME remained so till today None of the great Urdu writers who followed Ghalib like Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Maulan? Mohammed Husain Azad and Maulvi Zaka Ullah, could remain uninfluenced by Ghalib s writings Ghalbs letters have been collected in a book called Urdu I Mualla A few not included it have been publi shed under the title Udi Hindi Besides Ghalib wrote some commentaries, a few prefaces and three treatises, namely Tegh . Tez Nama i Ghalib ind Lataif 1 Ghalib There are also a few portions of 1 novel which could not be completed due to his death Ghalıb s letters have great historical value They gre us information about the conditions in Delhi in the middle of the nineteenth century Some of them give a graphic account of the happenings during the Mutiny These letters also serve as the best introduction to his personality and if arranged in the chronological order they tell the story of his life more faithfully than even the best of biographies could do In a letter dated 25th August, 1867, when he was nearing the end of his life, Ghalib s tells a friend (Saif ul Huq Sayyah) of his growing disabilities and apologises for being unable to write to his friends as he used to "I got both your letters but could not reply Before now I used to write while lying in bed Now I cannot do even that My hands tremble and my eyesight is weak You must take me to be one on the eve of his departure from this world" Writing to another friend earlier in the same year, Ghalib traces the history of his forefathers The letter reads thus "You want to know something about me and the Khulat which I am entitled to As regards my nationality I am a Turk belonging to the Seljuk dynasty My grandfather came to lodia in the time of Shah Alam The Moghal empire was then on its decline He got into service as an officer with only 50 horsemen under him and with the distinction of nagara and nishan and a fertile parganalt was given to him toward He says ·As Prose riter 83 He got the salaries of his men and himself The state of things was unsettled after the death of Shah Alam and the parganah was lost My father Abdullah Beg, then took service at Lucknow under Nawab Asaf ud Daula and from there went to Hydera bad to serve Nawab Nizam Ali Khan as leader of 300 horse men He was employed for several years but owing to some dispute he lost that job and came to Alwar He got into the employ of Raja Bakhtawar Singh and was killed in a battle I was then brought up by my uncle Nasrullah Beg, who was the Subedar of Akbarabad on behalf of the Mahrattas In 1806 the Subedar's jurisdiction was changed into that of a Commissioner appointed by the British Govern ment under General Lake General Lake asked my uncle to get some recruits for the British Government together a brigade of 400 cavalry men He was to get Rs 1 700 a year as his personal allowance and a jagir of more than a lakh of rupees per annum for life but he suddenly died and the brigade was disbanded and some pension in cash was allowed to his heirs in lieu of the jagır That pension I am getting now I was only five years of age when my father died and only eight years old when I lost my uncle I went to Calcutta in 1830 and got an inler view with the Governor General I was given a knlar of seven pieces of cloth, a plumed head dress and a pearl necklace Since then a khilat of the same kind was granted to me whenever there was a durbar at Delhi After the Mutiny my khilat and my entry into the durbar were stopped on the ground that I was one f the associates of the late King Bahadur Shah My application showing my innocence was then examined and the trouble ended after three years and the khlat was restored This was a remnant of the estate which I had lost and not a reward for any service rendered by me A letter to Saif ul Huq Sayyah describes one of the sources of income on which Ghalib depended for a long time It says "For twelve years the late Nawab Yousaf Ali Khan of Rampur ·84 ETERNAL FLAME every month used to send his verses to me along with a draft for Rs 100 He never asked me for a receipt for the money he gave He used to enclose the draft in his letter and occa sionally sent a lump sum of Rs 200 or Rs 250 as a gift During the disturbed period following the Mutiny my income from the Fort vanished and the pension from the British Government was stopped It was through the kindness of the Nawab of Rampur who continued sending my salary every month besides some other sums, that I and my depen dents managed to live in those days The present Nawab, may God preserve him long continues to send me my monthly salary as usual though I do not know whether occasional gifts will continue or not An incident that distressed the poet most is described in one of his letters to Tafta Ghalib had written a gasıda and sent it to Nawab Nasır ud Din Haider of Lucknow The Oudh ruler had granted him a reward of Rs 5000 which never reached Ghalib as it had been misappropriated by some greedy courtiers through whom it was to be handed over to bim In reply to Tafta s letter which probably alluded to that particular qasida, Ghalib said . You have reminded me of a very old story that has revived a sore spot in my heart A gasida was submitted through Munshi Mohammed Husain to Roshan ud Daula and through the latter to Nawab Nasır ud Din Haider of Lucknow The Nawab ordered Rs 5000 to be sent to me on the very day the qasıda reached him The middleman Mohammed Husain, never joformed me of this order The late Muzaffar ud Daula came to Delhi from Lucknow sometime after this and told me about it, but he asked me not to tell Mohammed Husain that he had given me the information I wrote to Sheikh Imam Baksh Nasikh to find out the face of my qasıda He wrote in reply that a reward of Rs 5 000 had been given by the ruler of Lucknow but Roshan ud Daula had himself kept Rs 3 000 out of the sum and given Rs 2000 to Mobammed Husain asking him to send to Ghalib any amount he liked out of Rs 2,000 ·As Prose Writer 85 Nasikh enquired from me whether Mohammed Husain had sent anything to me I replied that I had not received even five rupees out of the total sum of Rs 5,000 On hearing this, Nasikh again wrote to me that I sbould send him a fetter statiog that I did not know whether any reward for my gasıda had been given by the King He promised that he would manage to place this letter before the ruler and to get the person who had taken my money to disgorge it I wrote as desired but on the third day after the dispatch of my letter I heard that Nasır ud Din had died You can see for yourself what I could do and what could be done by Nasıkh after this misfortune This was another instance of Ghalib chasing money and it eluding him in devious ways It is rather strange that despite his fondness for books, Ghalib did not buy them for bis own use or for building up a library of his own Perhaps he thought that this would interfere with his practice of helping his friends and pupils as the money at his disposal was always limited He appears to have possessed a retentive memory in his youth and to have absorbed and digested all that he read He had engaged a person to bring him books on hire from the bazar Those of his contemporaries who were friendly with him sent bim copies of their publications as gifts or for comments Even these he would not retain and gladly offered to others Ghalıb was, however, an omnivorous reader He consi dered it an ideal bliss to have sufficient readın, material (though mostly hired or borrowed) on his bookshelf and plenty of good wine in stock In a letter to Mir Majrub, he observes, speaking of himself in the third person 'Maulana Ghalib is very happy these days Dastan | Amir Ham”a a book extending over 960 pages and a volume of Bostan : Khayal, of about the same size, have just arrived and he has got 17 bottles of pure wine in his storehouse He reads througliout the day and drinks throughout the night Any one who has attained this much deserves to rank with Jamshid or Alexander ·86 ETERNAL FLAME He was a regular reader of newspapers that came out from Delhi Lucknow Agra and Calcutta There are references to several of them in his letters As he was an important visitor to the palace, it was necessary for him to know what the newspapers wrote about the comings and goings in the royal court and appointments and transfers of officials Calcutta was the headquarters of the British Government whereas Lucknow and Agra were among the main centres of literary activity The newspapers carried reports and comments on the literary events and controversies of the day Ghalib did not hesitate to take himself into the thick of a polemical discussion Hence it was entirely necessary for him to re main posted with all that was happening in the literary circles Like an established artist, Ghalib was very punctılıous about the correct printing of his works He wanted them to be as accurate as possible in one of his books the word nahib got printed by mistake instead of some other word He detected the error while the book was still in the press but only after a large number of forms had been turned out He at once wrote to Tafta, who was supervising the publication as follows The two leaves in which the word nahib occurs may be removed and corrected and other leaves substituted for them It does not matter whether such leaves number 400 or 500 Please get them all changed and I shall bear whatever expense is incurred on the paper so wasted If this word stands as it is it will disfigure the whole book and that will be a blot on my name It is an Arabic word I had corrected it in the manuscript but it seems to have escaped the attention of the lithographer I am dying of nahıb (fear) of this word and would like to know soon if it has been corrected He was equally keep on the excellence of his books get up Some of his letters show what great value he attached to neatly and beautifully got up books Once he received from Tafta a copy of the latter s book Sunbalıstan It had ·As Prose }}riter 87 so shabby an appearance that Ghalıb instead of thanking Tafta for the present wrote "You have wasted your money and also your composition and my corrections What a bad copy of your verses this is! You could have understood what relation your serses bear to this bad copy if you had been here these days and seen some of the unfortunate Begums from the old royal house going about in the sireets whose faces are as beautiful as the moon but whose clothes are quite dirty and shabby and the shoes all torn I am not exaggerating things by using this simile but to be frank I regard Sunbalıstan as a beautiful sweetheart in an ugly dress The poet gives vent to similar feelings in a letter to Mir Majruh Good printing done at Lucknow Whosoever gets his Diwan printed there is praised to the skies and the beauty of caligraphy adorns his words But curse be on Delhi, its weather and its printing The publishers here do not know how to mention the name of a writer properly I have been Carefully examining every copy as it was sent to me The caligraphist used to send me the copy through another man and now that the Diwan has been published and a copy has been presented to me as its author, I find that the mistakes are all there and the copyist never took the trouble of correct- Therefore I have had to add a list of corrections and shall have to purchase some copies for distribution whether I like them or not I shall send three copies to you and my other two friends there I am not pleased with the book nor will you be Whenever Ghalib published a book, he himself bought a large number of copies from the publisher for free dis tribution among his friends When Nama i Ghalb came from the press, the poet wrote to a trend I got 300 copies of the book printed at my cost and distributed them far and wide I cannot send you a copy today because parcels are not taken by the post office on Sundays Tomorrow I shall send you all the copies that are left with me But Ghalıb was upset if anybody offered him the price of the ing them ·88 ETERNAL FLAME book asked for This aspect of his character is brought out in a letter he wrote to Mir Majruh 'You tell me that there are many people wanting to purchase the book and that I should let you know the price Well, I am not a broker a bookseller or the manager of press The owner of the Ahmadi Press where the book has been published is Mohammed Husain Khan Its manager is Mirza Ammun Khan The press is in Shahadara and the owner lives in Kucha Rai Man of Delhi. The price is six annas Postage is extra You may give this information to the intending pur chasers who may order any number of copies they may like by post They may remit the price either in cash or send postage stamps to the above address You and I have nothing to do with this matter Ghalib s writings do not show any traces of contact with the West though a fairly large number of English words had infiltrated into the Urdu language before he died He did occasionally make use of foreign words in his letters but that is about all Otherwise, his thoughts, both in his poems and prose, were basically Eastern and clothed in a purely Oriental garb He lived in an age when India's composite culture could successfully hold its own against the West s dominat ing influences However Urdu writers like Halı, Syed Ahmed Khan and Nazir Ahmed, who soared into prominence after Ghalb were considerably influenced by tbe works and style of English authors ·6 PERSIAN WORKS FOR A LONG TIME Mirza Ghalib devoted his literary energies to the writing of Persian verses He considered it like other leading poets of his day, something below his dignity to write in a language that was not yet thought ripe for literary expres sion of a high order His mind was so much imbued with the Persian mode of thought and expression that he scoffed at friends who suggested to him to write in Urdu Even when he did turn his attention to this language, his verses contained an overdose of Persian words and idioms and had only a sprinkling of Urdu words As such, they could hardly be called Urdu ghazals Ghalib was so proud of bis Persian Diwan that he declared that he must not be judged on the basis of the quality of his Urdu poems He said Farsi bin ta babını naqsh hai rangarang Bigu ar az majmua 1 Urdu ki be rang i manast (Read my Persian verses if you want to see pictures of various hues Overlook my Urdu collection for it is devoid of my true colour) The English poet Milton too had thought similarly when he said that his early writings in classical Latin would bring bim greater fame than his English effusions But it was his ·90 ETERNAL FLANIB magnum opus Paradise Lost written in English that made him immortal Most other European writers of the pre- Renaissance era too preferred the medium of Latin to their own languages An outstanding exception was Dante who opted for his Italian dialect to write The Divine Comedy There is no doubt that Ghalıbs Persian ghazals are of a high standard and he could hold his own against many of the best writers of Persian including those of Iran itself He received his early education from an eminent Persian scholar Sheikh Muazzam who lived in Agra where Ghalib spent his boyhood But a real flair for Persian he got from his contact with a Parsi scholar of the Persian language Mulla Abdul Samad This acquaintance gave a big impetus to Ghalıb s natural aptitude for Persian and made him a pro found scholar of this language Another factor that contributed to Ghalib's preference for Persian over Urdu was his stay in his father in law's (Mirza Ilahı Baksh Khan Maruf s) house in Delhi Maruf was a Persian poet of no mean merit Little did Ghalıb however, know at that stage that his fame in India would entirely rest on his Urdu ghazals and not on the Persian writings on which he prided bimself so much But it is a pity that his Persian verses did not become popular even in Iran where this language is commonly spoken This has also been the fate of Sir Mohamed Iqbal s Persian poems He too set much store by his writings in that foreign language The only Indian writer of Persian who finds a mention in Professor Edward G Browne s monumental work, Literary History of Persian is Amir Khusro The professor says "Good and chaste Persiin has very rarely been produced or admired in Hindustan where we find a Baboo Persian pre cisely similar to Baboo English He adds Absurd exaggerations, recondite words vain epithets, far fetched comparisons and tasteless bombast represent to perfiction the worst style of those florid writers who flouri ·Persian Works 91 shed under the patronage of the Timurids id north eastern Persia and Transoxiana during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of our era and who unfortunately, passing with Babar ipto India, became models and examplers to the bombast loving people of that country Persian litera ture produced in India has not as a rule the real Persian flavour which belongs to the indigenous product Ghalıb s prose works in Persian are Panjahang, Mehri s- Neemroz and Dastanba Panjahang, which consists of five parts, contains his Persian letters which he wrote to his numerous friends and others before the Mutiny "These throw a good deal of light on the conditions prevailing in the country in those days Mehr 1 Neemroz is the story of the Timur dynasty which Ghalıb was commissioned to write in 1850 by King Bahadur Shah After he had completed the narrative from Amir Timur to Humayun s return to the throne, Bahadur Shah asked Ghalib to make it a history of the world from its very beginning The King deputed Hakim Ahsanullah Khan to assist Ghalib in this task The arrange ment was that the Hakim would make the selections to be recorded from books of history and write them in Urdu Gbalıb would then render them into Persian The first volume covering the period from the creation of the world to the times of Chengiz Khan was completed in 1852 The second volume, which was to be called Mah 1 Neem Mah was to tell the subsequent story of the world upto the reiga of Bahadur Shah but it never saw the light of day as Hakim Ahsanullah Khan failed to do his part of the job in time In the mean time, the Mutiny broke out and put an end to tbe line of kings of the Timur dynasty Dastanbo was written during the difficult days of 1857 when Ghalıb had shut himself in his house It is an account of the stormy events that took place during the Mutiny and covers the period upto August 1858 Sıx out of its eighty pages are devoted to a gasida in praise of Queen Victoria There is a piece on the illuminations following the recapture ·92 ETERNAL PLAME of Delhi by the British This book is in pure and orthodox Persian and the use of Arabic words has been restricted to the unavoidable proper names The book that caused the biggest controversy in the realm of Persian literature of the post Mutiny period was Ghalib s Qareh i Burhan which was published in 1862 It is a critical commentary on the Persian dictionary Burhan Qareh of Maulvi Mohammed Husain Tabrizi of the Deccan Ghalıb found in it several contradictions and wrong defini tions of words He also did not agree with many of the authors explanations As he read the dictionary, he made notes on the margin and finally compiled his objections in a book form It invited a flood of criticism as well as praise A Persian scholar, Syed Saadat Ali published a book, Muharrig Qareh i Burhan, condemning Ghalib's work In reply, the Urdu poet s supporters brought out three pamphlets, one in Persian and two in Urdu These were followed by the publica tion of Satel 1 Burhan in Persian by Mirza Rahim Beg of Meerut who also severely criticised Ghalib At this stage, the poet himself joined issue with the champions of Tabrızı s bool and wrote a sixteen page rejoinder Nania i Ghalb, answer ing criticism of his book The critics were however, not to be silenced Onc of them wrote Muaisad Burhan to which the poct replied by bringing out Tegh Ter a journal of 32 pages Only the first issue appeared Someone then wrotc Tegh i Te tar This war of books and pamphlets continued unabated and the last piece Shamshir i Te'lar written by Maulvi Ahmed Ali went unanswered due to Ghalıbs death in 1869 Maulana Hali, writing in Yadgar | Ghalib, concedes that Ghalıb was not always correct in his opinions but defends him on the plea that when he wrote Dateh i Burhan be did not have with him any authoritative books on Persian grammar and mostly went by his memory One of the books written in condemnation of Qatch / Burhan used much vulgar language Its utle was Qareh ul Carch and the author Aminudin Amin was a teacher in a ·Persian Works 93 Patiala School Ghalib decided to ignore it and when someone asked him why he had not replied to Amin's criticism he said "If a donkey kicks you, will you kick it back?' On reconsideration, however, he filed a case of defamation against the author in the court of the Deputy Commissioner Delhs, who was an Englishman Both sides produced a galaxy of learned witnesses and there was a good deal of hair splitting in the court on the meaning of certain words to prove whether they constituted abuse or not In the course of the trial Ghalib realised that it would be difficult to win the case and moved for a compromise which was reached through the good offices of some leading citizens He, however, wrote further comments and explanations on Tabrızı s dictionary and published in 1865 an enlarged edition of Qateh 1 Burhan now called Durafsh 1 Kavanı The collection of Ghalib s Persian poems, entitled Mekhana i Arzoo Saranjam was published in 1845 It con tained about 6,700 couplets His subsequent compositions in Persian were lost in the 1857 holocaust However, his poems composed between the Mutiny and 1862 were publi shed in 1863 under the title of Kulyat Nazmi Farst It con tains about 10,000 verses Some smaller collections of Ghalib's Persian poems, in cluding the famous Masnavi Abr 1 Guharbar, appeared under different titles like Sabd 1 Chin, Bagh 1 Dodar and Dua : Sabah A number of books which contain Ghalıbs Persian letters and other writings and which were in the possession of persons who were in some way associated with the poet, have been published from time to time under various titles These include Mutfarqat i Ghalıb and Muasar : Ghalıb The Masnavi reveals what a tormented soul the poet was carrying In it be boldly expresses the feelings that crowded them selves in his mind when he reflected on the privations he bad suffered and the enjoyments he had missed It is a strong apology to God for having taken to drinking though his. religion forbade it A few of the verses when ·94 ETERNAL FLAMB would read as follows I was sorrowful and wine takes away sorrow, what could I do O the Merciful? An account of wine, music, beauty and scent should be demanded from Jamshid, Bahram and Parveze, But not from a poor man like me who now and then, blackens bis face with the fire of liquor I had no garden where I could enjoy a driok, nor a cellar in which I could store it, No musician to amuse me, nor a sweet heart to sit by me, No fair faced dancers ever danced before me, no noise of minstrels in my courtyard I had many periods of privation and many a spring without winc, Days when rain gladdened the earth and nights when the moon lit the sky were dark in my eyes without a drop of wine The cloud of the month of Babman covered the horizon, while my earthen cup remained as empty as ever Many a spring found me searching for necessaries of life, leaving the door of my house open as there was nothing in it to protect Many a time the world has been gay with the rose and the tulip, while I have lived moodily in my cell Any moments of pleasure that fell to my lot were like a dance of the half dead, I never had a full measure of happiness as was the desire of my heart If I prepared a thread to make a necklace the pearls would break, ·Persian Works 95 And when wine was procured, my cup got broken Do not look at my dress besmeared with liquor, but look at my emaciated frame Thou has kept me poverty stricken, but has kept my heart a prisoner of desires The unpleasant time that I had has turned life a thorn in my side Whenever my heart boiled with desire, a cry of pain reached my ear When I remember my continued disappointments my heart will not be at rest even in Paradise For every sin that thine record may show against me I shall cite a privation to show a desire unfulfilled Then how O God, will justice be done if my unfulfilled desires exceed the sins? Ghalib s Persian writings, though not so wellknown in Iran have been admired by scholars of this language in India According to Maulana Hali and some other critics, his Persian works can compare favourably with those of the best writers of Persian including some of the old masters recognised 10 Iran itself Be that as it may, there is no denying the fact that Ghalib s Persian books are hardly in demand any more and adorn only the shelves of libraries and literary institutes However his Urdu Diwan which made him im mortal will continue to be read and re read by those who follow Urdu, Hindi or Hindustanı ·7 WIT AND HUMOUR Wit is the salt of conversation not the food - llazlitt Happy is the man who can laugh at himself He will never cease to be Amused Tabib BourgIba WIT AND HUMOUR PERMEATE through most of the writings and remarks of Mirza Ghalib Though he was a man of an extremely tender, loving and lovable nature, he always enjoyed an edge over others in repartec He did not spare even King Bahadur Shah and his courtiers whenever they tried to be funny with bim He particularly relished his sallies at the rival poets and detractors whose criticism of his poems was motivated more by malice than a genuine love of the art of versification It seems most of the wellknown writers in history were endowed with an abnormal dose of wit and banter Two of the greatest English authors William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw, almost solely thrived on jests and jokes In America Mark Twain stil rules svpreme in the sphere of witty literature But Ghalıb s humour is a class apart It is neither akın to the buffoonery of Shakespeare nor the farce of GBS nor even the facetiousness and comicality of Twain It is something sublime, self effacing ·Wit and Humour 97 and bighly subtle In fact, it was Ghalib s rich sense of humour that carried this man of poor means through life which otherwise weighed heavily on him on account of his spendthrift pature, the stinginess of his patrons and the obduracy of government officials, besides some personal tragedies like the death of his father and uncle when he had not entered his teens and later of his seven children His joviality and vivacity stood him in good stead again and again and saved him many an awkward situation There are hundreds of anecdotes which show how quick witted was this genius of the realm of letters Ghalıb was very fond of mangoes and would go to any length to get fruit of really good quality His friends and admirers among whom were several Nawabs and noblemer, sent him baskets of the choicest varieties of mangoes from places as far away as Surat, Rampur and Bareilly Yet Ghalib s passion for them remained insatiable At a meeting where, besides Ghalıb a number of nobles were present everybody was expatiating on the qualities of various types of this fruit When it came to the poet to express bis views, he unbesitatingly declared "All mangoes must have two virtues--they must be sweet and plentiful Writing to a friend, he says “I cannot think of anything which I can ask you to send me from Surat What is there to be had which cannot be had here? No doubt, I like mangoes very much, not less than grapes But how can they reach here safely from Surat and Bombay? The Malda is known here as Pewandı and Vilay at They are fine indeed and they would be finer still at Surat but it seems you would be going out of the way to send them from there to Delhi The expense of sending mangoes worth a rupee would come to about four rupees by the parcel post and even then perhaps only ten out of a hundred will arrive here in a sound condition Please give up the idea of sending me any Delicious mangoes of every kind can be bad here in plenty The Nawab ·98 ETERNAL FLAME of Rampur often sends presents of fine fruit from his garden While I am writing this, I have just received to baskets of mangoes from a friend at Bareilly They have been opened in my presence but all except 83 out of 200 have become rotten Once Ghalib was taking 1 walk with the king in a garden of mango trees laden with very tempting fruit The poet looked intently at the trees whereupon Bahadur Shah asked him what he was gazıng at Ghalıb recited a Persian couplet which says that there is not a single fruit in the world which has not got on it the name and parentage of the person who is destined to enjoy it He added I am looking at the mangoes to see if any of them bears my name on it' The King was very much pleased at the implied request and sent him a large quantity of different varieties of mangoes from the royal garden On another occasion, Ghalıb wrote a nice little poem by way of thanks to the King for sending him mangoes One day Ghalıb was chatting in the verandah of his house with a friend Hakim Razı ud Din Khan who had a strong antipathy to mangoes Presently a donkey passed by, saw some mango skins, smelt them and walked away "You remarked the Hakim "mango is a thing even a donkey does not eat "Quite true quipped Ghalib "a donkey does not eat it When Nawab Allaudin Ahmed Khan invited Ghalib to Loharu, the poet wrote Am I blind that I should leave Delhi and go to Loharu at this time it was the rainy season)? In that desert there are neither mangoes nor grapes por any other attraction Sorry sir I can t visit you these days There are scores of verses Ghalıb s Urdu Diwan which show how light hearted he was Oace he read a ghazal in the presence of the King One of its couplets was He masail 1 tasuawuf se tera bayan Ghalb Tujhe ham kali samajhte jo na badakhuar hota see sir 17 ·Yıl and Humour 99 (What mysticism and what a style ! We would have taken you for an apostle had you not been addicted to winc, O Ghalib) On hearing it, Bahadur Shah teasingly remarked "We would not have considered you so (apostle) even then" Ghalib replied 'Your Majesty considers me so eveo now but has said it lest I should become boastful of my proximity to God' Whenever a special dish was prepared in the palace, the King used to send a share of it to his courtiers and com Panions among whom was Ghalib The poet used to thank the royal patron by writing a gata' (stanza) on the subject He wrote the following two verses when the King sent him a loaf made from gram powder Na poochh uski haqiqat hazur wala ne Mujhe jo bheji har besan kt roghnı rott Na khate gehun nikalte na khuld se bahar Jo khate haarate Adam ye besani roti (Do not ask me to describe the taste of the buttered besan loaf which His Majesty has sent to me Only if Adam had eaten this loaf he would not have taken wheat and therefore been thrown out of Paradise) At the time Bahadur Shah s servant brought the loaf Ghalıb was explaining something to a student who had come from outside Delhi After the servant bad left, the student, who was intrigued by this unusual gesture of the King, asked Ghalib what was so peculiar about the gram loaf that the King should have distributed it among bis courtiers The poet replied “Listen, O fool It was gram that once complained to God thus, 'A great many cruelties are perpetrated on me in the world They crush me, grind me fry me boil me and eat hundreds of dishes made of me No one else suffers such barbarities' Thereupon, God said, 'O gram, you better remove yourself from my presence, because I also feel like eating you ·100 ETERNAL FLAME Bahadur Shah was very fond of moong dal and it was frequently cooked in the royal kitchen Once he sent a bowlful to Ghalıb who thanked the King by writing a quat Tain praising the gift Another delicacy which be shared with the poet was prepared from seeds of sem (beans) Ghalib spent his time playing chess and chausar with friends He was once hauled up on the charge of gambling and sent to jail for six months After serving half the term, he was released He want to live with Kale Khan who was the King's spiritual mentor (Pir) and also a well wisher of Ghalib A friend congratulated the poet on his release to which the latter replied 'Before this I was a prisoner of gore (white skinned, ie the British) and now I am a prisoner of kale (dark skinned) Ghalıb had the gift of saying the right thing at the right moment Once a creditor sued him for breach of promise Addressing the judge, the poet said he knew what the outcome of his debt would be but 10 spite of that he took the loan, and so the sentence of the judge would not make much diffe rence to him At this the judge was so pleased that he acquitted Ghalib and paid his debt from his own poket Like Dickens humour with Ghalib was a way of life Even in his despondency he took resort to it Hai khabar garm unke aane ki Aaj hı ghar men boriya na hua She--the beloveds expected today I wish there was a gundy bag in the house--possibly to give her a surprise by hiding) After the Mutiny had been suppressed, most leadiog Muslims of Delht left the city fearing persecution at the hands of the British Gbalıb, however, stayed put in his house in Ballimaran in Chandni Chowk One day a few white soldiers forcibly entered his residence altăough tåe guards posted there by the Maharaja of Patiala tried to stop them Gbalıb writes in Dastanbo that they did not damage or loot any article but only took him along with his servants and some neighbours to Colonel Brown who was staying in a nearby ·VYıt and Humour 101 building that belonged to Haji Qutb ud Din Looking at the poet s cap, the colonel asked Well, are you a Muslim ? ' Ghalib replied Sır, only half What do you mean ?" said the officer The poet clarified "I drink wine and do pot take pork' The colonel laughed Then Ghalib showed him the letter which he had received from the Secretary of State acknowledging receipt of the qasida which the poet had written in praise of Queen Victoria Why did you not present yourself on the Ridge after the victory of the Sarkar ?' asked Brown "I was a commander of four palanquin bearers All of them ran away How could I then present myself ?" Ghalib replied The Colonel thereupon sent him and his companions back home with due courtesies A well wisher of Ghalib, Munshi Moti Lal, who was a head clerk in the Punjab Secretariat of the British Government, called on him after the Mutiny was over The poet s pension had not yet been restored nor had he been allowed to resume his position at the durbar He therefore broached the subject with the visitor and declared 'Call me a kafir (non believer) if I have remained without wine for a single day and a sinner if I have offered nama (prayer) even once Still I am being treated as a rebel Muslim All that Ghalıb wanted to emphasize in his own humorous way was that he was too much of a latitudinarian to be a fanatic Similarly, in one of his quatrains, Ghalib says those observe fast (roza) who have the wherewithal to feast in the evening But he who has nothing to eat when he breaks his fast should be excused if he eats the fast itself The King once asked Ghalib at the end of the month of Ramzan how many fasts he had observed I did not observe one fast replied the poet This could mean that he had observed all the fasts except one and also that he had not fasted even for a day which in reality was the case Ghalıb went to Rampur to meet Nawab Kalab Al Khan He reached there at a time when the latter was about to proceed to Bareilly where he had been called by the Lieute "Let ·102 ETERNAL FLAME nint Governor As the Nawab rose to go, he told Ghalıb * I leave you with God' The poet replied 'Sir, it was God who sent me to you and you are sending me back to Him' meaning that he had come to the Nawab as he (the poet) was poor and the latter rich, all handiwork of God Ghalib used to receive anonymous letters from his rivals and detractors These often contained filthy abuses He opened one such letter in the presence of Maulana Hali It abused the poet's mother Ghalib laughed and said The fool does not know how to abuse It is the daughter who should be abused in the case of an old man like me for the young man the abuse should be directed at his wife the mother should be the target while abusing a child Ghalib s witly remarls became so popular that his friends and admirers flocked to him all the time Every remark that escaped his lips caused amusement among the listeners His contemparary the court poet Zauq was his principal rival though outwardly the two pretended great respect and regard for each other At a get together Ghalib was praising the verse of Mir Taqı Mir whereupon Zauq declared that Sauda was far superior to Mir Ghalib rejoined, 'I thought you were Miri (protagonist of Mir) but now I find you are saudai (an insane person) Ghalib had a legitimate pride in the nobility of his birth and attached an almost fantastic value to the maintenance of his dignity There are a few interesting anecdotes about his sense of self respect and love of independence when the old Delhi College was founded, there was a vacancy in it for a professor of Oriental Literature Ghalib made up his mind to apply for the job He went to see a high Government official in this connection but as he was not received by the officer on this occasion in the manner to which he was accus tomed Ghalib plainly told him that he had come with the intention of asking for the job but had changed his mind because he was not received with the customary ceremony which had usually characterised bis reception on other occa ·IVıt and Humour 103 $1ons The official explained that the previous interviews were in his (Ghalib s) capacity as a leading citizen while on this particular occasion he had come to ask for a job Ghalib replied that he would rather go without the emoluments of the post than suffer a diminution of his respectability Like a true Oriental, Ghalib extended his hospitality to everybody who visited him although his pecuniary condition was none too satisfactory He never went out without his palanquin carried by four persons and met the nobles and other elite of the city on equal terms He made it a point to call on all those who visited him One day Dewan Fazal Allah Khan passed by Ghalib s house in a horse drawn carriage but did not stop to exchange greetings with him The poet sent him a note saying 'I feel thoroughly ashamed today What greater offence can there be than that you should pass by my house and I should not be there to pay you my respects ? The Dewan immediately made amends for his lapse by visiting the poet in the same carriage When Ghalib called on Nawab Mustafa Kban unexpectedly one evening, the latter asked if he had come straight from his house or had visited someone else on the way The poet replied that he owed an anna to a certain person and bad gone there first to make the payment This shows how devastatingly frank he was Ghalib s admirers including men of high status were always keen to do bim a good turn One day Ghalib lay in bed obviously feeling tired Mır Majruh began pressing his feet to give him relief from pain You are son of a Syed (high caste Muslim) Why do you want to load me with a sin ? remonstrated Ghalıb Maruh replied “If you think so, you may pay me for my services As he was about to leave he jokingly demanded his wages Ghalib said What wages? You robbed me of my fatigue and I robbed you of yours money! That squares it up As Ghalib was taking his dinner one hot evening Maulana Halı begin airing him with a handkerchief "You need not ·104 ETERNAL FLAME try to please me, I am not going to leave any kabab for you said Gbalıb Then he related the following story "Dishes of many kinds were laid in the dining room of Nawab Abdul Ahad Khan to suit the taste of his companions, friends and relatives He himself was however, served a special delicacy which was given to no one else One night ma afar (a dish containing costly ingredients) was prepared and placed 10 front of him Among those present was a Dom (member of a low caste) who was a great favourite of the Nawab The latter sent for an empty plate so that he could give part of his dish to the Dom who was looking at it greedily There was some delay in the plate being brought Meanwhile, the Nawab went on eating but at the same time calling for the plate The Dom could no longer restrain himself and said 'Sir there is no need for another plate This plate (from which the Nawab was eating) itself is going to turn empty' Everybody laughed and the Nawab passed on the plate to the menial with what ever was left in it On an inquiry from Mır Majruh if he was receiving his pension all right, Ghalıb wrote "I have learnt the art of living without a livelihood You need have no anxiety on that account the month of Ramzan I spent cating fasts and as for the future I leave it to God If I get nothing else I can easily live on sorrow A friend, Syed Sardar Mirza, visited him Inte in the evening As he got up to leave, Ghalib, who was then very old and could not walk crawled to the door with a candle in hand so that the visitor could locate his shocs For God s sake, dont trouble yourself I shall myself find my shoes protested the friend 'It is not that I brought the candle to make sure that you dont put on my shoes, said Ghalıb Someone wrote to Ghalib telling him about the death of the second wife of bis disciple Umro Singh and the bereaved husbands desire to marry for the third time so that the new wife could look after his children Ghalib ·IY,1 and Humour 105 wrote back as follows I pity as well as envy Umrao Singh My God! Here is a man who twice got rid of his shackles and yet does not want to remain free On the other hand, I have been carrying a noose (referring to his own wife) round my neck for the last 51 years, it neither breaks nor does it strangle me to death Tell this fellow not to make this mistake again I am willing to take care of his children Ghalib was sick of domestic affairs On a winter morning he saw a parrot sitting in a corner of the cage with the head drawn between the wings Addressing it the poet remarked 'O sweet tongued you have neither a wife nor children What are you then worried about? Ghalib wanted to rent a new house He saw one and liked the sitting room but before finalizing the deal, he sent his wife to inspect the ladies apartment She told him that the house was reported to carry a curse Can there be a bigger curse than you ?' Ghalib asked The poet was so much weighed down by age and worries that he began to pray for death Meanwhile, an epidemic broke out in Delhi Mir Majruh who lived in Panipat made anxious inquiries about his health Ghalıb wrote 'Damn this epidemic that cannot kill even seventy year old men and women In his correspondence with friends and admirers the poet was absolutely informal He enjoyed cutting jokes with them even in his letters He wrote to a friend in the last week of December 1858 The friend received the communication on the first of January 1859, and sent his reply the same day In his next letter Ghalib complained My dear you replied in 1859 to a letter sent to you in 1858 This I dont like and on the top of it if I point it out, you will say 'I replied to your letter the same day Ghalib was at his humorous best when describing his own poverty and plight His house was in utter disrepair for lack of funds During the rains, it leaked and the ·106 ETERNAL FLAME walls turned green due to the growth of moss on them Ghalıb wrote a couplet which typifies his sense of humour ind at the same time tells us how hard up he was Ug raha hai dar o deciar se sabza Ghalib Ham byaban men hain aur ghar men bahar aaee hai (Grass is growing on the door and walls of my house It is 1 pity that I happen to be in a desolate place just when spring is visiting my home ) Writing to a friend about his house Ghalib says The sitting room is in a worse condition than the ladies apart ment I am not afraid of death It is lack of rest that is worrying me The roof has turned into a sieve If it rains for two hours, the roof continues to leak for four hours' At a literary get together in Lucknow where Ghalıb happened to be present (he had broken journey on his way to Calcutta) the talk turned to Urdu as it was spoken in Delhi and Lucknow Somebody addressing Ghalib remarked * When the people in Delhi refer to themselves they say apne tajeen while in Lucknow they say aapko Which expres sion you think us better? Ghalib replied 'Aap seems to be more elegant but then there is a snag 10 t For example of you say about me that you regard aapko (me) a paragon of virtue and in reply I say about myself that I regard aapho worse than a dog it will lead to a serious mis understanding Though I shall make this remark about myself you will possibly think I am saying it about you In Urdu, the word aap is used both while referring to one self as well as the addressee Ghalıb acquainted his listeners with the absurdity of this expression in a way that served the purposc as well as caused a good laugh The peculiarity of the Urdu language is brought out in another jole associated with Ghalıb In Urdu as also in Hindi, every noun animate or inanimate has either a masculine or a feminine gender For example the sky the sun the moon, free house (makan) and water are masculine ·Wit ond Humour 107 see while the earth the air, building (imarat), book and table are feminine Ghalib was asked if rath (chariot) was masculine or feminine He replied “Call it feminine if there are ladies in it and masculine of the occupants are men In the daytime in summer, Ghalib sat in a small dingy and dark anteroom on the first floor of his house Its door was so small that one had to stoop to enter it A mattress was the only item of furniture in it In this room on a hot afternoon in the month of Ramzan, Ghalıb was playing chausar with a friend Unexpectedly a venerable personality, Maulana Azurd walked in and was struck aghast to the poet gambling 'I had read in the Hadis (traditional sayings of Prophet Mohammed) that Satan remains imprisoned during Ramzan but today my faith in this saying is wavering said the visitor Pat came the reply from Ghalib 'Sir, the Hadis is absolutely correct But you should know that the place where Satan remains shut up is this very closet Influential people used to pester Ghalib with requests to write couplets signifying their or their son's date of birth and their calendar name This was also a practice peculiar to the Orient To write such a verse called for a good deal of calculation and laborious arrangement of words All the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet have their value in numbers When the numerical equivalents of all the letters of a verse are added up one can arrive at the year of one s birth or death If the value of the letters of a persons name is the same as his year of birth it becomes his calendar name Ghalib was not particularly fond of this vogue When Nawab Allaudın Khan wrote to him to compose a verse signifying the date of birth of his son and to give him a calendar name, the poet replied 'The tiger feeds his cubs on a fresh kill and teaches them how to hunt for food when they grow up You are a poet and God has given you ability Why don t you write a verse on the birth date of your son and give him a calendar name? Why harass a heart broken and grief stricken man like me? Allaudın Khan, I swear by ·108 ETERNAL FLAME your life The first son whose calendar name I wrote did not live This has made me doubt if it was not due to my all luck Whom I praise do not survive Nasirudin Haider and Amjad Ali Shah died after I had written only one qasida in praise of each Wajid Ali Shah (King of Oudh) could stand no more than three gasidas and that was the end of him Ten or twenty qaşıdas by me will take the per son praised even beyond the world of non existence No sir, God be merciful I shall not compose the date of birth nor find out the calendar name of your son Thus without displeasing the Nawab Ghalib excused himself from an em barrassing request A few years before he passed away, Ghalıb wrote his own probable date of death It was the year 1277 according to the Islamic calendar By a coincidence an epidemic broke out in the city the same year but the poet survived it He wrote to a friend "The prediction about my death was not wrong that is, I should have died in that year But I thought it unbecoming of me to die in an epidemic It was cer tainly below my dignity to do so I shall now sort it out after the pestilence has blown over After Ghalıb's death on February 15 1869 several verses and phrases appeared in Urdu newspapers and journals concerning this event The phrase that won the largest measure of agreement among poets and the people was Ah! Ghalib bamurd (Ah! Ghalıb is dead) His numerous disciples and other poets wrote elegies on him both in Urdu and Persian Ghalıb had anticipated this and had said on one occasion IVehshat o Shefta ab mersia likhen sha) ad Margaja Ghalib ashufta nara kehte hain (Wehshat and Shefta will perhaps write elegres now Ghalib is dead say the distressed voices) Syed Ghulam Ali Khan Wehshat and Nawab Mustafa Khan Shefta were among Ghalib s poet friends They also got their compositions corrected by him ·og LOVE OF WINE I wonder often what the Vintners buy One half so precious as the stuff they sell -Omar Khayyam (Fitzgerald translation) Despicable is he who seeks pleasure from wine All I need is forgetfulaess of self day and night --Ghalib (Anthor's translation) Poetry and wine are perhaps inseparable if we go by the record of versifiers, particularly of the East The beloved, the moon, the cloud, the rose, the nightingale, the glow worm--all these and many more manifestations of beauty and grace have fired the imagination of poets the world over and down the millennium but the thing that sustained them and their Muse through thick and this has been the little goblet or the cup of wine their most indispensable accoutrement Most of Mirza Ghalıbs verses on love despair Those on love mainly allude to God and are free from obscenity and lewdness His life was a long tale of despair and disappointment which made him take a sympathetic view of man s failings instead of making him bitter and spiteful This is because he found a good companion 10 wine which he compares to the bręcze in spring are and wine ·110 TINYAL TIAUF Ilol fara mon sharab ll tastr Naidinoshi hai baad aimare (Thc brecze has the cifect of wine It has pradedantins surerfluous) Though alcohol shattered Ghalib s hcalih notwithstand ing the sirfucs he iscrted to this scrse received from it lustre and nourishment Whatcvcr clse he might miss he could not afford to miss his glass of sinc When he had no moncy hc borrowed from friends or bought his require ments on credit Hic was so much cnamoured of wine that When ? pious celebrity condemned his hrbit and warned him against God not accepting his prayers the poct replied What is left to pray for when I get winc in plenty Whencier anybody insited him to prayers, Ghalib crcused himself by saying that the priser hour clashed with his drinking time Oncc hc persuaded himself to visit a mosquc but Icft it without saying the prayer it became Anown later that a scruant had procured a bottle of whisky and rushed to the mosquc to show it to Ghalıb The poct who was in the midst of ma oo (ablutions) could not wait for the nama" to bc oier During his return journcy from Rampur to Delhi in 1860 Ghalib stayed for sometime in Moridabad He passed the first night in an inn but when Sir Syed Ahmed Aban who was in town heard of the poet s presence, he took him to his residence Out of consideration for his well being Sir Syed concealed Ghalb s bottle of winc he was carrying with him in the store room The poet was alarmed when he discovered that the bottle wis missing Sir Syed tried to reassure him but the poet insisted on seeing it He was thereupon taken to the store room There he pro tested that someone had used the wine for the bottle was not as full as when he had brought it He jokingly accused his host of having cheated him knowing the guest s nature, Sir Syed laughed away the remark ·Love of Wine 111 When Ghalib was well off, he ate only the core of chapatis and cast away the corners but when adversity elbowed out Dame Fortune he ate those dry crumbs with wine He once said Ghalib ki faqa masti par qurban jaun Sookhe tukre bhi Khata hai sharab men dubokar (Admirable is the way Ghalib enjoys his poverty he eats dried crumbs soaked in wine) One day there was nothing in the house to cat Ghalib s wife reminded him that he had not drawn his pension from the court for some time As he was returning from the Red Fort with money in his pocket, he entered a wine shop, settled his old account bought a couple of bottles and deposited the balance with the barman as advance for future use He often used to recite this couplet Qaraz kı peete the men lekin samajhte the je ham Rang laegi hamarı faqa mastı eh din (No doubt I borrowed money to buy liquor but I knew my privations would bring a change in my life some day) The change they brought was an enhancement in the beauty and richness of his verse Added to Ghalib s privations was the feeling of solitude in his heart owing to the lack of a suitable companion in life His wife was an extremely pious and religious lady who devoted most of her time to prayers and the observance of fasts She could not appreciate her husbands literary talents and thinking Their marriage therefore was at best a tie of duty and convention A thing that had a depressing effect on the poet s mind was the death of all his seven children one after the other He was left without an issue in his old age He and his wife lavished their affection on an adopted son but unfortunately this boy also died The evening of Ghalıb's life was further embittered by various physical ailments No wonder he took to the ·112 ETERNAL FLAME solace of the cup in which he wanted to drown his misery Even when he was too old and weak to hold the cup, he insisted on wine being kept before him so that he could feast his eyes on it Go hath ko junbish nahın aankhon men to dam hai Rehne do abhı sogar o meena mire aage (Though I cannot move my hand my vision is still all right Let the wine and cup remain in front of me) Another pathetic couplet on the subject is Ata hai dagh , hasrat i dil ka shumar yaad Mujh se mire gunah ka hisab ai Khuda na maang (It reminds me of the number of sore spots in my heart owing to loogings unfulfilled Do not o God, ask me to render an account of my sins) In this one verse is condensed the entire thought and philosophy of Ghalıb How beautifully he has conveyed the idea that the sins committed by man in his life time are bound to be numerous and that feeble humanity is always strug gling heroically against alluring temptations! It is a bold and straightforward expression of the feelings that crowded them selves into the heart of the poet on reflecting that in his life there had been a large number of enjoyments omitted even if there had been some moments enjoyed Some of his other verses on wine are Men aur barm i mae se yon tishnakaam aun Gar men ne ki thi toba saqi ko kya hua tha (It is unthinkable that I should return thirsty from a meet ins If I had resisted the temptation to drink what prevented the barman from forcing it on me?) Hareef i joshish darya nahin khud dari sahil Jahan saqı ho to da ana hai batal hoshiari ka (Honever bard it may try the bank cannot save itself when the river is in spate just as one cannot be too clever inside a bar) ·Love of Wine 113 Mujh tak kab unki bazm men ala tha daur 1 jam Saqı ne kuchh mila na diya ho sharab men (The glass of wine rarely reached me in his assembly The fact that today it was passed on to me makes me doubt if the barman might not have mixed something-poison--it) Jab maekada chhuta to fir ab kya jagah ki gaid Masjid ho madrasa ho koee khanqah ho (After the tavern had been abandoned--where I could drink in the company of rivals-I am not particular about the choice of place It may as well be a mosque a school or a monastery re I am willing to drink at any of these places) Pila de oak se saqi jo munh se nafrar hai Piala gar nahın deta na de sharab to de (Let me O barman drink from my hand if you distike my using your cup Give me wine if you do not want me to touch the cup) Kyon radd 1 qadah kare har zahid Mae har ye magas ki qae nahın hai (Why argue ie reject the cup holy man? It is wine not something vomitted by a bee ie honey) Vaiz na tum piyo na kısı ko pila sako Kya baat hai tumharı sharab , tahur kt (You neither drink o preacher nor make others drink what spiritual wine you keep') Kehte hue saqı se haja aati hai mujh ko Har yon he mujhe durd 1 te jam bahut har (I hesitate to tell the barman but the fact is that I can be content with the remnants of the cup) Notwithstanding the voluminous evidence we have on Ghalib s weakness for wine he was a moderate drinker except as a youth when he drank three or four times a day however he followed Omar Khayyam s advice--drink little, drink occasionally and drink secretly--and fixed the Later, ·114 ETERNAL FLAME quantity permissible to himself Gradually he gave up drinking in daytime altogether He restricted it to just one drink before going to bed Moreover, he mixed two or three parts of rose water in the wine to make it mild In this regard, there is a couplet by Mir Majruh Ghalıb aae hain lau ai Majrul Bada i nab men mila ke gulab (Ghalib has arrived Bring O Majruh pure wie mixed in rose water) According to Maulana Hali the key of the cupboard containing the wine bottles remained with the watchman who had strict instructions not to let the poet open it at night But sometimes in a state of ecstasy Ghalıb insisted on drinking more than the fixed quantity and rebuked the watchman for not obeying his orders but the latter would not oblige Once or twice Ghalib swore that he would not touch liquor any more but the pledge was broken before it was made In this connection the poet writes Two of my friends urged me to give up drinking in the name of religion but I was not taken in by their talk and I did not stop drinking Thereupon they played another trick on me They persuaded the shopkeeper from whom I used to buy liquor on credit not to sell it to me any more Incidentally, his bill too had run up considerably and he refused me any further credit An empty cup and an empty pocket! What could I do? Had I cash I could have got my supply from somewhere else but how can there be cash with Ghalıb? It appears that due to financial stringency Ghalıb had to do without drinking for some time but whenever he got a chance he did not let it slip Ghalib chhuti sharab par ab bhi kabhi kabhi Peeta hun ro: i abr shab-i mahatab men (Ghalıb has given up wine but even so he takes it when there is a cloudy day or a moonlit night) ·Love of Wine 115 After the Mutiny but before his pension was restored, Ghalıb wrote to Mis Majruh "It is morning and bitterly cold A brazier has been placed in front of me After writing every second word I warm up my hands This fire may have heat but not that flame that runs through every vein the moment you gulp down two draughts the heart is strengthened, the head becomes clearer and the voice gets vigorous But this devotee of the barman of Paradise goes about thirstyl Ah how terrible how terrible" Ghalib s favourite drink was Scotch Whisky cularly liked a brand called Old Tom and in one of his letters goes lyrical over its virtues In his prose writings, he has praised Scotch as well as champagoe and various Spanish and Portuguese wines But all these became scarce during the Mutiny and the prices shot up (of course not in the manner they do now) A bottle that sold for Rs 2 (Ah the good old days!) went up to Rs 5 Ghalib found it too expensive He switched over to the indigenous product Occasionally he brewed it in his house also He parti ·9 FRIENDS, PUPILS AND CONTEMPORARIES Mirza Ghalıb had scores of friends and admirers all over the country and was in constant correspondence with most of them He was always full of sympathy for those who suffered on any account or were faced with any difficulties His letters show how much affection he had for each one of them, never sparing expense of effort for their sake They in turn had the greatest admiration and regard for his personality and recipro cated his feelings with love and sincerity Though Ghalıb himself lived for the most part from band to mouth no one informed him of his misery or sorrow without eliciting from him a suitable response He was ever willing to extend pecuniary help to his friends and so were they when it became known that the poet was in trouble With him it was an article of faith to make sacrifices in the cause of friendship Besides, adversity had made him tender towards those who suffered like him If he himself could not do a good turn to the needy he would persuade some rich patron to come forward with help That Ghalib stood by his friends even at a heavy cost to himself can be seen from the way he sunnorted the claims of ·Friends, Pupils and Contemporaries 117 Aminudin Ahmed Khan and Ziaudin Ahmed Khan younger brothers of Nawab Shamsudin Ahmed Khan Had Ghalıb chosen 10 side with the Nawab instead of his brothers, who were his friends in their quarrel over the division of their father's estates, he would not have lost his pension When rumours spread in Delhi about the death of the Raja of Bharatpur, Ghalib became extremely worried about his friends in that Tuler s employment He wrote to Tafta to find out the true position and reply to him by the next post To make sure that the letter reached the addressee he did not affix a postage stamp and instructed Tafta also to send a bearing cover Until not long ago people in India believed that the best way to ensure delivery of a letter was to send it bearing so that the postman took special care to collect the dues from the addressee Ghalib s local friends visited him regularly His house was the meeting place of all his cronies There they chatted and played chess or chausar He entertained them beyond his means and shared their joys and sorrows His friends and admirers in other towns unfailingly called on him whenever they came to Delhi They also sent him gifts especially his favourite fruit mangoes The rich among them sometimes enclosed in their letters small amounts of money as they knew the poet s spendthrift habits Among Ghalib s intimate friends were a large number of Hindus This sh ws that he was free from any nd of religious or racial prejudice Munshi Jawahar Singh Jauhar was the first to collect and publish his Urdu letters Another of his Hindu admirers was Rai Bahadur Pyare Lal an eminent educationist of Punjab Several Hindu friends helped him during the Mutiny when Ghalib had shut himself in his house out of fear and when all his sources of livelihood had disappeared 1 Scc Chapter 11 Fight for Pension page 19 2 See Chapter III The Mutiny and After page 35 ·118 ETERNAL FLAME The number of Ghalib s pupils was legion They belonged to various walks of life Among them were rulers of States and Princes like Nizam, Betab and Taufiq, Government servants like Zaka Qadar and Tafta respectable intellectuals like Shefta, Arshi and Haqır, and ordinary educated men like Munas, Dard and Aram After Zauq s death, the King too had his poems corrected by Ghalib The heir apparent, Mirza Fakhroo, and Bahadur Shah s youngest son, Mirza Khizr Sultan, were also in his tutorship The circle went on widen ing until Ghalib became bedridden Even then he cartied on his labour of love with surprising regularity The practice of younger and immature poets getting their compositions improved by a well established author came to India from Iran where from very early times it had been customary for men of aristocratic families to take to the writing of poetry They assumed poetical names and got themselves apprenticed to some renowned master to whom they paid a regular stipend or made occasional presents There also used to be some young gifted poets who could not afford to pay a fee to their mentors The latter pot infrequently corrected their verses free of charge in order to encourage talent and also to boost the number of their own admirers Ghalib however did this work in a selfless manner and never boasted about the number of his pupils or the high status of some of them Quite a big portion of the money he received by way of pensions and stipends from the courts of various rulers he spent on helping poor writers among whom were several of his pupils In his desire to help them as much as possible Ghalıb not only made corrections to the compositions submitted to him but also wrote additional explanatory notes and directions in letters accompanying the corrected sheets Two of his best known pupils were Tafta and Halı who later wrote bis bio graphy () adgar i Ghalib) Commenting on a Persian qasida sent by Tafta Ghalb wrote . Well done What a nice qasida you have n! The continuity of sense and the ·Friends, Pupils and Contemporaries 119 simplicity of words are entitled to praise, One of your lines coincides with a line of a verse of Shaukat of Bokhara, that is Chak gardıdamo az jaib badaman raftam I think you may well be proud of your thought having reached the same height as that of Shaukat in this line, but the line preceding this in your poem does not compare well with the corresponding line of Shaukat It would have made me much happier if you had equalled or excelled him in that line also What Ghalib in reality wanted to tell Tafta was that the latter had unashamedly failed in the act of piracy In the same letter Ghalıb advises Tafta not to write ghazals and qasıdas according to the letters of the alphabet The method followed by most Persian and Urdu poets was, if they were making a collection of poems to write them ending with each letter of the alphabet This led to much artificiality A poet might not have very much to say which would give him an adequate number of verses ending in a particular letter of the alphabet The result was that his search for words that ended in the desired letter and then reshaping of the verse in order to contain such words would stand in the way of free flow of thoughts Such verses invariably lost much of the subtlety of idea and elegance of idiom Poetry of this kind was often found to be a mere form without any life or soul in it Ghalıb therefore asked Tafta and his other pupils to try to compress more sense and thought in what they wrote and be guided by the inspiration of the moment rather than act according to tradition and common practice He did not want them to pack their ghazals and qasidas with unnecessary wordage and uncalled for jargon Quality rather than quantity should be their aim, he told them again and again Persian and Urdu writers had another peculiar habit They sent their books to friends for writing a taqriz (eulogis tic cummentary) on them The review highly praised the work Irrespective of the fact whether the friend to whom a book was submitted actually thought highly of the effort or not It was ·120 ETERNAL FLAME taken for granted that the comment must invariably be in laudatory terms Such comments were then published along with the book as testimony of its excellence A good deal of undeserved praise was this way wasted on mediocre writers The readers too understood this and attached little value to the testimonials Ghalib did not like the practice of showering undeserved praise on each and every piece of writing and tried to combat this evil He tried to be as fair in his comments as possible even when the subject matter under review had come from a friend or pupil It appears that Tafta sent his book to Ghalıb for writing a taqri. The latter was not particularly impressed by his pupils achievement and therefore gave it only mild praise whereupon Tafta complained that he had been treated unkindly by the master Ghalib replied 'I cannot give up my principles I do not know that style of Indian writers of Persian in which they begin to praise like the professional Bhats (singers) Look at my qasidas You will find that verses on general subjects of a literary nature are far more in number than those devoted to the eulogy of the person concerned The same principle I follow in my prose Look at the taqrı. I wrote on the book of Nawab Mustafa Khan and see how small is the space devoted in it to his praise See again the preface I wrote to the Diwan of Mirza Rahim ud Din Haya or the taqri- I wrote at the instance of Mr John Jacob to his edition of Dinan 1 Hafi. There is only one verse in his praise while the rest of it is on other interesting topics I assure you that if I had written a preface to a collection of poems of a prince I would not have given him more space than I have ghen to appreciation of your work if you knew this peculiarity of mine you would have regarded the praise I have given you as adequate To have introduced this reform in Urdu literary criticism in defiance of the practice in vogue at that time and at the risk of displeasing his friends and pupils was really brave of Ghalıb Ghalıb wanted his pupils to follow his instructions very ·Friends Pupils and Contemporaries 121 strictly In no case would he relax these whatever the status of the disciple concerned They were told to write their compositions in a clear hand leaving ample space between the lines to enable him to make the necessary changes His own handwriting was very elegant in spite of the fact that he wrote at a fast speed Another directive he had given to his pupils was to use paper of a fine quality He welcomed any number of questions on the changes made by him but discouraged the taking of a rigid attitude on any issue Ghalib was outspoken and siacere in whatever he sud or did and wanted others to be frank and honest in their utterances and deeds When he made a promise he did so with all seriousness and felt slighted if any body disbelieved him Once when he ran out of his own book of poems, he wrote to a pupil who was also related to him, to lend him his copy The latter refused to oblige him perhaps thinking that he might lose a book which was so precious to him This upset Ghalıb who sent to the pupil a sharp note saying "Have you thrown to the winds our relationship of uncle and nephew, master and pupıl? God knows what you would have done had I asked for a thing costing five hundred or a thousand rupees! Besides I am not asking you to part with your book You are welcome to keep it I just want to see it and copy the portions which I do not have Then I shall Your refusal to accede to my request only shows that you consider me a liar you do not want to trust me! Or you wish to harass and tease me A letter to Nawab Allaudin Khan says I again wrote to you that I did not keep the manuscript of the gasida I also wrote that I do not remember which rubais you want St:11 you write 'send me the rubais send me the qasıda meaning thereby that I am a liar and that this time I would send them Brother I swear by the Quran the New Testament, the Old Testament the Psalms of David and the four Vedas of the Hindus that neither have I the qasida nor I remember those rubais for ever return it ·122 LTERNAL FLAME Ghalib considered the standard of his own writings far above that of any of his contemporaries And this finally turned out to be true judging from the extent of fame he achieved as compared to other Urdu poets but not so in the case of his Persian compositions In Persian he compared himself with the great ones of Iran, both past and present He refused to concede superiority to any writer in the matter of idiom and grammatical expression He likened the old masters such as Khusro and Sa adi to a lamp and himself to the sun! This kind of attitude often landed him into bitter controversies At mushairas, it was not Ghalıb s habit, as was the case with most other poets to acclaim indiscriminately every verse that was recited, irrespective of its merit He chose for praise only the really good ones Many of his contemporaries felt offended at his supposed indifference towards their composi tions and this sometimes led to a vile criticism of his own poetry It did not however deflect him from the right course Ghalib also did not believe in an uncritical adoption of the styles of the masters of the past Do not think what they have written is authentic were not fools born in that age too? he tells Tafta in a letter He did not care of his adherence to his convictions annoyed the court circles How ever, he readily aceepted any genuine suggestion for improv ing his verses He did change some of them as a result of critical comments by others All the same he carried the impression that his verses were not adequately appreciated He has frequently complained about it in his writings Once on return from the Fort he went straight to Nawab Mustafa Khan and said Today the King Emperor greatly apprecia ted my efforts In order to offer him Id greatmgs I wrote 2 qasıda in his honour After I had read it out His Majesty observed, Mirza you recite very well The implication was that the King was impressed more by bis manner of declamation than by the merit of the poem For a long time ·Friends Pupils and Contemporaries 123 verse the Mirza and the Nawab talked about the ingratitude of the world It immensely gladdened the poets beart if someone genuinely congratulated him on the excellence of his poems When Munshi Nabi Baksh Haqır, a renowned critic of his day, stayed with Ghalib during a visit to Delhi, the latter wrote to Tafta God has taken pity on my helplessness and solitariness and sent to me a man who brought with him balm for my wounds and a cure for my pain He has turned my dark night into a bright day With his talk he has lighted a candle which showed to me the worth of my poetry--worth that had remained hidden from my own eyes due to my mis fortune I am surprised to find this man s, that is Munshi Nabı Baksh s great gift of understanding and appreciating a It is said that God divided beauty into two equal halfs One half He gave to Yousaf and the other half to the rest of mankind I shall not be surprised if poetic understand ing and appreciation too has been divided into two parts one part going to Munshi Nabi Baksh and the other to the rest of the world! Though the world and the heavens may well be my enemies, I am no longer worried over it due to my friendsbip with this man I am fully satisfied with this blessing In 1828 when Ghalib visited Calcutta in connection with his pension case he clashed there with local writers who were admirers of Qateel another Indian poet who wrote in Persian Qateel was a convert from Hinduism and was known as Diwali Singh before he became a Muslim 'Who is Qateel? asked Gbalıb adding contemptuously, that Khatrı son of Faridabad? Am I to accept this mean fellow as an authority? This raised a veritable storm and led to exchange of angry arguments between the protagonists of the two poets The campaign and counter campaign were later carried on through the columns of the local language press so much so that people started passing remarks against Ghalib as he walked through the streets However thinking discretion to > ·124 ETERNAL FLAME better part of valour in a bostile city, he wrote in Persiin on the advice of his well wishers + masnal entitled Baad / Mfukhalaf Ia it he stated the object of his visit to Calcutt? and regretted the controlersy that had developed He did not mean to show disrespect to his elders and bring bad name to his city (Delhi) He implored all those who had been offended to forgive and forget Towards the end of the poem he even praised Qateel though one could not help reading sarcasm in between the lines At another literary get together in Calcutta where Ghalib was also present someone spole highly or Faizec "Faizec is not as great as people think Sud Ghalib This remark was resented and the man who had praised Frizee then related an incident "When Faizec went to Albar for the first time he recited a qasida of 250 verses on the spur of the moment declared this man Ghalib replied “With God s grace even now there are persons who can recite crtempore a few couplets, if not a few hundred Farzec s supporter took out of his pocket a shining picce of stonc and requested Ghalib to say something on it The Mirza recited eleven Terses one after the other Ghalıb s principal contemporary and rival was Sheikh Mohammed Ibrahim Zauq sho by virtue of his being the hings us (teacher) and also on account of the excellence of his own compositions commanded considerable respect in the court circies and outside In fact some critics do regard Zauq as greater than Ghalib Among them is Maulana Mohammed Ilussain Azad the author of Nabi Ilusal which 11 a comprehensive history of Urdu literature Ghalib hos ever ghored Liter contempt whenever Zauqs name is membicard Had Zauqrot been the 11785 literary adviser Ghalib restors would have tchased differertly Zauq 18 both ly one of the matest malars of Urdu verse and 17 my mind it) cl synd 17th beally ard row of his 13 EUSE 11-out's But asa piard thigier Ghalib is com11 cech supcr to ZALA ·Friends, Pupils and Contemporaries 125 Zauq (1794 1854) was the son of a soldier but was gifted with the poet's imagination and a teacher s intellect He adopted the style of Shah Nasir, his mentor, but soon surpassed him in popular esteem He came on the scene when the Moghal kings devoted greater attention and time to mushai ras than to affairs of the state and employed leading poets for revising their own compositions They even bought up literary works of well known writers and passed them as their own Zauq too is believed to have been a victim of this practice Some of Bahadur Shah Zafar s best ghazals are said to have come from his pen Zaug was an erudite scholar and exercised perfect command over the Urdu language His treatment of subjects such as religion and philosophy was as effective is that of love, a topic common to all poets How beautifully he expresses the uncertainty of life in the following verse us away Laee hayal age gaua le chalı chale Apni khushu na dae na apni khushi chale (Destiny brought us into the world and death is taking We neither came nor are we going of our own free will) Once writing to a friend about his own worries and difficulties Ghalib quoted the following couplet from one of Zauq's ghazals without mentioning the authors name Ab to ghabara ke ye kehte hain ke mar jaenge Mar ke bhi chain na paja to kidhar jaenge (When overwhelmed by difficulties we say we shall seek out death But if death too does not bring us deliverance where shall then we go?) Another of Ghalib s illustrious contemporaries was Momın Khan Momin (1800 1851) Being the son of a physi cian, Hakım Ghulam Nabi Khan, he began life writing pres criptions in his father s clinic Soon he turned his attention to ·126 ETERNAL FLAME 1s astrology and writing of Urdu poetry and achieved quick success in both Though the accuracy of his predictions won him many admirers it was his artistry with the Urdu langurge that brought bım everlasting fame Imagine Ghalıb offering to trade his whole collection of Urdu ghazals for the following verse of Momin Tum mere paas hote ho goza Jab koj ee doosra nahm hota The words of this couplet are so simple and yet so mean ingful Translated it will read Whenever I am alone I feel as if you (the beloved) are with me that is you talk to me only when no other man present Is it not quite natural for a man s thoughts to go to his beloved whenever he is alone? Ghalib also liked the following famous couplet of the eighteenth century poet Mirza Rafi Sauda (1713 1780) and has mentioned it in bis writings Dikhla ye lejake tujhe mist ka bavar Lekin koyee Khouahan nahin wan jinsi garan ha (I would like to take you—the beloved-to a bazar in Egypt but there no one asks for costly goods) A later day contemporary of Ghalıb was Nawab Mirza Khan Dagh of Delhi (1831 1905) His father died when he was barely seven but got an easy entry into the court circles as a result of his widowed mother marrying the Kings son, Mirza Fakhroo He also had the benefit of guidance from the Royal tutor Zauq Dagh s pre eminent position in the domain of Urdu ghazal has been recognised by the literary critics of his time and also by those who followed him He preserved carefully the traditions of the old masters and did not allow the purity of the Urdu language to be affected by Western influences which had begun to make inroads into Indian culture long before h s time He lived and died an Oriental poct and there are not many among the Urdu litterateurs who ·Friends Pupils and Contemporaries 127 can match his devotion to this language He was at his best When handling a love theme Ghalib went into an ecstasy when he read Dagh s following verse Rukh : roshan he aage shama rakh har no ye kehte hain Udhar jata hai dehlen za dhar parwana ata har (The candle has been placed alongside the radiant face to find out to which of them goes the moth that is who shines more -the flame or the beloved s face? There were a number of other poets both in Delhi and Lucknow who flourished during Ghalib s time and who have left their mark on Urdu literature Among them were Mirza Asghar Ali Naseem of Delhi Mır Majruh of Panipat, Imam Baksh Nasıkh, Haidar Ali Alish and Daya Shankar Naseem (all of Lucknow) and the great elegy writers, Mir Babar Ali Anis and Mirza Salamat Ali Dabır (both of Lucknow) Thev have however all been eclipsed by Ghalıb s phenomenal fame and his position in the heart of Urdu lovers Many more poets like Mohammed Iqbal and Jigar Moradabadı who were born after Ghalıb held the stage mostly during their life time Their memory is slowly fading from the people s minds if it has not already done so But Ghalib s is a case altogether different He has found a berth among the ranks of immortals of the literary world like Kalidas Khayyam and Shakespeare ·10 THE BIOGRAPHER MIRZA GHALIB ur doubtedly suffered a great many disappoint ments in life as narrated in the previous chapters but in one respect he was absolutely fortunate In his disciple, Shams ul Ulama Maulana Altaf Husain Halı he found a biographer who by writing Yadgar : Ghalib (Memories of Ghalib) left to posterity a connected and by and large authoritative account of the life and activities of the greatest of Urdu poets But for Halı Ghalib s fame would have been only as much as, or a shade better than that of his contemporaries like Zauq Momin and Majruh who at that time were considered as skilful and subtle versifiers as the Mirza himself It will there fore be no exaggeration to say that next to his Urdu Dian Ghalib owes the immortality of his name to his biographer The reverse is perhaps equally true Had Halı not written Yadgar i Ghalıb or had the subject of his memoir been a lesser luminary he would have passed into the vastnesses of time without much of a mention in the books of record At best he would have been remembered or read as one of the scores of prominent Urdu Jitterateures of the nineteenth and carly twentieth centuries Jadgar i Ghalıb though not professing to be a critical analysis of Ghalib is as yet the best help (for Urdu readers) ·The Biographer 129 to a study of the poet and his works It avoids the hyperbole of such writers as Dr Abdur Rahman Bijnawani who declared in his Mahasın 1 halam 1 Ghalib that, besides the sacred Vedas, India possesses but one inspired book which is Diwani Ghalib! Nor is Halı as severe in his judgment as Dr Syed Abdul Latif author of Ghalib A Critical Appreciation of His Life and Urdu Poetry who writes that “Ghalıb was primarily a lyrical poet and should be judged as such and in no other capacity He cannot be numbered among the great ones of the earth to say nothing of the greatest ones Between these two extremes stands Hali who on account of his personal knowledge of Ghalıb lends credence and colour to his tfarration He has quoted some of the finest verses in Ghalib s Diwan and written illuminating notes to explain their elegance or to bring out their significance Being his favourite pupil and enjoying close association with him, Halı got an oppor tunity of hearing some of the verses from Ghalıb's own lips and discussing their meaning with him Quite a number of Ghalib s couplets are open to different interpretations Hali's explanations are generally accepted as authoritative They give us an indication of the development of the poets mind Besides his reminiscences of the day to day life of his master make the readers feel as if they themselves were present when Ghalib said or did a particular thing It gives them a sense of personal participation in the thrilling events of that period and leaves them mentally satisfied This is perhaps an addi tional reason why Ghalib has drawn to himself more admirers than any other Urdu poet By writing Yadgar i Ghalib Halt not only performed a duty which he owed to his master who was his ideal in literature but also succeeded in removing the somewhat unfair impression which Aab : Hayal of Maulana Mohammed Husain Azad a leading Urdu crite and Hals contemporary leaves on one s mind with regard to the merits of Ghalib s poetry Azad had the greatest regard and admiration for his own Inaster Sheikh Mohammed Ibrahim Zaug who corrected the ?

·130 ETERNAL FLAME Kings compositions Ghalib and Zauq were the principal claimants to sovereignty over the realm of Urdu poctry during Bahadur Shah s time We need not, therefore, be surprised of Azad wanted to make out that on the whole Zauq was a greater poet than Ghalib It must however, be said to Azad s credit that he did not altogether shut his eyes to the eminence of Ghalıb and has paid him rich tribute in dob i Hajar, which is one of the most comprehensive histories of Urdu literature Hali however, refrains, quite wisely, from pitting the merits of one poet against those of another For the most part, he confines himself to explaining the difficult terses in Ghalib s Dinan and a narrative of his life which itself is as interesting as a work of fiction The book contains hundreds of anec dotes which not only tell us the kind of man that Ghalib was but also throw interesting light on the conditions obtaining in Delhi and other places in the turbulent days of the final phase of the tottering Moghal empire Besides Yadgar i Ghalıb Halı wrote the biographies of the great Persian poet, Sheikh Sa adı and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a leading educationist and reformer of the nineteenth century As a matter of fact Halı was the first man who developed and perfected the art of biography writing in Urdu His place is quite high in the list of persons to whom modern Urdu owes a permanent debt of gratitude The late Sir Abdul Qadir who rose to be the Law Member to the Government of India before independence and who was a great patron of Urdu writers, says in his book Famous Urdu Poets and IVriters, that Hali bas left Urdu literature purer in thought and expre ssion than it was when he took upon himself the arduous task of reforming it In the line of literary criticism be is a writer of recognised merit whose writings have inspired and will continue to inspire many an aspirant to literary fame with lofty ideals Even Dr Abdul Latif, who does not think very high of Ghalib s poetry has paid uostinted tribute to Hali in his book The influence of English Literature on Urdu Literature ·Tlie Biographer 131 in He says "Hali is the leader and inspirer of the movement for a striking development in Urdu literature Another author, Professor Tahir Jamil in his book Halıs Poetry A Study, writes "Halı stands out pre eminent for his valu able services to Urdu poetry If the Syed (Sir Syed Ahmed Khan) succeeded overcoming religious fanaticism Halı applied himself enthusiastically to purge Urdu poetry of exaggeration, artificiality and untruthfulness which were sucking the very life blood of literature Sir Syed was the first to notice in Hali s style of writing a distinct departure from the old ghazal writers and a promise of remarkable achievements He suggested to him the idea of writing a poem on the fallen condition of Muslims Hali lost little time on acting in this suggestion He wrote a Musaddas (long poem with each stanza having six lines) and called it Modd Ja r 1 Islam (the Flow and Ebb of Islam) In this he adopted with telling effect the same line as was later taken by Sir Mohammed Iqbal recalling in vivid terms the glories of the early Arab polity and the brilliant con quests of the Sassanians in Asia Europe and Africa The aim was to rouse Indian Muslims from their intellectual stupor, social stagnation and economic decadence The poem changed the people's notion of Urdu poetry and made Hals the envy of his contemporaries Most of them tried their hand at poems in the Musaddas style but could reach no where near the standard set by Hali After reading Maddo Jazz 1 Islam Sır Syed wrote to Hali 'From the moment I began to read the book I could not lay it aside until I had finished it and when I had finished it I felt sorry that it had come to an end The book is a model of elegance and eloquence Many of its stanzas cannot be read without the eyes getting wet with tears Any. thing that springs from the heart appeals to the heart It is true, as you have stated in your preface that I moved you to write this book and I regard this as a virtuous deodom that when I die and am questioned by God a.

·132 LTCRNAL FLAME achievements in the world I shall point to this deed and say I have done nothing except being instrumental in Halı s writing of this book Then followed from Halis pen a number of poems in the same style and strain such as Shikila i Hind (The Com plaint of India) and Manajat • Bewa (The Prayer of the Widow) He was the first Urdu poet to write a patriotic poem called Hubb : Watan (Love of Motherland) He was also the first to introduce political and economic themes in his verses and thus deal a formidable blow at the traditional style of Urdu poetry whose outstanding features until then had been artificiality, convention and unashamed hyperbole He tried to make simple facts attractive by the manner in which they were presented Halı combines in himself the qualities of three of the top Urdu poets Ghalib Mir and Shefta This he acknow ledges in one of his couplets Halı Sakhun men Shefta se mustſeed hun Ghalb ka mautqad hun maqlad hun Mır ka (In style and expression Halı has benefited from Shefta He has faith in Ghalıb and is a follower of Mır) Finding that his Musaddas while bringing a new awaken ing among Muslims, was also making them vain glorious and look too much to the past, Hali began writing poems that reminded them of their duty in the present to mankind in general and to Islam in particular and stressed on them the need to do something good and of abiding value Though most of his exhortations tere addressed to his co religionists he was not altogether indifferent to the problems of Hindus His poems Munajat i Bexa and Chup Li Dad (In Praise of Silence) won him their admiration and gratitude No one could have served the cause of Indian womanhood better than done by Hali in these tko poems Halı also wrote a large number of rubais and short poems containing useful advice to the people especially ·The Biographer 133 the youth His rubais were translated into English by an ICS official, Mr GE Ward, and were published in England Some of his other poems were translated into English by another western scholar Dr Spooner Among bis wellknown poems in addition to those mentioned above, are Barsat (Rainy Season), Ummed (Hope) and Rahm o Insaf (Mercy and Justice) Hali was equally proficient in the writing of prose Be sides writing the three biographies mentioned above he translated into Urdu a book on geology which was published by the Pudjab University Another of his prose works, Majlis un Nisa (Assembly of Women) remained for a long time a text book for girls schools in Punjab Tor writing it he was awarded a prize at 1 durbar held by Lord North brook Viceroy of lodia from 1872 to 1876 He also wrote a book, Muqaddama Shero Shari, in which he has analysed the different aspects and deals of poetry as set forth in various literatures both of the East and West It shows tremendous research and hard work put in by the author to get the necessary information But the book that shows Halı at his best is adgar i Ghalib It is considered his magnum opus Of all his works, both in prose and verse it is liked and appreciated the most One may say without the least chance of ever being proved wrong ibat Hall will not be forgotten as long as Ghalib is remembered Altaf Husain was born in 1837 He belonged to the famous family of Ansaris whose forbears had migrated to Ipdia from Herat in the time of Ghias ud Din Baiban (over 750 years ago) and settled at Panipat in Punjab Halı had a disturbed childhood His mother became insane soon after huis birth and the father died when he was only nine years old His brothers and sisters brought him up in a religious atmosphere and made him learn the Quran by heart He got a good grounding in Persian and Arabic from competent tutors without however getting the benefit of a repulor schooling ·132 TLRNAL ILALI achiciements in the world I shill point to this deed and say I have done nothing creep being instrumental in Halıs sriting of this book Then followed from Hals pen 1 number of poems in the same stylc and strain such as Shihnalllini (The Com plaint of India) and Manajat i Bena (The Prayer of the Widow) He was the first Urdu poct to write 1 patriotic poem called Hubh I llaran (Loic of Motherland) Hc was also the first to introducc political and cconomic themes in his verses and thus deal i formidable blow at the triditional style of Urdu poctry whose outstanding features until then had been Trtificiality contention and unishimcd hyperbole He tried 10 make simpic facts attractive by the minner in which they were presented Hal combines in himself the qualities of three of the top Urdu poets Ghalıb Mir and Shorts This he acknow ledges in one of his couplcts Hali Sakhun nien Shefia se murifeed hun Ghalib ha mautqad hun maqlad hun Mir ha (in style and expression Hali has benefited from Shelt. He has faith in Ghalib and is a follower of Mir) Finding that his Musaddas while bringing a new Julen ing among Muslims was also making them vuin glorious and look too much to the past Hall begin writing poems that reminded them of their duty in the present to minkind in general and to Islam in particular and stressed on them the need to do something good and of abiding value Though most of his exhortations were addressed to his co religionists he was not altogether indifferent to the problems of Hindus His poems Munajat i Bena and Chup hi Dod (In Praise of Silence) won him their admiration and gratitude No one could have served the chuse of Indian womanhood better than done by Hali in these iso poems Halı also wrote a large number of rubais and short poems containing useful advice to the people, especially ·Tie Biographer 133 the youth His rubais were translated into English by an ICS official, Vr GE Ward, and were published in England Some of his other poems were translated into English by another westera scholar, Dr Spooner Among his wellknown poems, in addition to those mentioned above, are Barsat (Rainy Season), Ummed (Hope) and Ralım-o-Insaf (Mercy and Justice) Halı was equally proficient in the writing of prose Be sides writing the tbree biographies mentioned above he translated into Urdu a book on geology which was published by the Punjab University Another of his prose works Majlis un Nisa (Assembly of Women) remained for a long time a text book for girls schools in Punjab For writing it he was awarded a prize at a durbar held by Lord North brook, Viceroy of India from 1872 to 1876 He also wrote a book, Afuqaddama Shero Shariin shich he has analysed the different aspects and ideals of poetry as set forth in various literatures both of the East and West It shows tremendous research and hard work put in by the author to get the necessary information But the book that shows Halı at his best is ) adgar Ghalib It is considered his Of all his works both in prose and verse, It is liked and appreciated the most One may say without the least chance of ever being proved wrong ihat Hali will not be forgotten as long as Ghalib is remembered Altaf Husain was born in 1837 He belonged to the famous family of Ansaris whose forbears had migrated to India from Herat in the time of Ghias ud Din Balban (over 750 years ago) and settled at Panipat in Punjab Halı had a disturbed childhood His mother became insane soon after his birth and the father died when he was only nine years old His brothers and sisters brought him up in a rcligious atmosphere and made him learn the Quran by heart Не got a good grounding in Persian and Arabic from competent tutors without, however getting the benefit of a regular schooling magnum opus ·132 [TERNAL FLAMF achievements in the world I shall point to this deed and say I have done nothing except being instrumental in Halıs writing of this book Then followed from Halis pen a number of poems in the same style and strain such as Shukla i Hind (The Com plaint of India) and Manajat · Bena (The Prayer of the Widow) He was the first Urdu poet to write a patriotic poem called Hubb : IVatan (Love of Motherland) He was also the first to introduce political and economic themes in his verses and thus deal 1 formidable blow at the traditional style of Urdu poetry whose outstanding features until then had been artificiality, convention and unashamed hyperbole He tried to make simple facts attractive by the manner in which they were presented Hali combines in himself the qualities of three of the top Urdu poets Ghalib Mır and Sheft? This he acknow ledges in one of his couplets Halı Sakhun men Shefia se mustfeed hun Ghalib ha mautgad lun maqlad hun Mfur ka (In style and expression Halı has benefited from Shefta He has faith in Ghalıb and is a follower of Mir) Finding that his Musaddas while bringing a new awaren ing among Muslims was also making them vain glorious and look too much to the past Halı begin writing poems that reminded them of their duty in the present to mankind in general and to Islam in particular and stressed on them the need to do something good and of abiding value Though most of his exhortations were addressed to his co religionists, he was not altogether indifferent to the problems of Hindus His poems Mftinajat i Bella and Chup ki Dad (In Praise of Silence) won him their admiration and gratitude No one could have sersed the cause of Indian womanhood better than done by Hali in these two poems Halı also wrote a large number of rubars and short poems containing useful advice to the people especially ·The Biographer 133 the youth His rubais were translated into English by an ICS official, Mr GE Ward and were published in England Some of his other poems were translated into English by another western scholar, Dr Spooner Among his wellknown poems in addition to those mentioned above, are Barsat (Rainy Season), Ummed (Hope) and Rahm o Insaf (Mercy and Justice) Hali was equally proficient in the writing of prose Be sides writing the three biographies mentioned above he translated into Urdu a book on geology which was published by the Punjab University Another of his prose works Majlis un Nisa (Assembly of Women) remained for a long time a text book for girls schools in Punjab For writing it he was awarded a prize at a durbar held by Lord North brook Viceroy of India from 1872 to 1876 He also wrote a booh, Muqaddana Shero Shari, in which he has analysed the different aspects and ideals of poetry as set forth in various literatures both of the East and West It shows tremendous research and hard work put in by the author to get the necessary information But the book that shows Hali at his best is Yadgar i Ghalıb It is considered his magnum opus of all his works, both in prose and verse It is liked and appreciated the most One may say without the least chance of ever being proved wrong tbat Halı will not be forgotten as long as Ghalib is remembered Altaf Husain was born in 1837 He belonged to the famous family of Ansaris whose forbears had migrated to India from Herat in the time of Ghias ud Din Baiban (over 750 years ago) and settled at Panipat in Punjab Halı had a disturbed childhood His mother became insane soon after his birth and the father died when he was only nine years old His brothers and sisters brought him up in a religious atmosphere and made him learn the Quran by heart He got a good grounding in Persian and Arabic from competent tutors without however, getting the benefit of a regular schooling ·134 ETERNAL FLAME Balban had granted to Khwaja Malik Ali Hali's first ancestor in India a few fertile villages in the Panipat Pargana and appointed him as Qazı of the place Naturally Halis brothers wanted him to follow the ancestral profession, that IS become a Qazi in due time One of his teachers, Maulvi Ibrahim Husain Ansari was also a theologian But the boy was destined to become something greater than a mere village priest Halı had not advanced very far in his studies and was barely seventeen when he was persuaded by his elders to get married This interrupted his studies for some time He was getting restless because he wanted to pursue a scholarly career Therefore one day he quietly slipped away from his house and went to Delhi where there was a galaxy of literary men in those days He wished to join the Old Delhi College but did not do so for fear of offending his people back home who would not tolerate any kind of Western education The Muslim theologians of those days held English schools in great contempt and called them majhalas (places where one remains ignorant) Thus de prived of English education, Halı devoted himself entirely to Oriental learning In 1856 he took a petty job in the Collectors Office at Hissar but returned to Panipat after the Mutiny broke out in the following year During his stay in Delhi Halı became acquainted with Ghalıb and paid him frequent visits to seek authoritative interpretation of his difficult verses, both Urdu and Persian Ghalib found that the young man had a poetic mind and a clear head He advised him to take to writing poetry, saying that he would be doing an injustice to his natural bent of mind if he did not do so Thus encouraged Halı started writing Urdu ghazals as was the vogue among Urdu and Persian poets Attracted by the richness of his verses, Nawab Mustafa Khan of Jahangirabad invited Hali to live with him as a musahib (aide-de-camp) The Nanab bimself was a well ·The Biographer 135 known poet who wrote under the name of Hasrati in Persian and Shefta in Urdu Under his able guidance, Halı began to shine with lustre which increased as time pissed The Nawab sent his own poems to Ghalib for correction Hali enclosed his compositions also for a final check up by Ghalıb after they had been examined by Shefta On the death of Shefta Hali got an appointment in the Punjab Government Book Depot at Lahore where his duties consisted of revising translations of English books into Urdu for the Education Department This work enabled him to get acquainted with English literature which widened his outlook He would occasionally get hold of students who knew English and would ask them to interpret English books to him The simplicity and directness characterising English writings impressed him a good deal and he began to have second thoughts about his praise and love of Persian books which he now found loaded with much dispensable wordage Halı did not like Lahore and pined to return to Delhi From the literary point of view he considered Lahore to be a very poor substitute for Delhi Moreover as a new comer and stranger he had no friends in the Punjab capital During his stay in Lahore there was an outbreak of epidemics and he was taken ill He wrote He who comes and lives in Lahore can realise that this is the world spoken of as the home of troubles There is so much of strangeness here that the nightingale does not know the rose Later, Hali realised that he had been unfair criticism of this beautiful town He therefore added a footnote in his Dean where these lines appear to the effect that they were written in a particular context His desire was at last fulfilled and he got a chance of returning to Delhi as a teacher in the Anglo Arabic School there As he grew old he became more and more philosophic in his writings and utterances In appreciation of his contribu in his

·136 ITERNAL FLAME
tion to the progress and enrichment of Urdu literature
the Nizam of Hyderabad granted him I stipend of Rs 100
per month which he continued to receive till his death in
1914 Ile spent the last few years of his life in the native
town of Panipat which he loved so well and which had been
the home of his ancestors for several centuries
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1
Yadgar i Ghalib by Altaf Husain Hali
2 Zihr i Ghalıb by Malik Ram
3 Aluslik alat Ghalib by Niaz Fatehpuri
Muhasan i halam i Ghalıb by Abdul Rehman Bijnawar:
5 Aab i Hayat by Mohammed Husain Azad
6 Jadid Tarihh Adab Urdu by Azim ul Huq Junedi and Syed
Amir Hasin Noorani
7 Famous Urdu Poels and II riters by Sir Abdul Qadır
8 Sepoy Mfutiny by RC Majumdar
9 An Adianced History of India by RC Majumdar HC Ray
chaudhuri and halinkar Datt1
10 A History of Persia by Sir Percy Sykes
11 Sharah Dewan Ghalib by Yousaf Salim Chishti
12 Ghalib A Critical Appreciation of His Life and Urdu Poetry
by Syed Abdul Latif
13 Naqsh 1 Azad by Maulana Abdul Kalam Aznd
14 The Influence of English Literature on Urdu Literature by
Syed Abdul Latif
15 Holes Poeiry A Study by Tahir Jamil

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