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This is my
fourth installment.
I have received excellent response from lot of
friends; both Urdu and non-Urdu speakers. Please know that this is my
own, Asghar Vasanwala’s, work and not a forwarding of someone else’s
work as some you thought. Please forward this to your friends. Also
please send me your comments/complements.
I will appreciate if you forward me emails
of your Urdu/non-Urdu friends.
Here is the she'r in Urdu,
Gujarati and and Roman script
Teshe baghair mar na saka koh-kan
Asad
Sargushta-e-khumar-e-rusum-o-quyud tha
Oh Asad (Ghalib), Farhad couldn't die without a pickaxe blow (on head)
It shows that he was a prisoner of traditions.
Tesha
= pickaxe
Koh-kan= rock digger, a title of Farhad because he dug rocky
hill to create a brook of milk, a condition to get his beloved Shirin;
Sargushta = engulfed;
Khumar= intoxication;
Rusum =Plural of Rism, a
custom;
Quyud = Plural of Qaid, a confinement;
Asad= Ghalib's real
name Asad-ul-allah (Lion of God)
This verse refers to the love story of Shirin and Farhad.
Farhad was a labor who fell in love with a princess, Shirin. For testing
Farhad' s love or as a ruse, a chamberlain challenged Farhad to bring a
brook of milk from a hill called Koh-e-besutun (a hill without pillar)
to Shirin' s palace, as a condition to get Shirin. Farhad took up this
challenge and dug out a brook in this rocky terrain by laboring day and
night and made milk flow through it. Farhad is also known as koh-kun =
rock digger because of this incident. When Farhad completed the
impossible task, he asked the Chamberlain to fulfill his promise. At
this point the Chamberlain told Farhad that Shirin was already married.
Farhad couldn't bear this and he hit his pickaxe on his own head d and
died.
Ghalib uses this tragic incident to tell us about his
own independent nature. As we know Ghalib was a non-traditionalist, an
iconoclast. Many verses in his poetry book alludes to his this
iconoclast nature.
In above verse Ghalib actually mocks at Farhad, a symbol
of love. He picks at Farhad and laments why he had to die in a
traditional way? He says, any Tom Dick and Harry can die by a pickaxe
blow on head, Farhad, you a non-traditional lover (a lowly labor in love
with a princess), should have invented a unique non-traditional way to
kill your self; for an example Farhad should have just stopped his heart
by a cold breath, a feat that a traditional person can’t perform.
Please look at words in this verse. Ghalib has used
combination of Farhad, Pick axe, rock digger, traditions-confinement
etc., all related set of words.
The more you ponder over it, the
more you would enjoy it. |
