The  Living  Legend  Of  Urdu  Poetry

For those who have joined now, let me say few words about this Ghalib series.

Ghalib, his Ghazals, his poems, his genius, and his wits have always fascinated millions of Urdu lovers including myself. Those who want to read my previous work please Ctrl + click  or copy and paste in internet address window, the following link: http://users.adelphia.net/~asghar   or, if you choose, you may send me an email request; I will email back my previous explanations just for asking.  

This is my 24th 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 today’s verse (sh’er) & its explanation in Urdu, Gujarati, and English  

Ba faiz-e-be dili, nomidi-e-javed aasaN hai  

                                                 By the grace of distress, it is easy for me to survive the eternal disappointment

Kushaish ko hamara uqda-e-mushkil pasand aaya     

                                            Opening process itself liked my difficult knot; (now it want touch it )

Ba faiz = By the grace     be-dili=distress     nomidi (na ummidi) = disappointments   javed = eternal, constant

Kusha= open Kushaish = (knot) opening (divine) process     uqda = a knot, a problem     uqda-e-mushkil = knotty or difficult problems  Note: Hazrat Ali, son-in-law of Prophet Mohammed’s ( peace be upon him) title is Mushkil-kusha or one who opens difficult knots. In times of trouble, Muslim, especially Shi’as remember Hazarat Ali for help.

This is the 2nd verse of Ghalib’s 8^th ghazal.  This ghazal is not popular at street level and its verses are difficult to understand yet it they are packed with so much energy and punch that I don’t want to skip them.

Meaning:                                                                                                                                                                                                             Suppose you buy a painting by Picasso or by M.F. Hussain. Would you try to alter it? No, you will leave it untouched. Ghalib is expanding on this theme with a twist. Ghalib is distressed because of his failure in love or for any other mundane reasons. This has led him into a state of eternal disappointment. If we had such misfortune we would say it is a punishment from God or it is because of our Karma. However, Ghalib takes credit for his state of constant despair (nomidi-e-javed) as if it is his own  creation and says hamara uqda-e-mushkil or my difficult-knot, is liked by kushais, the opening process itself, so much so that it didn’t prefer even to touch it. It left it untouched.

Kushaish could be an angle or a separate God or goddess as Hindus and Greeks believe. He thinks that because his state of despair is preserved as a model by the divine authority, his condition would never change. Such belief has made him content and now he does not run after Dua  or     Dava . Now his life has become easy; thanks to his be-dili or distress.

This is an extraordinary way of thinking about out difficulties and misfortune. If we think that our misfortunes and our difficult knots of lives are so unique and so great that they are accepted as a model by the Almighty, then there is no point in Dua or Dawa; our state of misery won’t change. And, we should be content the way we are.  When battalions of problems and misery descend on me I say “Kushaish ko hamara uqda-e-mushkil pasand aaya”    That eases my suffocation.

 This sh’er may be a satire also. We are told by various religious authorities that God has made prophets, Imams, Gurus etc. as permanent models of extreme good or made the Satan a model of extreme wickedness. They don’t change. So, Ghalib boasts that his state of difficulties and knotty problems is also a permanent state.

 The philosophical theme of “Be satisfied with what you are; and, don’t get crazy after solutions” runs throughout the Ghalib’s book. It doesn’t mean that he was a pessimist. He was living in a time when his beloved King Bahdurshah was just deposed and banished in Rangoon jail by the ‘angrez Ru-siyah’ (blackened face British) as he calls them. Despised groups of that time like Sikh, Jat, Marathas, and Gorkhas had got the sudden meteoric rise in military and civil jobs for supporting British.  Most of Delhi people were in distress and felt helpless. This holocaust condition reflects in Ghalib’s poetry. In one of his Farsi she’r he says to a drowning person: Why do you want to remain afloat by beating your hands and feet against the waves of this sea? The surface of the sea is hot like fire of hell; but if you quit, you will go to the bottom of the sea and there it is like sal-sabil, an eternal peace. To drown is better than the fear of drowning.

 Origin of Ghalib’s distress or ‘be-dili’ may be rooted in his love affair.  So, indirectly he is thanking his love.

An another poet has said:   Shukria ae pyar tera Sukria       Dil ko kitna khubsurat gham diya ! 

Thank you, oh love, thank you         What a beautiful grief for my heart!