The Taste of Words: An Introduction to Urdu Poetry Read Free Page A

in the prose world led to the emergence of a loose consensus around how the language would be scripted.
    A brief but vital digression into the Urdu prose tradition is necessary here. Until the eighteenth century, traditions of Urdu prose had been overwhelmingly oral, relying on the narrative powers of
dastan
s (epics) such as
Char Darvesh
,
Hatim Tai
,
Betal Pachchisi
,
Gul-e Bakawali
,
Laila Majnun
,
Panchatantra
and others. Also influential were the traditions that were derived from the folklore associated with the Islamic Empire, such as the dastan of Amir Hamza. Enter the famous press started by Munshi Nawal Kishore in Lucknow in 1858. This press began to tap into a vast market, which had been starved of popular fiction. One of the best-known offerings of Nawal Kishore Press, Pandit Ratan Nath Sarshar’s
Fasana-e Aazad
(The Legend of Aazad), is often spoken of as Urdu’s first novel. Somewhat similar in structure to
Don Quixote
,
Fasana-e Aazad
chronicles the travels of a modernist nobleman Azad, and his reluctant rustic companion, Khoji, who embarks on a series of adventures to win the hand of a beautiful woman named Husn-Ara. The journey of Urdu fiction from
Fasana-e Aazad
to Mirza Rusva’s
Umrao Jaan Ada
, and then on to Premchand’s
Godaan
, and eventually Qurratulain Hyder’s
Aag ka Darya
is fascinating, which we shall reluctantly set aside in order to return to poetry.
    A parallel movement in the eighteenth century was the maturing of the
marsiya
tradition, especially in Lucknow. The religious observances of Shia Muslims during the month of Mohurrum have always involved poetic representations of the events surrounding the battle of Karbala where Imam Husain, the grandson of Prophet Mohammed, was martyred. The Karbala passion play has provided a fertile ground for poets in a variety of languages. Urdu was no exception, but thanks to the extraordinary literary ability of the eighteenth-century marsiya poets, in particular Mir Anees and Mirza Dabeer, the marsiya or elegy emerged as a robust literary form in its own right, a tradition that endures till today.
    After Mir, came Ghalib.
    Like Mir, Ghalib is not just a personage in the history of Urdu poetry but an era. The Ghalib stage in the nineteenth century arguably represented an apotheosis of sorts for Urdu
sukhan
, or the poetic aesthetic. Asadullah Khan Ghalib (known lovingly among Urduwalas as
chacha
Ghalib, and to Hyderabadis simply as
chicha
) took the poets of his era who were still recycling Mir’s tropes to school with his incredible riffs on philosophy and love and politics, making it clear who the real inheritor of Mir’s mantle was. Despite his poverty, cantankerous nature and needless obsession with Persian (which led him to devalue his own Urdu poetry and waste time on inferior Farsi efforts), he was recognized as a genius in his own time (at least by the cognoscenti), and in the 150 years since his death he has acquired the status of a colossus in the poetic landscape of Urdu. The
Deevan-e Ghalib
may be the most highly printed book in the history of Urdu literature, and Ghalib’s verse may be the most translated.
    While Ghalib was producing his magic in Delhi, the Deccan was displaying its own brand of renaissance. The rulers of Hyderabad were courting artistes like Zauq in much the same way a current IPL franchise may court an upcoming player. Zauq’s regretful rejection was communicated to the Hyderabadis poetically, and gave the Delhi-ites a sher with which to gloat forever:
    In dinon gar-che Dakkan mein hai badi qadr-e sukhan
    Kaun jaaye Zauq par Dilli ki galiyaan chhod kar
    Although in the Deccan they value poetry these days
    O Zauq, who can forsake Delhi’s wondrous lanes and byways?
    Dagh Dehlavi, a future exponent of the Zauq–Ghalib style of poetry, would eventually move to Hyderabad, where mushairas in the nineteenth century occupied the cultural space that an A.R. Rahman concert might in the early twenty-first century. Poetry began