Humsafar: The World of Urdu Poetry

By Hitesh Gupta Aadil

This book is a treasure trove of over 150 beautiful and timeless romantic ghazals, nazms, and rubaais— all of them translated and transliterated into English. It holds the iconic verses of poets like Ghalib, Firaq, and Faiz, and showcases the poetry of popular contemporary poets.Lose yourself in the captivating melodies of Urdu poetry with Humsafar, and discover the beauty and power of love that transcends all boundaries.Experience the magic of Urdu poetry!• A collection of timeless poetry• Best works of renowned poets who explore spirituality• A must-have book for poetry lovers• Poems that explore love and beauty in all its glory• Captivating ghazals, nazms, and rubaais

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fingerprint Publishing
• Release date: May 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9789358562477

Book preview

The Language of Lovers

Hamaari pyaari zabaan urdu

Hamaari naghmon ki jaan urdu

Haseen dilkash jawaan urdu

Zabaan wo dhul ke jis ko ganga ke jal se paakeezgi* mili hai

Awadh† ki thandi hawa ke jhonke se jis ke dil ki kali khili hai

Jo sher-o-naghma‡ ke khuld-zaaron§ mein aaj koyal¶ si kookti hai

Isi zabaan mein hamaare bachpan ne maaon se loriyaan** suni hain

Jawaan ho kar isi zabaan mein kahaaniyaan ishq ne kahi hain

Isi zabaan ko chamakte heeron se ilm ki jholiyaan bhari hain

Isi zabaan se watan ke honton ne naara-e-inqilaab* paaya

Isi se angrez hukmaraanon† ne khud-sari‡ ka jawaab paaya

Our dear language, Urdu

The life of our melodies is Urdu

Beautiful, lovely, and young is Urdu

The language which got pure with the water of Ganges

Whose heart blossomed in the cold breeze of Lucknow

One who sings like a nightingale in heaven of poetry and music

Our children have heard their lullabies in this language

Love has used it to tell its tale after turning young

Its diamonds have filled the coffers of our knowledge

Lips of our nation got the slogans of revolution from it

British rulers got the answer to their tyranny in it

The above nazm, a small depiction of the part Urdu has played in our lives, is a curtailed version of the original penned by Ali Sardar Jafri.¹ It was the language spoken by kings, noblemen, and commoners alike. It is the language of oral tradition and tahzeeb. Its words are dipped in mundane daily activities, local culture, mysticism, socio-political movements, humour, and philosophy, as much as they are immersed in romantic love and self-reflection. It is the ink of Gulzar’s pen as well as the melody of Jagjit Singh’s voice. It is here, it is there, and it is everywhere, the language called Urdu.

The word Urdu is derived from the Turkic word ordo which means ‘army.’ Genes of Urdu can be traced back to the twelfth century when Persian, the language spoken by armies of Muslim invaders, started amalgamating with the local dialects spoken by commoners residing in Punjab and Delhi, known as brij and khari-boli.*² While Persian was the language used in royal courts, it was of limited utility outside, as the victorious armies found it hard to interact with the masses. The need to bridge this social gap resulted in the growth of a new ‘hybrid’ language that injected words from Persian, Arabic, and Turkish into local dialects such as Dehlvi and Punjabi.³ This hybrid language was called Hindvi or Rekhta, before its name was changed to Urdu.

For the next five hundred years, Urdu spread to various other parts of India, the most important of which was the Deccan region of South India. Adoption and evolution of Urdu in its raw form happened in the Deccan at a much faster pace as compared to Delhi, where formal Persian was still dominant. However, the balance shifted in Urdu’s favour when Wali Dakhani (1667–1707), a famous Urdu poet of his era, travelled to Delhi in the year 1700. In 1720 an anthology of his works became popular in northern India, which reminded people of the richness, lyrical diction of Urdu poetry, and potential of the Urdu language in general. This realization along with the decline of the Mughal Empire, paved the way for Urdu to eventually dethrone Persian as the number one language. Still, the proponents of Persian tried to assert its influence on Urdu by preserving many Persian words because they added formality, elegance, and finesse to an otherwise rustic language.

Urdu became the official language of British India in 1837, along with English. It was marching towards becoming the lingua franca but its ascent was interrupted by the Partition of India. It became the national language of Pakistan and continued to flourish there.

Figure 1: The concise timeline showcasing the critical events in the evolution of Urdu poetry and language from the seventh century AD to nineteenth century AD.

In India, Urdu was included in one of the fourteen officially recognized languages, but its popularity declined steeply as Hindi and other regional languages took the limelight. One interesting fact is that while the Urdu-speaking population has been on the decline in India, the interest of the general public in Urdu poetry has risen considerably since independence. Multitudes of factors such as the adoption of ghazals by the Indian film industry and classical ghazal singers, its simplification by poets like Sahir Ludhianvi and Javed Akhtar, countless websites, and the penetration of social networks have contributed heavily to this cause.

Popularity in Other Languages and Countries

Urdu poetic forms are popular not just in Pakistan and among the Hindi-speaking populace in India but also in various other parts of the world. While the history of how each of these poetic forms panned across the globe is remarkable, for the paucity of space and brevity, I would only highlight the journey of the most popular type of Urdu poetry—the ghazal.

Ghazals were first introduced to Europe in the nineteenth century, where numerous scholars translated Persian ghazals into their local languages. But, the original formulation of poetry started when German poets such as Friedrich Rückert (1788–1866) and August Graf von Platen (1796–1835) began writing in the ghazal form (they called it ‘ghasels’). Below are two couplets from Rückert.⁴

Die neue Form, die ich zuerst in deinen Garten pflanze

O Deutshland, wird nicht ubel stehn in deinem reichen Kranze

Nach meinem Vorgang mag sich nun mit Gluck versuchen Mancher

Sogut im persischen Ghasel, wie sonst in welcher Stanze

The new seed which I in your garden sow,

O Germany, for your rich harvest wreath will grow

And thou who once ottave rime made

Thy gifts now in ghazals of Persia show!

The non-German readers who cannot understand the meaning can surely pay attention to the ending of the couplets and appreciate how the rhyming patterns match those of Urdu ghazals. Many English poets from Europe also tried their hand at incorporating the techniques, patterns, and rhythms of Urdu poetry. In the nineteenth century, it caught the attention of American poets, which resulted in some great pieces of authorship, most notable of which are the works of John Hollander and Adrienne Rich. The American-Indian poet Agha Shahid Ali compiled and edited the first anthology of English ghazals called Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. Read the following four couplets from Hollander’s poem called ‘Ghazal on Ghazals,’ and you will be amazed at how seamlessly he adapts the basic tenants of ghazal to his imagination.⁵

For couplets the ghazal is prime; at the end

Of each one’s a refrain like a chime: ‘at the end’

On a string of such strange, unpronounceable fruits

How fine the familiar old lime at the end

Dust and ashes? How dainty and dry! We decay

To our messy primordial slime at the end

Two frail arms of your delicate form I pursue

Inaccessible, vibrant, sublime at the end

A flavour of a more modernized version of American ghazals can be found in Patricia Smith’s ‘Hip Hop Ghazal.’⁶

Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,

Decked in shells & splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.

As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,

inhaling bassline, cracking backbone, and singing thru hips.

Numerous poets in other western countries such as Spain (Federico Garcia), Australia (Judith Wright), Canada (Jim Harrison, John Thomson, and Phyllis Webb), France, and Italy fell in love with its form and adapted it to their respective languages.

Inside the Indian subcontinent, ghazals were introduced in Gujarati theatre by the Parsi community (which established more than twenty drama companies between 1853–1869), after which they picked up traction with poets like Kalapi, Balashankar Kantharia, and Damodar Tripathi. They were written in Bengali by poets such as Kaazi Nazrul Islam and Ajay Bhattacharya. Ghazals also exist in other Indo-Pak languages such as Kashmiri, Pashto, Punjabi, Telegu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Marathi.⁷ Ghazal also travelled to neighbouring countries of Nepal where Motiram Bhatta wrote the first set of ghazals in Nepali and South East Asian countries of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia where a localized form of Malay ghazals became popular.⁸

Themes of Urdu Poetry

Generally, Urdu poetry is considered to be a by-product of separation from the beloved, adverse fate, and unfulfillment of desire. While one sees this theme pretty often, it is not always the case. If you read Quli Qutub Shah’s poetry (the founder of Hyderabad and a phenomenal poet), you will learn about merrymaking, beautiful courtesans in his palaces, and his love of wine. He had everything in the world one could ask for, and he didn’t feel shy about showcasing it in his compositions. Urdu poetry has come a long way since Quli Qutab’s time. It has touched every possible aspect of life and form of human emotion. It compares the love for a woman with the love for God. It revolts and highlights the injustice in society with progressive thoughts. It turns the heat on with political satire and adds an individualistic dimension to philosophy.

It is worth realizing that Urdu poetry also uses a vast amount of Persian imagery, idioms, sentiments, and Persian history, geography, and characters to achieve the above-said impact. Some examples that are encountered frequently are Laila Majnoon, Heer Ranjha, Aadam Hawwa (Adam and Eve), shama parwaana (candle flame and moth), saaqi sharaab (bartender and wine), sehra saraab (desert and mirage), and Moosa Toor (Moses and mountain). Strictly speaking, these age-old repeated symbols are termed as un-Indian, but without these arrows in its quiver, Urdu poetry would not be half as effective as it is today.⁹

Romance and Love

No other form in Urdu poetry comes close to ghazal when an expression of love is required. In conservative Islamic societies with the purdah system in place, youngsters couldn’t strike up a conversation with members of the opposite sex. When it was extremely hard for a girl and boy to catch a glimpse of each other after puberty, let alone consummate their love, ghazal provided a way for them to express their feelings anonymously and in indirect ways. And as expected, this love was not reciprocated or was beyond approach due to parental restrictions, the communal ethos, or social taboos. It is also not crucial for the beloved to echo the feelings back since the lover has accepted his situation but continues to love, nonetheless. This feeling of failure, the pain of longing, and frustration can thus be seen in various ghazals. Majaz explains this frustration with the following ghazal:¹⁰

Aasmaan tak jo naala* pahuncha hai

Dil ki gahraaiyon se nikla hai

Aah kya dil mein ab lahoo bhi naheen

Aaj ashkon† ka rang pheeka hai

This lamentation that has reached the sky

Has originated from depths of my heart

Leave moaning, there isn’t any blood in my heart

The colour of my tears is dull today

Erotic

Urdu ghazals and nazms also convey an erotic or physical form of love. However, this intent behind such poems is not to showcase eroticism or treat an individual as an object of physical desire, but to appreciate the physical beauty and personality of someone you love. See how bold Khwaja Haidar Ali Aatish’s take is on spending a night with your beloved:

Yaar ko main ne mujhe yaar ne sone na diya

Raat bhar taala-e-bedaar‡ ne sone na diya

I and my beloved, didn’t allow each other to sleep

Entire night our awakened fortune didn’t let us sleep

Eroticism is also often achieved by graphical representation of one’s body or limbs such as lips, locks of hair, cheeks, or waist. The way a woman walks, lifts her eyes, or ties her hair is also depicted metaphorically by ghazal writers. Who can forget Pankaj Udhas’ ode to Qateel Shifai’s famous ghazal ‘Chaandi Jaisa Rang Hai Tera, Sone Jaise Baal’ (Your complexion is like silver, hair like gold), which is one of the most popular ghazals of the eighties? To showcase the flavour of eroticism from the nineteenth century, I present two shers by Ameer Minai:¹¹

Chaand sa chehra noor ki chitwan* maasha-allaah† maasha-allaah

Turfa‡ nikaala aap ne joban§ maasha-allaah maasha-allaah

Jama kiya ziddain¶ ko tum ne sakhti aisi narmi aisi

Mom badan hai dil hai aahan** maasha-allaah maasha-allaah

A face like a moon and sight of its splendour; god willed it all

Beautiful and rare is your youth; god willed it all

You are a blend of opposites; this firmness, and this softness

Body made of wax and heart of iron; god willed it all

Spiritual and Religious

Apart from romantic connotations, love can also happen with god almighty (religious or spiritual love) or any other social or religious idol. As a matter of fact, the word ishq or love is divided into two buckets*: ishq-e-majaazi (metaphorical love, love of another man or woman) and ishq-e-haqeeqi (divine love or love for god). So deep was this love, that traditional Sufi mystic poets compared their desire of god and enlightenment with the passion for the opposite sex. And the way these poets depicted their love was by writing poems that were slightly vague in their intent. I present here one of the nazms from Hazrat Baba Gulzar Sabri, a famous Sufi mystic of his time, in which he iterates the constant denial of his love for god. If you read the nazm without this context, it could easily be construed as a message from a boy to his beloved. A beautiful version of this piece has also been performed in Coke Studio Season 7 (2014) by Abbas Ali Khan and is readily available on apps like YouTube.¹²

Mujhe baar baar sada† na de

Meri hasraton ko hawa na de

Mere dil mein aatish-e-ishq‡ hai

Meri aag tujh ko jala na de

Don’t call for me again and again

Don’t fan my desires for you

My heart contains the flame of love

Be careful, or this fire will burn you

The love for religion should also not be confused with a narrow form of religious enthusiasm that leads to unwarranted communal tension. For Urdu poets and mystics, their love had no barriers of caste, creed, or belief. They loved the idea of freedom and sometimes even showed their love for religion by challenging orthodox Islamic views of society. Daagh in the following couplet tries to show his disobedience:*

Karte ho ‘daagh’ duur se but-khaane† ko salaam

Apni tarah ke ek musalmaan tumheen to ho

‘Daagh’, you greet the temples from a distance

You are a unique muslim in your own way

Political and Social Issues

Urdu poetry has also often been used for communicating patriotic and political ideas. Bismil Azimabadi’s poem ‘Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna Ab Hamaare Dil Mein Hai’ became the anthem of the freedom struggle against the British rule in India. Poets like Faiz, Majaz, and Jazbi became part of the Progressive Writers Movement and believed in votary of free expression and socio-political justice. They refuted the centuries-old romantic-spiritual tradition of poetry and brought their audience face to face with the suffering of common men, characterized by oppression, insecurity, and despair. For them, their love was for their country, and they often disguised their dissent as love poems. For instance, read the following nazm for women’s rights titled ‘Aurat,’ which was narrated by Habib Jalib in a women’s rally held in 1984:

Baazaar hai wo ab tak jis mein tujhe nachwaaya

Deewaar hai wo ab tak jis mein tujhe chunwaaya

Deewaar ko aa todein baazaar ko aa dhaaen

Insaaf ki khaatir ham sadkon pe nikal aaen

Majboor ke sar par hai shaahi ka wahi saaya

Baazaar hai wo ab tak jis mein tujhe nachwaaya

That market still stands where you were forced to dance

That wall still stands where you were immured

Let’s break this wall and demolish that market

Let’s come out on the streets for justice

Oppressed are still living in the shadow of royalty

That market still stands where you were forced to dance

Humorous

It would have been a sad state of affairs if Urdu hadn’t bonded itself with humour and wit. For laughter is a companion for happiness and celebration, a poison for stress, a cheap medicine for the soul. So rudimentary yet powerful this emotion is that Plato once said that ‘Even the god loves jokes.’ And thus, for centuries, poets across the world have used their words to concoct a potion for stress, anxiety, and loss of hope.

The Urdu poetry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had chunks of humour, yet it carried an unsmiling tone. Poets like Ghalib and Iqbal had to deal with poverty, disease, famine, and constant wars and their work portrayed exaggeration and self-misery in a comic yet grim tone. Even in modern literature, a hefty section of the Urdu poetry intends to establish a bigger purpose or communicate a social message using satire. Bribery, corruption, choices made by political leaders, overpopulation, unemployment or inflation, there was never a dearth of topics for poets to point out the ills of society in their own language.¹³ Josh highlights the pervasiveness of bribery by writing the following stanza in his nazm ‘Rishwat’:¹⁴

Kis ko samjhaaen use kho dein to phir paaenge kya

Ham agar rishwat naheen lenge to phir khaaenge kya

Qaid bhi kar dein to ham ko raah par laaenge kya

Ye junoon-e-ishq* ke andaaz chhoot jaaenge kya

Jab talak rishwat na lein ham daal gal sakti naheen

Naaw tankhwaahon ke paani mein to chal sakti naheen

How can I explain, if I leave it, I’ll have nothing

If I’ll not take a bribe, then what will I eat?

Jail me, but that may not help to mend my ways

This frenzy of love is impossible for me to quit

Unless I take a bribe, I cannot succeed

My lifeboat cannot sail in the waters of my salary

The most apparent type of humorous poetry, which involved pure laughter and enjoyment, grew in the twentieth century as the stress levels of a common man elevated with the modernization of the society. Akbar Allahabadi, one of the founding fathers of modern, humorous Urdu poetry, jokes about the plight of married men by writing the following sher nearly a hundred years ago:

‘Akbar’ dabe naheen kisi sultaan ki fauj se

Lekin shaheed ho gaye beewi ki nauj* se

Akbar, you didn’t concede defeat to a king’s army

But received martyrdom from your wife’s temper

Apart from the above genres, Urdu poetry has been written on many other themes such as philosophy, personal loss, tourism, and self-praise. The underlying fact of all types of Urdu poetry, just like any other language, is that, eventually, it is the reader who gives meaning to a piece of text. Many times, this meaning could be very different from the one the poet imagined, and that is the magic of Urdu poetry.

Schools of Urdu Poetry

Urdu has two major forms of dialect. The first one, Urdu of Delhi (North India), is spoken in northern parts of India and in Pakistan and is also known as urdu-e-mualla or muhawra-e-shahjahanabad. The version that got developed in the Deccan region† is called Dakhani. As expected, these epicentres also gave birth to respective schools of poetry. Dakhani became the origin of the Deccan School of Poetry while Urdu of North India resulted in the Delhi and Lucknow (Awadhi) School of Poetry. Each of these three cities carved out a unique regional identity, not only in content but also in style:

Arz-e-dakan* mein jaan to dilli mein dil bani

Aur shahr-e-lucknow† mein hina‡ ban gai ghazal¹⁵

It became the life of Deccan and the heart of Delhi

And ghazal coloured Lucknow with hina

The Delhi School of Poetry was known for its creative depth, high emotional quotient, and realism. They didn’t pay a lot of attention to verbal accuracy. The times when Ghalib, Momin, and Zauq reached their pinnacle were turbulent from a social, political, and economic point of view. The Mughal Empire was on the decline under Bahadur Shah Zafar (who himself was a great poet), and there were constant battles among the British, Mughals, Marathas, and Jats. After Nadir Shah’s invasion in 1739 and then the yearly conquest of Ahmad Shah Abdali from 1748 started taking their toll on Delhi, Lucknow became the new cultural capital of North India. Lucknow School of Poetry, on the other hand, was not known for its depth of thought but for its finesse, style, and flair of words that mirrored the relatively laidback and comfortable lifestyle in the Awadh region. It focused on being more graphic, erotic, full of metaphors, extreme verbosity, and suitability for public display and consumption.¹⁶ The difference between the two can be summarized as below:

Aim of a poet should be to write

thoughts of Delhi in the language of Lucknow

One should note that some poets migrated between schools to escape the state of penury, avoid political unrest, or if they felt that their poetry was not fully appreciated. Zauq from Delhi talks about migrating to Deccan in one of his couplets:

In dinon garche* dakan† mein hai badi qadr-e-sukhan‡

Kaun jaaye ‘zauq’ par dilli ki galiyaan chhod kar

Although poets in Deccan are appreciated these days

‘Zauq,’ I still don’t want to leave the streets of Delhi

And a befitting answer to Zauq’s above sher came in twentieth century in Kavish Badri’s ghazal:¹⁷

Ab na wo ahbaab§ zinda hain na rasm-ul-khat¶ wahaan

Rooth kar urdu to dehli se dakan mein aa gai

Nowadays neither friends nor its script is alive there

Angry Urdu abandoned Delhi to visit Lucknow

Common Misbeliefs Related to Urdu

Misbelief: Urdu is the sister language of Persian and Arabic. Hence, it is an alien language with no ancient ties to India.

Fact: Local dialects of Hindi and Punjabi intermingled with Arabic and Persian words in the thirteenth century to create a hybrid language known as Urdu. As a formal term, Urdu only became famous when it was first used in 1780 by Mus’hafi (1750–1824) in one of his poetic collections. Before that, Urdu was known as Rekhta or Hindvi, a term used by foreigners to describe people living in India or Hindustan and the language spoken by them (just like Chinese, English, etc.). Mansoor Usmani, a poet from Moradabad, highlights the truth in one of his ghazals:¹⁸

Jahaan jahaan koi urdu zabaan bolta hai

Waheen waheen mera hindostaan bolta hai

Wherever somebody speaks in Urdu

My Hindustan speaks there too

Misbelief: I don’t know Urdu at all. I am a