Artists and poets first and foremost make our lives musical and lyrical – they create conditions of joy and ecstasy. After that, they illuminate our minds, which indicates how we are advancing towards the highest destinations of humanity.
Ghalib, who passed away 150 years ago on February 15, is among the few greatest artists whose popularity is only increasing with the passage of time. It is a sad reality that Ghalib did not achieve the exalted position which he deserved while he was alive.
The fame of his verses had spread even in his youth in the Urdu circles of Agra, Delhi and indeed all the cities of northern India; but Ghalib’s poetry, both in terms of its shape and meaning, was different from the prevalent and favoured style of his own time. His verse had a novel meaning, and the beauty of his verse was a novel beauty. To understand and enjoy it, there was a need to bring the mind to a new level – and that needed time.
During Ghalib’s time, northern India was in the throes of great anguish and pain, chaos and unrest, and weakness. In these circumstances, most poetry had become either full of seasonal and shallow pleasure, or the conditions of utmost hopelessness and defeat. Ghalib’s own private life is a long tale of misfortune, want and impoverishment, and of the tortuous feeling that there was no real appreciation of his worth.
Also read: On Ghalib’s 150th Death Anniversary, a Visit to His Apartment in Kolkata
But Ghalib’s greatness lies in the fact that like many other poets of his era, he never adopted the philosophy of make or break. He did not become a victim of these circumstances but rather overcame them, thus avoiding the degradation of his soul. He extracted revolutionary and dynamic results from the philosophy of vahdat-ul-vujood (unity in diversity). Even while viewing good and evil, joy and sorrow, motion and rest, opposites together in confrontation, he understood life and all its manifestations as a unity. In this chaos, Man in his view appears as the most remarkable existence.
He said,
‘Do look upon the pomp of life
This commotion is all thanks to us
From this dusty curtain whose name is Man
An apocalypse-like event is glittering’
That is why Ghalib loved this Man; because his heart was permanently agitated with enthusiasm, wish and desire, passion and hope. And whenever he was trapped in the maelstrom of grief and sorrow, failure and misfortune, even then he would say:
‘What was left in the home for your sorrow to destroy it
That longing for construction we once had, is there indeed’
This same constructive longing, the desire for adorning and making life, permanent restlessness, and the same continuous anguish of the spirit, is for Ghalib the most precious capital of Man. A heart which does not possess this restlessness and impatience, and the spirit having no passion for transforming life is, according to Ghalib, mean, deficient and abhorrent.
‘Ghalib, beware the hard, cold hearts of prosperous and satisfied people
The hearts and lives which possess anguish and impatience (they are worthy of respect)
How much kindness and favours do these hearts and lives possess’
In another verse, he expresses the same subject:
‘If I envy someone at all, that is the person
Who travels alone, hungry and thirsty
In the rocky valleys of mountains
Not on the satiated hearts of the haram (sacred territory of Mecca)
Who satisfy themselves with their Aab-e-Zamzam’ (water from Hagar’s well in Mecca)
Ghalib’s disposition was replete with satire and comedy. He also had the ability to laugh at his deprivations. If he hated anything, it was shallowness, superficiality and puerility; he liked innovation, originality, singularity, elegance and purity.
To combat the hardships of life was the greatest sign of humanity, in his opinion. If he was vexed by something, it was at the uniformity, lifelessness and waning away of emotions. In a letter, he has written in a comical style:
‘When I imagine Paradise and think that if forgiveness is in order and I am rewarded with a palace, as well as a houri, eternal abode and to spend my life with this same lucky woman, my heart is agitated at the thought; and the heart comes to the mouth, he-he that houri will grow weary, why wouldn’t the disposition worry, the same emerald palace, and the same branch of Tooba…’ (a tree of paradise)
Ghalib would have seen the lives of nobles and their habits, meaning a state of insensitivity, a lack of humanity, intelligence and knowledge, and self-interested pleasure-seeking free of elegance and purity; so he must have felt strong alienation and hatred from all these matters. He was always in search of the true jewel:
‘Seek that joy from the Heavens which was available to Jamshid
Do not desire his splendour (since it is of no worth)
If your cup has grape wine, that is the real thing
Which is admirable, not that wine cup
Even it be made of ruby.’
At one place, in a letter, Ghalib has presented his concept of “pleasure” in very clear and plain words:
‘Listen sahib, whatever taste a person has for whichever hobby and he spends his life frankly in it, that is (to be) called pleasure.’
The freedom to work as one desires is not only the true definition of pleasure, but also of individual freedom. Class society, though, gives very few this opportunity. Had the idea of creating a socialist society ever been presented before Ghalib, where every individual would get this opportunity, he would definitely have supported it with great enthusiasm.
Also read: Ghalib and the Art of Conversion
His wish was that since the gems of asceticism and freedom, and sacrifice and favour, have been entrusted to Man, he should also be given the full opportunity to employ them; and he said with great longing:
‘If not in the whole world so be it, at least in the city where I live, no one starving or naked should be visible indeed. Punished by God, rejected by mankind, weak, sick, (a) fakir, imprisoned by adversity, irrespective of myself and my matters of speech and skill, one who cannot see anyone begging, while begging myself from door to door, that person is myself.’
Ghalib wrote this painful letter approximately 150 years from today. But how much the world has changed. The kalam of Ghalib is our most precious spiritual gift, and Ghalib is our most beloved poet. His skill secure, his fame ever-increasing, and his heart’s desire that “no one starving or naked should be visible” in the world, became a reality when less than 50 years after he passed away, the first socialist revolution occurred in Russia in 1917.
Note: All translations from Farsi and Urdu are the writer’s own.
Raza Naeem is a Pakistani social scientist, book critic and award-winning translator and dramatic reader currently based in Lahore. He is also the President of the Progressive Writers Association in Lahore. He can be reached at razanaeem@hotmail.com.