Mirza Beg Asadullah Khan (1797–1869), better known as Ghalib, was a multidimensional personality and a poet who reflected on every aspect of human nature. His subtle and nuanced language takes the reader into endless depths of meaning. Choosing not to become a soldier like his ancestors, he attained great heights as a poet.
His Urdu couplets are still deeply embedded in the human psyche and are often quoted. His letters, written to people across the country, are testimony of the breadth and depth of his vision and, for the first time, gave legitimacy to Urdu prose. It should be noted that there was no language by the name of Urdu before 1775, and by choosing it as a vehicle of his creative expression in prose, Ghalib made a signal contribution to its development.
Maaz Bin Bilal’s is a recent and rather new-generation English translation of Ghalib’s masnavi (long poem) Chiragh-i-Dair — the third among his 11 masnavis penned in Persian. It is perhaps the only example of a long poem in Persian by an Indian about an Indian city. The masnavi is a fine example of the nuanced complexity of Ghalib’s thought and language, which the translation highlights while remaining true to the original.
Published as Temple Lamp, this is not the first translation of Chiragh-i Dair, but the best one. There are two other English translations of Chiragh-i-Dair to my knowledge. One is by P.K. Nijhawan, based on Kalidas Gupta Reza’s Urdu translation, and Kuldip Salil’s based on Sadiq’s Hindi one. It is documented that while proceeding from Delhi to Calcutta, the then capital of British India, Ghalib arrived in Banaras in the spring of 1827 and was greatly captivated by the city. That Ghalib chose to describe Banaras, believed to be the holiest centre of Hindu culture, as the ‘Kaaba of Hindostan’ reveals the extent of his love for the city.
Ghalib was distraught after Allahabad
A bust of Ghalib at his house or haveli in New Delhi. | Photo Credit: Wiki Commons
The depth and perception of Ghalib’s understanding of Hindu religion and culture were such as to challenge Hindu theologists themselves. On reaching Calcutta, he gained a greater knowledge of the Hindu culture of Bengal. For him, like many others, Hinduism is not perceived as a religion in search of a political identity, as different from its Muslim counterpart. Ghalib’s fascination with Banaras is evident in the masnavi. For instance, Verse 81 reads: So great is the majesty of Banaras / that the reach of thought cannot mount its summit.
Ghalib had reached the city distraught after Allahabad, a city of colonial clerical ethos, but was left rejuvenated with renewed hope and life after his sojourn there. It was in this city that he, according to one of his letters, longed to live till the end without any desire to return to Delhi — if only he had been still young. Because of its very structure, the masnavi has traditionally been the genre for composing long stories in verse. The 19th century saw a proliferation of masnavis in North India. Delhi and Lucknow, the two main centres of Urdu poetry in India at the time, saw the creation of many masnavis, which portrayed daily life more forcefully than ghazals, qaseedas, or even marsiyas (elegies). It is, therefore, not surprising that Ghalib chose this genre to pour out his love for the city.
Not an easy poem to translate
However, Chiragh-i Dair is not an easy poem to translate. Nothing is easy in the case of Ghalib. To convey its true essence and the unparalleled heights reached by the poet’s virtuosity in another language is very tricky, but Bilal has done a commendable job. His translation is not versified. But this should not be regarded as a drawback because an insistence on rhyme and rhythm has occasionally obscured the essential spirit of a poetic work.
The translator’s introduction is of merit in understanding the poem’s impulses and place. It covers aspects like Ghalib’s life, his Banaras sojourn, the Chiragh-i Dair poetics and themes, and a brief, select bibliography of the works in this field. It benefits both scholars and the uninitiated. It firmly helps to set Bilal’s work apart from the many cut-and-paste jobs prevalent in this age of Internet-promoted scholarship.
Among the points Bilal makes, two deserve special mention. A city like Banaras, or any other oriental city for that matter, may well be viewed from a perspective different from the colonial one. Second, even if Ghalib valued his Persian creations more, his Urdu poetry, upon which, in the main, rests Ghalib’s immortality, cannot be underestimated.
This translation, one cannot but feel, will help to turn the attention of the English-speaking world once again towards Ghalib’s considerable and valuable legacy to poetry and literature.
The reviewer, a Ph.D from JNU, is the general secretary of Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind), an organisation responsible for canon formation in Urdu.
