Some souvenirs from the festival of stories

(Part III)

After the death of Mirza Ghalib’s adopted son Zainul Abidin Khan Arif, Mirza brought his two sons Hussain Ali Khan Shadan and Baqir Ali Khan Kamil to him. Mirza’s companionship was available to both of them, and their taste for poetry and speech also began to flourish. In those days, there was a trend of calling city riots due to the destruction of the city of Delhi.

One day Mirza Ghalib addressed Hussain Ali Khan who was eight or nine years old and said, “Happy! You drowned my name, Ghalib’s grandson and such a leper brain that he doesn’t even say a poem!” Shadan replied, “Grandpa! Don’t worry, we will say poetry. A few days later, a mushaira was held under the auspices of Mirza Ghalib and according to tradition, most of the poets recited poems on the destruction and destruction of Delhi in a sympathetic tone. As a result, an atmosphere of mourning prevailed over the mushaira and the people of the mushaira became depressed. At the same time, Ghalib signaled to read Shadan who was with him, the eyes of the congregation were fixed on this light. Shadan read the notice after acknowledgments and manners:

Well done! The name and mark of Delhi has been erased

Meri Papoosh became the elegiac poet of Delhi

The reading of the poem was such that a wave of life flowed in the mushaira, crying people read it with laughter, Ghalib hugged and loved his talented grandson.

When Allama Iqbal went to Lucknow in 1912, he also met the beloved Rashid Lucknowi, grandson of Maranis. The family of Mir Anis has the distinction of having introduced elegance of expression and simplicity of words in Urdu poetry through everyday and idiomatic expressions.

On Pyare Sahib’s request, Allama Iqbal recited to him his famous ghazal, “Kabhi O Haqirat-i Mantatar Nazar Aa Rabas-i Majaz Mein”. Ghazal Sun’s dear Sahib became silent, and after a few seconds’ pause, he said, “Now say something in Urdu too?” Humorous poet Syed Olad Hussain, poet Lucknowi, satirized on the same heavy rhetoric of Allama Iqbal. Describing the curse of a fat woman, he writes:

A carry from Maloha he also put high

If it comes on the shoulders of four, then the whole palanquin

“As thick as Hazrat Iqbal’s Urdu!”

Renowned Urdu writer Ali Raza Abidi writes in his book “Janae Najraje”, “Once there was an agreement to spend the night in a village of Thatta, some distance from Karachi. We had rested our heads on the bed with white, cold sheets under the open sky, and then we did not know ourselves. Someone gently ran fingers through my hair before the poo erupted in the morning. I sat up nervously. She was the witch, floating on the ground, wading through the sugar-cane fields, wading barefoot into the canal a short distance away, and patting the waves of the canal as if she were a soft baby. I am happy.

The whole environment was filled with a sweet enjoyment. When the wind hit the leaves of the fields full of sugarcane, a rustling sound was heard as if someone was whispering softly, a gentle soft light wanted to spread, here the trees began to wake up with half-opened eyes, there the horizon began to shake. , the description of the environment was gradually changing into the language of feelings instead of words, so I woke up my friend who was sleeping nearby and said, “Get up, listen, nature is speaking Urdu.”

Qaiser Usmani writes in his book “Journey of Memories”, when he went to meet Arzoo Lakhnavi Sahib at his flat in Karachi, his students Partu Lakhnavi, Ahsan Rizvi and others were there. During the conversation I mentioned the following famous qawwali written by Nakhshab Jarchovi in ​​the movie ‘Zeenaat’ these days:

He didn’t sigh, didn’t doubt, didn’t do anything with his tongue

We sat down holding our hearts, holding our livers in our hands

Arzoo smiled meaningfully after hearing the information about the qawwali and said, “You can guess for yourself how Nakhshab has abused the information about one of my ghazals for this qawwali of Zeenat Film”. My ghazal is informed:

We didn’t do any work with our hands in the time of unemployment

When he got up, he held his heart, when he sat down, he held his kidney

Mufti Anttamullah Shahabi writes in Lataif al-Shaaraa, “One day Akbar’s vizier Abdul Rahim Khan Khanan was riding when a poor man on the road, who seemed to be a noble family, found a white bottle containing a drop of water. He bent it in front of Khan Khanan and straightened the bottle when the water started to fall.

Khan asked him to attend the court and later sent him away with honors and rewards. The courtiers asked Maja why they gave him money when he apparently did not ask for financial help. On which Khan Khanan said, “You don’t understand, this was a polite question, he demanded that a drop of honor has been saved, and she also wants to fall now, so help me.”

Syed Maqsood Zahidi writes in his book “Shadows of Memories” that in the presence of Maulvi Abdul Salam Nadvi, I read the following poem by Allama Iqbal:

The unbeliever’s awake heart is before Sanam

By the devotees that fear is inside the sanctuary

(In other words, the awake heart of a fur in front of stone idols is better than the heart of a devotee sleeping inside the Haram) Maulvi Sahib was in such a mood that the lines of the poem started to fade.

He started saying, “The apparent benefactors and demands of this poem are worthy of attention, but the terms presented in the poem are far from reality.” For example, a person with an awakened heart can never be a disbeliever, nor does he smash his head with stones for the sake of peace of heart, nor can his conscience be polluted by dirt. And whoever is truly religious can never be a victim of neglect in the sanctuary, because the spirit of pride is always present in his imagination and consciousness and he is always moving towards the same direction due to his conscious and unconscious attachment. comes, and that dimension is only the attainment of nearness to the self or the spirit of the universe. The meaning in which the late Iqbal has used the terms kafir and devout in this poem has the opposite effect on the mind of a thinker.

Nand Kishore Vikram, the author of the book Habib Jalib, Personality and Poetry, writes in his mentioned book that there was a period in Faraq Sahib’s poetry that he was unconsciously influenced by Mir Taqi Mir’s style of poetry. Until Mir Sahib’s impression on his speech was clearly visible. Little by little, this trend of Mirism began to affect other poets as well. Meanwhile, at the All Indo-Pak Mushaira presided over by Faraq Sahib in Delhi, Habib Jalib recited his ghazal:

Whose eyes are ghazal, every poem is my poetry, my poetry is my poetry

After reading a few poems, Jalib addressed Faraq Sahib in a respectful manner and said, “Faraq Sahib will read the poem!” Having said this, read the following verse:

Speak in your own way

Mir’s poem is Mir’s poem!!

Khaliq Anjum, writing a sketch of Jameel Jalbi in the memoir-based book “Muje Sab Hai Yad Azra Azra”, states, “The well-known researcher and writer Jameel Jalbi had the signs of becoming a great writer from his childhood. While giving an interview to Tahir Masood, Jameel Sahib says that I had a great desire to become a writer from my early age. In the afternoon, when everyone in the house was asleep, I would hide in the bathroom, tear the pages of the copies and write the text of the textbooks on them, then collect these pages and make a book and write my name as the author Muhammad Jameel Khan on the book. . My father would have been happy with this act of mine, but the rest of the family would have scolded me. This passion eventually became my destiny.

In Sarkhab, a book based on sketches of writers and poets, Irfan Javed, writing a sketch of Amjad Islam Amjad, writes that in a private gathering, Amjad sahib had a real incident with Ehsan Danish in the context of the decline of literature. Narrated like this, once a strange young man brought one of his ghazals to me for correction, which was informed as follows:

I have not understood and will not understand, do not explain to me

Just move on for God’s sake

I said that the first stanza of the notification is fine, but I don’t know anything about the line in the second stanza. On this this young man looked at me with bored and pitiful eyes and said, Kamal hai! You are such a great poet and you don’t even know that the line must come at the end.

In the book “Firaq Gorakhpuri, Yadayon Ke Jhrukku Mein”, Mutarab Nizami writes, Once I recited to Faraq Sahib a famous contemporary poem by the fast-growing poet Bashir Badr:

Let your memories stay with us

I do not know in which street the evening of life will end

After listening to the poem, Mr. Faraq said, I’m sorry! You have not recited any masterpiece. As far as I can remember, forty years ago today, a poet of the early days recited this poem as follows:

I walk with my head wrapped in a shroud

Don’t know where the evening of life will happen!!

Mr. Bashir has added a new stanza to the second stanza, while in the second stanza, he has introduced a composition called “Life Street” which is borrowed from the English language. In Urdu, if you say “street of life”, then in Urdu it can be the footpath, main road, and crossroads of life. In addition, it is wrong to determine only the street for death to come on the basis of semantic and literal palace only, because just as the time cannot be determined for death, the place also cannot be determined. Now look at the second stanza, “Let your memories stay with us”. Beloved can disobey us but cannot take his memories away from us because memories belong to us.

So the one we remember can forget us but cannot forget our memories from our heart. And when you can’t forget the memories, the dreams will naturally stay with the memories, now asking for one of the things that are indispensable, i.e. only wishing for the dreams, is wrong in itself. In the process of embellishing, the poem has been stripped of meaning.

Muhammad Baqir Shams writes in his book “History of Lucknow” that the famous poet Munshi Naubat Rai Nazar Lucknowi wrote a personal obituary on the death of his son in his youth which is considered a masterpiece of history literature. Its last stanza is:

He nurtured this heartache with thousands of caress

Never took it out in the sun

That is why the house was dark

It was the moon, it was the halo of that moon

Bury me with him in mourning

How can it be alone in poverty?

A special and noteworthy aspect of this stanza is that the poet is a Hindu, whose dead are cremated here, so he should have said, “Burn me to ashes with him” but because cremation turns the body into ashes. It is annihilated, and along with it, the concept of grief also ends, while the body remains safe and remains for a long time by burial, so the physical connection that is made in the last stanza of Hasrat Bayt, is A practical case may be possible. In addition, the idea of ​​the continuity of grief and its perpetuity also becomes stronger.

Tanveer Ahmed is famous in his book “Yadayin Yaad Aayte Haye” Ibn Safi, a well-known detective novelist, wrote a story in the 7th grade under the name “Nakam Arzoo” and was published by Adil Rashid in Bombay. Sent for the magazine. Deceived by the magnificent daughter of the story and maturity of words and imagination, the editor of the magazine wrote his introduction as a story writer as follows, “The result of thought: the painter of emotions, Hazrat Asrar Narvi.” The story published when Ibn Safi’s Ahl When she reached the house, the presence of the innocent storyteller came to the house so that he was addressed by saying, “Hey, painter of emotions!” Just bring a glass of water!