Shahryar’s Spots of
Time: Poetry and Poetics
Mohammad Asim Siddiqui
Kunwar Akhlaq Mohammad Khan, better known by
his nom de plume ‘Shahryar’, winner of India’s highest literary award Jnanpith
in 2011, has written lyrics for a number of Hindi films. His lyrics ‘In aankhon
ki masti ke mastane hazzaro hain’, ‘Dil cheez kya hain aap meri jaan lijiye’, immortalized by the voice of Asha Bhosle
and ‘seenein mein jalan aankhon mei toofan sa kyon hai’, sung soulfully
by Suresh Wadkar have made him too famous for most people to know that he is
one of the most important Urdu poets of the Indian subcontinent after
independence. Beginning with Gaman (1978)
Shahryar wrote lyrics for Umrao Jaan (1981), Faasle (1985), Anjuman
(1986) and some incomplete ventures like Daman, Zooni and Noorjahan
but rarely a thought is spared by a English reader to realize that he has six
remark-ably well-received collections of poetry. Gulzar, one of our important
contemporary poets who edited a book of Shahryar’s poetry, aptly places him
very high in the canon of modern Urdu poetry: “Firaq, Faiz and Faraz were the
great poets of great poetry; And there is Shahryar” (13).
All important Urdu critics who include
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, Gopi Chand Narang, Shameem Hanafi and others, have
written critical essays on Shahryar, recognizing his worth and analyzing his
ghazals and nazms. Prem Kumar, a Hindi critic, has published a very useful book
of Shahryar’s interviews titled Baaton Mulaqaton Mein Shahryar
(Vaani Prakashan, 2013). In this respect the editorial work of Sarvarul Huda, an
emerging critic of Urdu literature, who has put together in one voluminous book
all important criticism on Shahryar, reviews on his work and his interviews,
with a long and insightful introduction cannot be praised enough. For English
readers Rakhshanda Jalil’s literary biography of the poet, Shahryar: A Life
in Poetry (HarperCollins, 2018) neatly does the job of introducing to the
English reader the poet’s life and the context of his poetry, apart from
offering a translation of some of his selected nazms and ghazals. Jalil’s
translation of Shahryar’s nazms Through the Closed Doorway: A
Collection of Nazms by Shahryar (Rupa, 2004) was also remarkable for trying
to capture for English readers the rhythm of Shahryar’s nazms. English
translations of selected poems of Shahryar have also been done competently
by Baidar Bakht and Marie-Anne Erki
which appeared as Selected Poetry of Shahryar (Sahitya Akademi, 2010).
Mention must also be made of the work of Rekhta Foundation which has put on its
immensely useful website the poetry of Shahryar in Roman script. And not to
forget the eminently useful practice in recent years which has seen to it that
works of Urdu are available in Devnagri too, a point especially important here
because all his life Shahryar maintained very cordial relations with Hindi
poets, writers, critics and colleagues.
Shahryar’s
first collection of poetry Ism-e-Azam, which
metaphorically can be translated as the Holy Grail of Islam, came out in 1965.
Dedicated to Khalilur Rahman Azmi, an important Urdu poet and
critic and Shahryar’s mentor, the collection was well received and established
Shahryar’s reputation as a breathtakingly new voice in Urdu poetry. He was
especially welcomed as a poet of jadidiyat which in English can be loosely
translated as modernism. His second collection of poetry Saatvan Dar, appeared
in 1969 and the third collection Hijr ke Mausam in 1978. His fourth collection Khwab ka Dar Band Hai which bagged the award of UP Urdu academy
and also that of Sahitya Akademi in 1987 appeared in 1985. His fifth collection
Neend ki Kirche came out in 1995 and Shaam Hone Wali Hai, his last, in 2004. He continued
writing poetry after these publications though his production became slow in his
later years.
There were competing poetics of the progressives and the
modernists when Shahryar appeared on the literary scene in the 1960s. He did
admit that he must have been influenced by both. As a matter of fact both the
traditional and the experimental aspect of the modern coexist in his poetry
increasing the appeal of his poetry. He read all classical poets like Mir,
Ghalib and Atish avidly. Among the progressives he particularly liked Faiz Ahmad
Faiz. The modernists he took fancy to included N.M. Rashid, Miraji, Akhtarul
Iman, Munibur Rahman and Munir Niazi. He agreed with Khalilur Rahman Azmi in
his belief that art should be the primary concern of the artist. He did not
agree with the idea of writing poetry to a purpose, an idea held by the
progressive school, because it could compromise style.
Of all forms of Urdu poetry, ghazal has evoked a very
intense discussion. How should it be composed? Should it have an inner
continuity or a unity of mood and tone or each couplet of a ghazal can go in
different directions, are questions which have been discussed routinely in Urdu
criticism. Shahryar also has clear opinions about the form of ghazal. He notes
that in the classical tradition even contradictory thoughts could be seen in a
ghazal. But after Altaf Husain Hali’s intervention more and more poets,
particularly contemporary poets, started avoiding contradictory thoughts in a
ghazal. He agrees in principle with the idea that each couplet of a ghazal is
independent and complete but he was aware of the trend, followed in his time,
where contradictory thoughts in a ghazal were avoided by his contem-poraries.
Shahryar considered it a good change in the form of
ghazal. He explained that in earlier poetry style was everything and there was
no interest in thought or idea. A good idiom or a good use of zeugma (our Dictionary defines it as a poetic device “that uses one word to
refer to two or more different things, in more than one day”) could get a poet
praise. Not anymore. Now it is seen if the experience, which includes style, has
any newness or novelty. For Shahryar a
sense of wonder is a must for poetry. He further stresses that style cannot be
separated from thought. Without style, one cannot imagine an experience.
Referring to oft-quoted body and soul dichotomy, Shahryar said that he cannot
imagine a soul without its body.
Rakhshanda Jalil discusses Halqa-e
Arbaab-Zauq (The Circle of the Men of Good Taste), a literary school which
opposed the poetics of Progressive Writers’ Movement and insisted on exploring
the inner world and themes like “alienation of the self, the ennui and angst of
modernism” to place Shahryar in a larger perspective. Miraji, an important new
voice in poetry, was the intellectual force behind this group. Starting with Miraji, new nazm in Urdu has been used both
by Shahryar and poets coming after him. The new nazm, which includes many
experiments in prose nazms such as nasri nazams (prose nazms) and azaad nazms (free
nazms), has invited a lot of discussion. Shahryar did not shy away from writing
prose nazms either. However, he aptly remarks Urdu readers’ poetic sensibility
is in tune with ghazals and they do not derive as much pleasure from nazms as
from ghazals. One reason for this is that a nazm consists of not one or two but
many poetic units. Unlike a ghazal, a nazm has a unity of tone and subject and
requires multiple readings for its proper comprehension.
There is a richness and plentifulness of emotions in his
poetry. Often one can find different shades of an emotion, an emotion and its
contrary emotion, but all true to experience. It is because of this richness of
emotions and experiences and the variety of themes in his poetry that a lot of
his couplets in ghazals and many nazms stand independently and are quoted in
different contexts. A lot of his poems
are about dreams about which so much has been written that the first thing that
comes to his reader’s mind is that he is a poet of dreams. Night and time are
other dominant motifs in his poetry. But his poetry also explores the pangs of
loneliness, virtue of solitude, the playful and serious aspect of lover-beloved
relationship, lack in our life expressed philosophically, the beauty and pain
of fleeting emotions and sensa-tions and the serious environmental concerns. It
is not only dreams but also water, sea, river, and sand images that abound in
his poetry. Most importantly he is a poet of city life who advocates
rationalism, time-tested human values, composite culture of India and usually
shuns religious imagery in his poetry. Like many modernist poets self is also a
major subject in his poetry and a lot of his poems explore the injury caused to
self in his urban setup.
Shahryar is never loud in his poetry. He is more a master
of under-statement than raising a slogan. The tone in his poetry is always
gentle. In his poetry one feels as if the poet is talking to himself. His
addressee in his poetry is a very interesting non-presence.
For constraints of space, it is not possible to talk about
all these themes and motifs in his poetry. However, his poems, both nazms and
ghazals, devoted to the treatment of time, can give us some idea about the
nature of his poetry.
His famous nazm “Vaqt” (Time-IA)
personifies time, talks about its
characteristics while at the same time announcing that it is not like human
beings. Human beings may look back but not time which has an irrevocable march.
Human beings have feelings and sentiments but time has no such feelings. Time,
as the poet suggests, is not human and human beings
should not have any illusions about it:
Naqsh hain hum pairon ke us ke
Jab hi peeche chod gaya hai
Apni raah chala jaata hai
Hum aur tum ahsaas ke putle
Soch rahe hain
Shayad dekhe mud ke idhar bhi
Hum sadah nadaan nahin hain
Voh koi insaan nahin hai
(We are the mark of his steps/ So it has left
us behind/ It goes its own way/ We and you dummy of feelings/ Thinking/ Perhaps
it will turn back to see this side too/ We are not naïve/ It is not a
human being).1
In another nazm “Zindagi jo aane wali Hai” (Life that is
about to Come-IA) the poet views time transcending all
limits going beyond its flow from beginning to eternity. Using imperative voice
in the poem, which assumes an addressee, though the poem is more in the nature
of a discourse, the poem uses a number of metaphors to suggest the idea of sadness, quietness, loss and timelessness:
Azal aur abad ki hadon se bahut door
Khamoshiyon ke
Samundar ke afsurdah saahil se
Takraate sahra mein dekho
(Much beyond the limits of eternity and the
beginning/ From sad shores of sea/ of silences/ See in the
colliding desert).
The contrasting images of “sad shores of the sea,” which contrast
with deserts, also picture the vastness and
variety in the world. The poem builds its argument and atmosphere through many
unusual collo-cations, which rely on the poetic device of personification,
drawn from the world of nature. The note of sadness in the poem is evoked when
the poet says that the prophets of sounds have disappeared in the “deluge of
wandering winds (bhatakti havao ke sailab mei).” “The desolate eyes of
an awake shadow (kisi jagte saye ki sooni ankhon mei)” contain the
sobbing support of days gone by. In the hope of the music of the smouldering
and mysterious breaths somebody is still asking a stone-hearted idol its
whereabouts in the light of a sinking outline.
The division of time in different units like days,
nights, hours and minutes,
manifests itself in different ways in Shahryar’s poetry. The passing of time is
also identified with a sense of futility in his nazm “Ek Do Jaam” (One
or Two Goblets-IA). The speaker in this poem feels a philosophical void and he
tries to escape into drinking to give time a slip. But time has a sense of
inevitability and shows a cruel indiffe-rence to others’ moods. For the lonely
souls night is an even more cruel dimension of time. The speaker in this poem
notices the futility of the passing of time:
Raat ke baad subah ayegi
Subah ke baad dopahar aur sham
Aur phir raat
Ek bhayanak raat
Ek do jam aur aaj ki sham
(After night will come morning/ After
morning, noon and evening/ And again night/ A
dreadful night/ A goblet or two for today’s evening).
The use of the word ‘bhayanak’, an unpleasant and scary
adjective before the night, and his decision to drown
the evening in drinking shows his dread of night which is associated with
loneliness and a sense of psychological torture in the poem.
The meaningless passing of time is also the
dominant idea in his nazm “Ek Aur Maut” (Another Death-IA). This poem
begins with mentioning the passing of day and evening and the coming of night.
The poet also invokes the scientific idea of the revolution of earth on
its axis:
Kat gaya din, dhali sham, shab aa gayee
Phir zameen apne mahvar se hatne lagi
(The day passed, evening left, came night/ Again
the earth started moving from its axis).
Time and its division in day and night is also the
subject of “Raat Din aur
Phir Raat” (SD). In this modernist poem the poet
traces the journey of day from the dawn to the onset of night. The poet
identifies day with both the temporal and spiritual plane
of activities:
Raat ki zad se bhagta hua din
Pahle thahra ghane darakhto par
Phir lagayee zameen par is ne jist
(The day running away from the reach of night/
First paused on thick trees/ Then it
staged a leap on the land).
The day enters both mosques and temples; it reaches lanes
and bylanes of the city. It not only finds entry
in open houses but also means of transport like buses. The day can also touch
small objects like files in tall buildings and it can also register its
presence in coffee houses and mills with smoke chimneys. The day, seen in
opposition to night, is a welcome entity, whereas the night appears to be a
scary possibility. The day is also vulnerable before the night as it has to
escape the “reach of the night.” The journey of the day ends in some violence:
Phir kisi sakht shai se takraya
Aur phir raat, har taraf hi raat
(Then it rammed into a hard object/ And again
night, night every-where).
The nazm titled “Besabaat Taghiuur”
(Dying Change-SD) measures time in terms of its duration to
sustain and tolerate pain which follows an endless
cycle:
Lakeerei, dayere, dhabbe, naqooshpa
Meri ankho ke darvazon se
Meri jism ke andar utar jatei hain
Khoon ban kar rago mei raqs karte hain
(Lines, circles, stains, footmarks/ Enter the
inside of my body/ From the doors of my
eyes/ Turning into blood, dance into the veins).
The visualization of pain in its various shapes such as
lines, circles, stains and
footmarks concretises the experiential aspect of pain. It sometimes troubles
the speaker momentarily, sometimes for the duration of night and sometimes some
days. But then the pain disappears through his tears which have a therapeutic
role in his recovery from pain. The pain disappears only to give way to more
pain in an endless cycle of pain. The tears which fall on the ground and which
provide him a relief from pain acquire the shape of those lines, circles,
stains and marks of pain which entered his whole being in the first place. The
vision in this poem is very close to the Buddhist concept of the ubiquity and
permanence of dukha in human life. The poem suggests that pain, sadness,
and sense of hurt are integral part of human life. The whole idea in the poem
along with the reference to shapes of pain at the beginning and end of the poem
impart the poem a certain round structure. The exterior and interior dimension
of pain and its endless cycle are beautifully brought out in the
poem.
Time is also the subject of his nazm “Vaqt ke Sahra Mein”
(In the Desert of Time-IA) but it is not necessarily
the night but time as a whole which the poet identifies with life in general.
Desert in the title suggests not only the idea of vastness but also that of
loneliness. For the poet there are some inescapable facts of life like desire,
loneliness and problems in relationships. Using the imperative voice and exploit-ting
the power of verbs, the speaker asks his addressee to continue burning his body
under sun during day, to continue colliding with the hard rocks of distances in
relations and continue igniting the fire of desires in his heart. The sense of
futility and hopelessness is carried forward in the last line when the poet
asks his addressee to continue stumbling
like this in the desert of time:
Waqt ke sahra mein yunhi thokrein khate raho
(Continue to stumble like this in the desert of time).
This endless cycle of slow pain, constant efforts,
hopeless desires and continuous
blows appears to be the routine for lonely souls. They should feel this sense
of futility and torture endlessly. They should feel the effect of time like
this in their life.
Time is also an important concern in Shahryar’s ghazals. One
impor-tant aspect of modernity is our attitude to time. The
measurement of time and time’s conversion into money, labour and wages causes a
sense of anxiety about its passing:
Ajeeb cheez hai ye vaqt jis ko kahte hain
Ki aane paata nahin aur beet jaata hai—IA
(Strange thing is this what is called time/ It hardly
comes then it elapses).
There is a race against time for everyone in urban life.
Everyone is in competition with everyone to race ahead. But the speaker of
Shahryar’s ghazal refuses to join this rat race. At such moments the speaker is
confident that he will reach his destination before everyone at his own pace:
Chaahe jitna tez chalo mujh se tum mere humsafro
Pahunch na paoge tum lekin mujh se pahle
manzil par—IA
(However fast you walk than me my friends/ You will not
reach the destination before me).
Time is such an oppressive force that even for writing
about time one needs some allowance from time. Time is often measured in its
experiential aspect. It is not the calculation of time in terms of its units,
but the memory of time in terms of moments of happiness and unhappiness that is
the concern of the poet. The poet will write about his difficult times when he
gets time:
Fursat vaqt ne dee to hum bhi likhenge is ki rudaad
Kaise toofanon se nikle, pahunche kaise
saahil par—IA
(We will also write its account if time permits/ How we
escaped storms, reached the shore).
An important aspect of time is to take proper decisions
at the proper time. Sometimes these decisions can be life-saving. The speaker
in the following couplet issues a timely warning to his listeners to save
themselves from waters which are life-threatening:
In paanion se koi salamat nahin gaya
Hai vaqt ab bhi kishtian le jayo mod ke—HKM
(None escaped safe from these waters/ There is still
time, take away boats by taking a turn).
The two key images in this couplet are waters and boats
which apparently form a close metonymic relationship. But the water image is
more complex. It could be waters in the sea but it could also be tears of an
insincere lover which will indicate a different line of interpretation for this
couplet. If water is taken to mean tears, boats will indicate the figurative
meaning of a firm decision to turn back.
An important aspect of time that is gone is the memory of
that time. Memories can be an escape for a person but they can also sustain
troubled souls. For Shahryar his memories are very comforting:
Ab jee ke bahalne ki hai ek yehi soorat
Beeti hui kuchch batein hum yaad karein phir
se—KKDBH
(Now there is only one way to comfort the heart/ We
should remember some past conversations again).
Shahryar is an optimist. His poetry also celebrates
virtues of rationalism and man’s progress in the world. Time can throw such
surprises that its revolution can make our world better than moon.
Traditionally moon is a symbol of beauty. Calling earth better than moon
reveals a vision which is happy with all the progress made by the world:
Gardish-vaqt ka kitna bada ehsaan hai ki aaj
Ye zameen chaand se behtar nazar aati hai
hamein—IA
(How big is the favour of the revolution of time today/ This
earth looks better than moon to us).
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1. All translations in English from Urdu, unless
otherwise stated, are mine.
Gulzar, “Shahryar Suno!” in 44 Jananpith Award,
Sunday 18 September 2011. Gulzar’s short essay is taken by the magazine from
his edited book in Hindi Shahryar Suno: Chuninda Nazmein aur Ghazlein. New
Delhi: Bhartiya Jnanpith, 2011. Print.
Huda, Sarwarul. ed. Shahryar. New Delhi: Maktaba
Jamia, 2010. Print.
Shahryar’s opinions on the Urdu poetics cited in the
texts are taken from his interview recorded at Shamsur Rahman Faruqi’s home in
Allahabad on 31 August 1996. The interviewers were Asim Shahnawaz Shibli, Ahmad
Mahfooz, Asrar Gandhi and Shamsur Rahman Faruqi. The transcript of the
interview is included in Sarwarul Huda’s edited volume of Shahryar criticism.
Jalil, Rakhshanda. Shahryar: A Life in Poetry. Noida:
HarperCollins, 2018. Print.
Shahryar, Sooraj ko Nikalta Dekhu (Let Me See Sun
Rising): Kulliyaat Shahryar, ed. Sarwarul Huda. (Aligarh: Educational
Book House, 2013). This complete anthology contains all six collections of
Shahryar’s poetry. The text of the paper uses abbreviated forms of the titles
of his individual collections.
·
Dr.
Mohammad Asim Siddiqui is a Professor
of English at Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. His articles have appeared in
The Guardian, Asiatic, Social Scientist, Studies in Humanities
and Social Sciences (IIAS), Third Frame: Literature, Culture and Society
(Cambridge University Press), The Aligarh Journal of English Studies
and Re-Markings. He writes regular columns on arts and culture in The
Hindu, NDTV.com, Rediff.com, and News Central 24x7. His articles have also
appeared in Frontline, India Today, Hindustan Times, The
Statesman, The Indian Express and The Pioneer. He was
a Fulbright fellow at New York University, USA in 2007. Presently, he is the
Managing Editor of the project of the Urdu translation of Complete Works of Dr.
B. R. Ambedkar (CWBA), a project of Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, Ministry of Social
Justice and Empowerment, Government of India. His long monograph on Shahryar is
due for publication by Sahitya Akademi.
v
Copyright: Nibir K. Ghosh 2019.
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