Ghazal: Lafz of the lost love

Zehaal-e-miskeen makun taghaful, duraye naina banaye batiyaan /
Ke taab-e-hijran nadaram ay jaan, na leho kahe lagaye chatiyan / Shaban-e-hijran daraz chun zulf, Wa roz-e-waslat cho umer kotah / Sakhi piya ko jo main na dekhun,
To kaise kaTun andheri ratiyan / Yakayak az dil do chashm-e-jadu, Basad farebam baburd taskin / Kisay padi hai jo ja sunave, piyare pi ko hamari batiyan, / Cho shama sozan cho zaraa hairan, Hamesha giryan be ishq an meh / Na nind naina na ang chaina, Na aap aaven na bhejen patiyan / Bahaq-e-roz-e-visaal-e-dilbar, Ke daad mara gharib Khusrau / Sapet man ke varaye rakhun, Jo jaye pauN piya ke khatiyan.

(Do not overlook my misery, by blandishing your eyes and weaving tales / My patience has over-brimmed, O sweetheart! why do you not take me to your bossom? / Long like curls in the night of separation, short like life on the day of our union/ My dear, how will I pass the dark dungeon night without your face before./ Suddenly, using a thousand tricks those enchanting eyes robbed me of my tranquil mind./ Who could I care to go and report this matter to my darling? / Tossed and bewildered, like a flickering candle, I roam about in the fire of love. / Sleepless eyes, restless body, neither comes she, nor any message. / In honour of the day I meet my beloved who has lured me so long, O Khusro! / I shall keep my heart suppressed if ever I get a chance to get to her trick.)

Written by the iconic Sufi musician, poet and scholar Amīr Khusrau in the early 1300s, the beauty of this Persian ghazal touches hearts even today. But ghazal as a genre has a history which predates that says Afsar Makdoom Sheikh, a doctorate on Persian poetry, attending the 16th edition of Khazana ghazal festival this Friday and Saturday.

Arabia to Deccan

“Poetic rhyming couplets with a refrain composed in a way that every line shares the same meter is a chracteristic common to this genre through it's journey from the 6th Century in the sands of Arabia where it first struck roots as dreviative of from the Arabian panegyric qasida,” says Sheikh. “Early Arabic ghazals centred around twin themes of celebrating of wine, women, and song; or lamenting unrequited/lost love. Toward the 11th century when the genre crossed over to Persia it took on mystical overtones celebrating pain and suffering in love. The yearning faithful lover was now a martyr on pedestal.”

Though Urdu ghazal with its reach now preens like a queen, many like Hyderabad-based cultural historian Dr Apparao Reddy underline the genre's roots in the Deccan plateau from where it travelled up to the Urdu-speaking North.“Ghazals in India were first written in Dakhni and even Zahirabadi (a Dakhni, Kannada Telugu mix),” he points and adds, “When Aurangabad-born Sufi poet Wali Dakhni went to Delhi in 1700, he astonished Delhi's poets with his ghazals (many still sung by exponents like Abida Parveen and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan). Court poets like Shah Hatem, Shah Abro and Mir Taqi Mir (who until then composed in Persian and Arabic) were amazed a local regional language lent itself to such fine literary expression.”

Poetry pandemic

Reddy laughs, “It didn't take long for the poetry pandemic to spread over the next six decades when Mirza Jan-i-Janan Mazhar (1699-1781), Mir Taqi (1720-1808), Muhammad Rafi Sauda (1713-1780) and Mir Dard (1719-1785) laid foundations for the Urdu ghazal.”

While its journey to the East has given us ghazals in Nepali, Bengali (Kazi Nazrul Islam), Odiya, Assamese, Dogri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi and Kannada, its journey in the north have seen it strike roots in Turkish, Zazaki, Dari, Pashto, Uzbek, Kazakh, Shina and Balti. In fact it has given us ghazals in Myanmarese, Malay, Bahasa, Javanese and Somali too!

Kabul based musician and tabla exponent nephew Basir Hassan speaks proudly of the ghazal's Afghan jounrey in Dari and Pashto which saw it's zenith under his uncle and Patiala gharana maestro Ustad Sarahang (who composed the immortal title track for the Mera Saaya). “In fact there was much demand for the these performances until the early 80s when the situation in Afghanistan began to spiral out of control. From 1996-2001 we saw a complete ban on music by the Taliban government. Only later music was revived but ghazal had taken a bad hit. It is rare to come by accomplished ghazal exponents among young musicians now. (PIC)

In recent times the ghazal has also made forays into English!

GHAZAL ON GHAZALS.

For couplets the ghazal is prime; at the end
Of each one's a refrain like a chime: "at the end."

But in subsequent couplets throughout the whole poem,
It's this second line only will rhyme at the end.

On a string of such strange, unpronounceable fruits,
How fine the familiar old lime at the end!

All our writing is silent, the dance of the hand,
So that what it comes down to's all mime, 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.

You gathered all manner of flowers all day,
But your hands were most fragrant of thyme, at the end.

There are so many sounds! A poem having one rhyme?
A good life with a sad, minor crime at the end.

Each new couplet's a different ascent: no great peak,
But a low hill quite easy to climb at the end.

Two armed bandits: start out with a great wad of green
Thoughts, but you're left with a dime at the end.

Each assertion's a knot which must shorten, alas,
This long-worded rope of which I'm at the end.

Now Qafia Radif has grown weary, like life,
At the game he's been wasting his time at. THE END.
- by John Hollander

Bollywood connection

Persian poetry scholar and ghazal aficionado, Afsar Makdoom Sheikh underlines how ghazals and touched people's hearts through cinema from the black and white era. “From the times of K L Saigal down to the '80s ghazals have been the mainstay of film music. Lyricist poets like Shakeel Badayuni (Chaudvin Ka Chaand Ho) , Majrooh Sultanpuri (Ham Haiñ Mata-e-kūcha-o-bāzār Kī Tarah), Sahir Ludhianvi (Kabhi Khud Pe), Kaifi Azmi (Aaj Socha Toh Aansu) , Naqsh Lyallprui (Rasm-E-Ulfat ko Nibhaye), Gulzar (Surmayi Shaam iss tarah) and Javed Akhtar (Sagar Jaisi Ankhon Wali)."

The arrival of Jagjit Singh on the scene brought in a revolution and heralded the golden era of ghazals says well-known singer Rekha Bharadwaj. “He brought guitars, keyboard string sections into ghazals and changed its sound, feel and appeal for younger audiences. Even when he sang complicated Urdu poetry for Gulzar's Ghalib series he made it accessible.”

But the yo-yo between rhythm and melody has seen ghazals keeping on coming back with newer and newer avatars. Echoing Bharadwaj, singer Parthiv Gohil says: “Even today now when Arijit Singh is ruling the roost, the moment he sings a ghazal the response is astounding.”

Accessibility quotient

Leading ghazal exponent Pankaj Udhas who created the idea of Khazana nails it when we speak to him. As someone who has carved a niche for himself in a career spanning several decades, he should know. “Audiences want easily accessible, uncomplicated lyrics that those unfamiliar with Urdu/Persian will get.”

However this dilution should not come at the cost of quality warns Bharadwaj. “Urdu and Persian require a lot of attention of diction and pronunciation. Depending on how you say it khudai can mean divinity or digging. Sometimes one gets the feeling that poetry has been hurriedly put together with a Urdu dictionary at hand without getting into nuances of the language. In the hands of a young artiste this can then become a full blown disaster!”

One of the most promising singers on the horizon Puja Gaitonde laughs as she recounts her own experience. “I was only 14 and after my debut at the Sur Singar Sansad everybody was praising my singing. The late Urdu phonetics expert, Ustad Ibrahim Darvez also praised me but remarked, “Aapki gayaki toh bahut badhiya hai par aapke tallafuz (diction) mein daal-bhaat jhalakta hai.” Four years of training under him left her proficient in Urdu. “My style and expression too, have changed a lot because of that training.”

Singer Javed Ali who has sung for top composers like AR Rehman expressed regret about the negation of Urdu by the misinformed. “It is wrong to say ghazals or the language belong to one community. You know even senior artistes like DharamJi and JituJi also used to earlier write only in Urdu. Attempts to isolate and typecast one of our most beautiful languages on the basis of region, religion or borders is most unfortunate.”

As if one cue, child prodigy Sneha Shankar breaks into the famous Ghulam Ali ghazal: “Apni tasveer ko aankhon se lagaata kya hai? / Ek nazar meri taraf bhi, tera jaata kya hai.”

What else can one say but Wah!

Ghazal glossary:

iẓāfat == (f.) A Persian-derived grammatical construction linking a noun with another noun or adjective that follows it.

afāʿīl == (m.pl.) The names of the feet in traditional Perso-Arabic prosody.

baḥr == (f.) Meter.

taḳhalluṣ == (m.) The poet’s real or pen-name, used in the * maqt̤aʿ .

dīvān == (m.) An anthology of a poet’s work. Ghazals in a dīvān are arranged in alphabetically by the last letter of the rhyming elements.

rabt̤ == (m.) ‘Connection’. The relationship(s) between the two closely interlocked lines of a * shiʿr .

radīf == (m.) ‘Refrain’. The repeated word(s), if any, at the end of the rhyming element.

zamīn == (f.) ‘Ground’. The rhyming elements of a ghazal ( * qāfiyah and * radīf ) specified together.

shāʿirī == (f.) Poetry.

shiʿr == (m.) A couplet (or distich), two lines of verse meant to be read together as an integral unit. Every shiʿr terminates in the rhyming elements of the ghazal of which it is a part.

ashʿār == (m.pl.) An (optional) Arabicized plural for * shiʿr .

bait == (m.) The Persian term for a shiʿr . Optional Arabicized plural: abyāt .

t̤arḥ (also :ta-ra;h) == (f.) The rhyming elements and meter of a ghazal, specified together; all ham-t̤arḥ verses could in principle be part of the same ghazal.

miṣraʿ-e t̤arḥ == (m.) A ‘set line’ defining the pattern to be used for a ghazal.

ġhazal == (f.) A genre of brief, formally structured lyric poem in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu.

ġhazal kahnā == To compose a ghazal.

fard == (m.) A single * shiʿr , presented in isolation and not as part of any ghazal.

qāfiyah == (m.) ‘Rhyme’. The rhyming syllable that begins the rhyming element(s) of every ghazal verse.

qit̤ʿah == (m.) ‘Verse-set’. A series of * shiʿr within a ghazal, meant to be read together as a sequential set. The beginning is marked with a q ; the end is not marked.The name can also be applied to independent, structurally ghazal-like poems.

kulliyāt == (m.) A complete collection of a poet’s work.

mushāʿirah == (m.) A traditional gathering of poets and patrons for poetic recitation and discussion.

miṣraʿ == (m.) A single line of verse, half of a * shiʿr ; sometimes called a hemistich.

mat̤laʿ == (m.) ‘Opening-verse’. The special first * shi((r in a ghazal, in which the rhyming elements are present at the end of both lines, not just the second line. Some ghazals omit the mat̤laʿ ; others may have two or more.

maqt̤aʿ == (m.) ‘Closing-verse’. The special last (or sometimes next-to-last) * shiʿr in a ghazal, which contains the * taḳhalluṣ