Subtlety of Ghalib’s poetry

TRANSLATING Urdu poetry into English has been my favourite pastime over the last 60 years. I tried my hand at almost all well-known masters from Mir Taqi Mir down to contemporary poets of both India and Pakistan. I achieved a modicum of success handling Mir, Zafar and above all Allama Iqbal. The one who completely defeated me was Ghalib, the greatest poet of the Urdu language. I consulted many English translations done by English, American, Pakistani and Indian scholars and found them very inadequate. I came to the conclusion that to be enjoyed, Ghalib had to be read in the original; he was too subtle to be translated into another language, and translations only succeed in murdering him. I give an example: the opening lines of most Dewans (compilations) of Ghalib’s poetry:

Naqsh faridi hai kiskee shokhiye tehreer ka
Kaghazi hai pairhan har paikar-e-tasveer ka

I have read scores of translations of these lines and asked my Urdu-knowing friends to explain what exactly they meant. Neither the translators nor the explanations made much sense to me. A Pakistani Muslim who goes under a Sikh name Pritam Gyani sent me his rendering:

Of whose resplendant lines do these pictures speak
That dressed in paper robes, they pardon seek?

I cannot make any sense out of this translation either. Only Ghalib must have known what he was trying to say. He conceded that (some of) his writing was very obscure:

Mushkil hai zabes kalaam meyra, ai dil
Sun sun kay usey sukhanwaraan-e-kaamil
aasaan kahney ki kartay hain farmaaish
Goyam mushkil, wagarna goyam mushil.

The lines have been translated by Umesh Joshi as follows:

True though o heart, is my writing,
redoubtable poets hear me again and again
and request me to use simpler language
What I say is complicated, what I write is complicated.

Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797-1869) was born in Agra and was of Turkish descent. It is unlikely that any of his family spoke Turki but like other members of the landed aristocracy and senior civil servants, they preferred Persian to Urdu as it was the language of the elite. Ghalib started writing poetry very early in life but entirely in classical Persian. It was after he migrated to Delhi and joined the coterie of the poet-emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar that he realised that he would receive far more popular acclaim if he wrote in the language of the common people rather than in one confined to the Omrah. Both the emperor and his Ustad Zauq wrote in Urdu. In a few years Ghalib came to be acclaimed as the greatest poet of the language.

Ghalib’s forte was the ghazal. This further added to the translator’s problems. Though the ghazal’s lines conform to the same metre and rhyming pattern, they do not adhere to the same theme. You cannot give a title to a ghazal. In addition, since every couplet has an independent thought-content and some couplets are too obscure in simile and metaphor, the task of the translator becomes more daunting. I give an example of one of his most popular ghazals which I translated as follows:

When a stone’s veins burst, nothing will
stem blood’s flow,
They are not sparks of anger but
outpourings of sorrow.

The last couplet of the ghazal runs as follows:

Your concern with mystic problems,
Ghalib, your language is such,
You would have passed off for a saint
had you not drunk so much.

The latest translation of Ghalib is from the pen of T.P. Issar who retired as Chief Secretary of the Karnataka Government and has made his home in Bangalore. I give three examples of his translations of couplets which are favourites of Ghalib lovers:

Dil hi to hai na sang o khisht, dard se bharr na aae kyoon?
Roaingay hamm hazaar baar, koi hamein sataae kyoon?
Issar translated it as follows:
I do have a heart, though you have none,
and bleed it will, not being a stone.
You torment and yet don’t let me cry!
But I will cry till the eyes go dry.

My rendering is as follows:

My heart is not made of brick and stone,
that from pain it should be free
A thousand times will I cry,
What right has anyone to pester me?

The second couplet reads:

Daer naheen, haramm naheen; darr naheen, aastaan naheen baiththey hain rehguzaarr pe hamm, koi hamain utthaae kyoon?
Issar translates it thus:
I answer to no worldly address:
no threashold or door do I own.

A wayfarer resting a while am I:

Why can’t they leave me alone?

My rendering reads as follows:

It is not a mosque, it is not a temple
It is no one’s door-step nor his door
It is only by the roadside that I sit
Who has the right to order me to quit?

The third couplet, my favourite, reads:

Ghalib chhuti sharaab par ab bhee kabhee kabhee Peeta hoon roz-e-abr-o-shab-e-Mahbaab mein

Issar renders it as follows:

You may have foresworn the drink;
But I tipple a little at times
Like when clouds bring welcome rain,
Or the man in his fulness shines

My translation reads:

Ghalib renounced wine
But on days clouds cover the skies
And on nights that are moonlit
He breaks his vow and drinks a bit.

T.P. Issar’s translations are closer to the original and read better than other translations I have read. There is however plenty of room for improving on all that exist. The only other alternative is to learn Urdu and savour the headiness that Ghalib’s poetry produces.

Biggest squeezer

The local bar owner was so sure that his bartender was the strongest man around that he offered a standing $1000 bet. The bartender would squeeze a lemon until all the juice ran into a glass, and hand the lemon to a patron. And he who could squeeze one more drop of juice out would win the money. Many people had tried weight lifters, longshoremen, etc — but nobody could do it.

One day a scrawny little man came in, wearing thick glasses and a polyester suit, and said in a tiny, squeaky voice, "I’d like to try the bet." After the laugher had died down, the bartender said OK, grabbed a lemon, and squeezed away. He then handed the wrinkled remains of the rind to the little man. But the crowd’s laughter turned to total silence as the man clenched his fist around the lemon and six drops fell into the glass.

As the crowd cheered, the bartender paid the $1000, and asked the little man, "What do you do for a living? Are you a lumberjack, a weight lifter, or what?"

The man replied, "I work for the Indian Revenue Service."

(Contributed by Amir Tuteja, Washington)