Ghalib: A poet for all times

Pankaj K Deo

The best part is that every time you read his shayari, a new shade of meaning comes out of it.  No wonder, every generation has interpreted Ghalib in its own way, and it’s the malleability of his character that makes him so relevant in each era

“Huyi muddat ki ‘Ghalib’ mar gaya, par yaad aata hai vo har ik baat par kahna, ki yuuñ hota to kya hota”. What stirs flurries of interest in a poet, gone for 150 years and whose language no longer enjoys the pride of place it once did, is something that’s bound to intrigue everyone.

It is the style of expression that often immortalises a poet. Ghalib, the Wordsworth of Urdu poetry, remains alive for poetry lovers because of his andaaz-e-bayan, which was distinctly different from others. He was an iconoclast, a people’s poet just like William Wordsworth, a 19th-century Romantic poet from England. Like Wordsworth, Ghalib, too, was orphaned at an early age. It is perhaps due to this early bereavement that a sense of loneliness and a streak of Romantic rebelliousness are common to both the poets. 

Born in Agra on December 27, 1797, in a family of Seljuk Turk soldiers, Ghalib chose to live by the pen and not the sword. Although he later chose ‘Ghalib’, which roughly means ‘conqueror’ as his nom de plume, he preferred to win hearts and not territories. It is said that those who live by the sword die by the sword and those who live by the pen often die in penury. A prodigious child who started writing in Urdu and Persian at a very young age, Ghalib faced financial hardship all his life. The poet was barely four years old when his father died in a battle fighting for the ruler of Alwar. Consequently, most of Ghalib’s childhood was spent in Agra at his maternal grandparents’ house where he learnt Persian and Urdu. He shifted to Delhi at the age of 13 after his marriage. 

“Being orphaned at an early age perhaps led to Ghalib’s waywardness and fiercely independent thinking,” says Dr Sayeed Alam who heads the Delhi-based theatre group, Pierrot’s Troupe, and has written and staged several plays on Ghalib. Ghalib remains etched in public memory, whereas his contemporary poets have been lost in the mist of time. Alam says, “Ghalib became accessible to his lovers in flesh and blood because of the biography written by Altaf Hussain Hali on Ghalib titled Yaadgar-e-Ghalib. Other poets Meer, et al, did not have their biographies available to us.”

The romantic persona of Ghalib, available in the form of a biography, led to various cinematic and theatrical adaptations of his life. Ghalib’s life has been made into feature films and television serials. Sohrab Modi’s film, Mirza Ghalib, produced in 1954, set the trend, which culminated into Gulzar’s Mirza Ghalib made for Doordarshan in 1988. While Saadat Hasan Manto wrote the story of Modi’s black & white film, Gulzar chose to write and present Ghalib in an episodic form for a colour television audience. 

Vikram Kalra, a Delhi-based photographer and sketch artist, drew Ghalib’s sketch and that of his haveli, which adorn the wall of Ghalib Memorial or Ghalib Ki Haveli at Gali Qasim Jan, Ballimaran, Old Delhi. “I was doing sketches of havelis in Old Delhi in the 1990s when I came to know of Ghalib’s haveli. Gulzar’s beautiful description of the building in his melodious voice in the serial is what inspired me to draw the sketch,” says Kalra. 

Ghalib has written for every mood, every occasion and for every person and hence remains one of the most quoted Urdu poets. The best part is that every time you read his shayari, a new shade of meaning comes out of it. No wonder, every generation has interpreted Ghalib in its own way, and it’s the malleability of his character that makes him so relevant in each era. The readers in every age see in Ghalib’s verse a reflection of their own emotions and desires, and the poet does not disappoint them, for he has penned thousands of such breathtaking verses: “Hazaroñ khwahisheñ aisi ki har khwahish pe dam nikle. Bahut nikle mere arman lekin phir bhi kam nikle.” 

As far as singing of Ghalib’s ghazals is concerned, Kundan Lal Saigal’s beautiful rendition of them is what kept Ghalib alive in the consciousness of post-Independent India. “KL Saigal’s rendition of Ghalib’s ghazals was the hallmark every subsequent ghazal singer aimed to achieve,” says Dr Sayeed Alam. In fact, Saigal, considered a musical genius by many, also led a life that resembled Ghalib’s.

Saigal’s biographer Pran Nevile affirms Alam’s view in his book, “Many artistes have sung Ghalib, but none has been able to surpass Saigal, a fact that was acknowledged by the renowned Indian ghazal queen Begum Akhtar.”

Ghalib’s enduring appeal is perhaps partially attributable to the popularity of ghazal. As an art form, ghazal originated in Arabia, but is now an intrinsic part of Arabic, Persian and Urdu literature. The ghazals of Ghalib are densely textured and delve deftly into the subtle nuances of universal themes such as love, loss, betrayal, and Sufi mysticism. His verses lend themselves to multiplicity of meaning such as the following lines: “Na tha kuchh to Khuda tha, kuchch na hota to Khuda hota, duboya mujhko hone ne, na hota main to kya hota.” 

Part of Ghalib’s attraction as a poet emanates from the accretion of myth around his persona about his non-conformity and unorthodoxy. In public perception, he comes off as the definitive, pluralistic bon vivant who lived an unorthodox life. He loved French wine. When an orthodox person told him that the prayers of those who consume liquor are never answered, he quipped that a man who already has adequate amount of wine does not need to pray for anything else. Such stories make his life seemingly far more exciting and colourful and endear him among people in each age. 

Like Wordsworth, Ghalib, too, is often criticised for his shifting political loyalties. Ghalib was the last poet laureate of the Mughal empire under Bahadur Shah Zafar, but that did not stop him from seeking patronage of the British after 1857, though without success. In the 19th century, it was customary for poets to seek patronage from the rich and the powerful. Poets needed to survive and often had to seek help from the power that be, which often meant going against the principles they held dear in their poetry.

As a poet, Ghalib was also not committed to any political ideology. “Mirza Muhammad Asadulllah Khan Ghalib was essentially an apolitical person. Both his Persian verse and Urdu Diwan are almost entirely devoid of explicit political verse,” writes Pavan K Varma. Varma’s book Ghalib — The Man, The Times, published by Penguin, is considered one of the most authoritative biographies of the poet.    

Many consider imitation as the sincerest form of compliment to an artist. Ghalib occupies the topmost position when it comes to inauthentic or fake verses of his imitators being ascribed to the poet. One comes across many such fake Ghalib verses on the Internet as well as in memes and WhatsApp messages even today. 

Moreover, Ghalib’s poetic expressions attained an idiomatic status among Urdu speakers. Ralph Russell, one of the most revered names among Ghalib scholars in the West, says, “Many of his verses have become proverbial, part of everyday life of Urdu speakers as phrases from Shakespeare have become in English.” 

An erratic literary genius whose work transcends the boundaries of time and language, Mirza Ghalib will be remembered as long as love, as a divine emotion, continues to prevail in human life. His poetry cannot be confined to a particular age or language or geographical boundaries.