With time, references to nature, to the changing seasons, to natural phenomena, began to appear more frequently. The nazm was more accommodating of such descriptions than the ghazal, which could at best incorporate new motifs or invest new meanings to existing motifs such as night, cloud, sleep, etc. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, a smaller picture began to emerge in the big canvas of modern Urdu poetry: poets who chose to shun the outright political, reformist or moralist concerns of their day and instead talk of the small sorrows, the everyday joys of the ‘little’ man. Their interest was in feelings, responses and experiences not necessarily pertaining to big, historical events but related to the quotidian life. Miraji (1912–49) began an uninhibited and passionate pursuit of the personal and the emotional in his brief but intense poetic career. In an oeuvre defined by an all-pervasive sense of the mubham – an Urdu word encompassing shades of the ambiguous, unclear, hidden or indistinct – he has left a lasting legacy of free verse. Others such as N.M. Rashid introduced the Urdu writer to new images and symbols inspired by the French symbolists such as Stéphane Mallarmé and the Romantics such as Baudelaire. A powerful literary grouping known as the Halqa-e Arbaab-e Zauq (The Circle of the Men of Good Taste)12 rose in opposition to the Progressive Writers’ Movement and began to vociferously decry the progressives’ obsession with socially engaged purposive literature. Members of the Halqa encouraged writers to move from social/political to personal matters, explore the inner world of the imagination and take greater interest in themes that had been shunned by the progressives, such as alienation of the self, the ennui and angst of modernism, the flux and migration caused by rapid urbanization as well as the problems of increasing Westernization and industrialization. With the decline of progressivism and the commensurate rise of modernism, issues of state and society began to give way to matters of the heart and mind – especially in the light of new developments in psychology – and sex and sexual matters became pressing concerns.
Notions of nihilism, narcissism and anarchism swirling in the new currents of the 1950s and 1960s seemed more attractive to many young and budding writers than the plight of mill workers or the need for more factories, dams or bridges. Where the progressives, despite their waning influence, were still demanding complete fidelity to the cause, the Halqa and the modernists were urging writers to write in the light of personal experiences alone. It was at such a time that Shahryar began his earliest experiments in poetry: with one group standing for totalitarianism and regimentation and the other for unbridled freedom, even a deliberate use of obscure, personal or ambiguous images and diction. In his first collection, Shahryar does not use any radically new images: night, day, sleep, memory, desire, sky, earth, mirror, the shade of dense trees, a grain of wheat (gandum ka daana), the sound of waterfalls, and so on. What is new is his unselfconscious viewing of these images through the prism of his own intensely felt, personal experiences. Sample this short nazm from Ism-e Azam:
Fareib dar Fareib
Din ke sehra se jab bani jaan par
Ek mubham sa aasra paa kar
Hum chaley aaye is taraf aur ab
Raat ke is attaah darya mein
Khwaab ki kashtiyon ko khete hain!
Deception after Deception
(When the desert of the day began to torment us
Finding a somewhat uncertain shelter
We came away this way, and now
In this unfathomable river of the night
We row the boat of dreams!)
And this one also from Ism-e Azam:
Khud-fareibi
Raat ki deewar uthhne de abhi
Shaam-e na-ummeedi ko jalne de abhi
Khushk honthon ki sada aane ko hai
Bheegi zulfon ki hawa aane ko hai
Neend ki kaali ghata chhaane ko hai
Is dareeche ki shikasta ungliyan
Chhoone hi wali hain goongi bijliyan
Apne dil ko apni aankhon ko sambhaal
Aur khala mein khwaab ka saaghar uchhaal
Raat ki deewar uthhne de abhi
Shaam-e na-ummeedi ko jalne de abhi
Self-deception
(Raise the wall of night
Light the lamp of despair
Parched lips are about to call
The scent of damp tresses is about to waft by
The dark clouds of sleep are about to amass
Mute lightning is about to touch
The broken columns of this doorway
Take care of your heart and your eyes
And toss the goblet of dreams into the empty nothingness
Raise the wall of night
Light the lamp of despair)
As well as these two from Khwaab ka Dar Band Hai:
Hum Peechhe Aatey Hain
Sadkon par awaragardi khatam karo
In galiyon mein ghar hain
Ghar hain sab khaali
Dastak deney par lekin khul jaatey hain
Tum aagey jaao
Hum peechhey aatey hain
We Shall Follow
(Stop wandering aimlessly on the streets
These streets have homes
Homes that are empty
But will open upon knocking
You go ahead
We shall follow)
And:
Alaav Sard Ho Gaya
Alaav sard ho gaya
Humari rooh ka alaav sard ho gaya
Dabeez barf ki tahein hata ke dekh lo agar yaqeen na ho
Ragon mein khoon jum chuka hai
Dil ki dhadkanon ka silsila bhi toot jaayega
Reit se bana hua yeh jism reit banke duur-duur phail jaayega
Siwaye reit ab tumhare haath kuchh na aayega
The Furnace Has Chilled
(The furnace has chilled
The furnace of my soul has chilled
Remove the thick layers of ice if you don’t believe me
The blood in my veins has frozen
The chain of heartbeats too will snap
Made of sand, this body will, like sand, scatter
far and wide
Now you will find nothing save a handful of sand)
And this, from Neend ki Kirchein:
Baar-e Digar
Paas ki lambi sadak
Mere qadmon ke taley
Aanewali thi, nahin aayi
Once Again
(The long road nearby
Was about to arrive
Beneath my feet, but didn’t)
By the time we reach his last collection, Shaam Honey Wali Hai, the nazms get shorter and pithier. There are several extremely short nazms in this collection, often no more than three lines. It’s almost as if the thread is unspooling and he knows there is little left; so, a great deal has to be compressed in the fewest possible words as, for instance:
Sach Bolne ki Khwahish
Aisa ik baar kiya jaaye
Sach bolne wale logon mein
Mera bhi shumaar kiya jaaye
A Desire to Speak the Truth
(Why not try this once
Among those who speak the truth
Include my name too)
There is also a weariness as in:
Zinda Rehney ki Shart
Har ik shakhs apne hissey ka aazaab khud sahey
Koi na uska saath de
Zameen pe zinda rehne ki yeh eik pehli shart hai
The Stipulation for Staying Alive
Every individual must bear his share of torment
No one must give him company
That’s the first stipulation for life on this earth
And a profound acknowledgement:
Sazaa ki Khwahish
Maine tere jism ke hotey
Kyun kuchh dekha
Mujhko sazaa iski di jaaye
A Desire for Punishment
(Despite having your body
Why did I look elsewhere
I should be punished for this)
It must be remembered that Shahryar had an unusually long time to hone and
perfect his skills as a poet of the nazm. By the time he began to write poetry, the nazm had been extensively used – both by the progressives and the modernists. The former had utilized it optimally to harness literature with social change in keeping with the ‘utilitarian’ purpose of poetry, as enunciated by men like Hali over half a century ago and subsequently perfected by Iqbal, Josh, Sahir, Faiz and a host of others. The latter had drawn upon the relatively slender output of the poets who subscribed to the non-utilitarian school, that is, the poetry of Jigar Moradabadi and Moin Ahsan Jazbi. Not only did the modernists revolt against the watertight compartmentalization of ideas but also against literary etiquette and ideologies, state patronage, even against the ethical, philosophical, religious, social or political conventions that had come to represent convention.
A group of young writers who styled themselves as the Nai Nasl (‘New Generation’) – which comprised Balraj Komal, Qazi Salim, Baqar Mehdi as well as some lapsed progressives such as Khalilur Rahman Azmi, and several brand-new voices such as Ibne Insha, Nasir Kazmi, Shaz Tamkanat, Jafar Tahir, Waheed Akhtar, Shahab Jafri – mounted repeated attacks on the citadel of organized progressivism. This wave of ‘new poetry’ was continued by the post-1960 generation, which comprised Zafar Iqbal, Ahmad Mushtaq, Nida Fazli, Kumar Pashi and Shahryar.
Let us briefly examine Khalilur Rahman Azmi as a poet, especially a poet of the nazm. Given his influence on Shahryar, it seems worthwhile to compare the poetic voices of the two. Azmi (1927–178), born in Sultanpur, UP, a teacher at the department of Urdu at Aligarh, was extremely well regarded as a scholar and literary critic, especially after his early and seminal study of the Progressive Writers’ Movement in Urdu for his PhD in 1957 (eventually published from Aligarh as Urdu Mein Taraqqui Pasand Tahreek in 1972). He had published his first collection of ghazals and nazms, Kaaghazi Pairahan, as early as 1953. Like Shahryar, he was aligned both with the progressive movement, especially its early idealistic phase, as well as modernism. A perusal of Azmi’s and Shahryar’s nazms reveals a host of similarities: use of simple everyday words and images drawn from daily life, an unexpected and sudden but altogether natural use of Hindi words in otherwise chaste Urdu syntax, a smattering of colloquialism, such as tedhi-medhi, which had been considered beyond the pale of poetry, and most of all the same sense of khud-kalami, of speaking to one’s self. Sample the opening lines of this jewel-like nazm, ‘Main Gautam Nahin Hoon’ by Azmi:
Main Gautam nahin hoon
Magar main bhi jab ghar se nikla tha
Yeh sochta tha
Ki main apne hi aap ko
Dhundne ja raha hoon…
(I am not Gautam
But when I too had set out from my home
I used to think
That I was setting out
In search of myself…)
Despite the seeming similarities, in images and occasionally also in themes, it is interesting how experiences filter through each individual’s mind and acquire different meanings. Sleep, for instance, forever elusive for Shahryar, is for Azmi dreadful, for it brings with it painful possibilities of meeting those who have been lost or left behind and may yet again be lost or left behind even in dreams:
Bhook ki aag jo bujhti hai to neend aati hai
Neend aati hai to kuchh khwaab dikhaati hai mujhe
Khwaab mein milte hain kuchh log bichhad jaate hain
Un ki yaad aur bhi rah rah ke sataati hai mujhe
(Sleep comes when the fire of hunger has been doused
With sleep come some dreams
In dreams I meet some people and lose them
And then their memory troubles me even more)
Coming now to the issue of translations, while Shahryar’s nazms lend themselves relatively easily to translation – compared to his ghazals – they come with their own share of hazards. Retaining the compactness and metaphoric precision of the Urdu original while also carrying into English some of the rhythm and rhyme of Shahryar’s often idiosyncratic use of words and silences, not to mention a peculiar syntax, can be quite daunting. Unlike English, metrical patterns in Urdu depend on line lengths and lengths of syllables rather than stresses. There is also no preordained word order, the poet being free to craft his own syntax; punctuation too is seldom used as most poets prefer to allow natural pauses to do the job. If you look at how Shahryar’s poetry is placed on a page, you will see how he makes full use of natural pauses and builds a pace and tempo into his words that is perfectly in consonance with the direction in which the nazm is taking the reader. While all of this has great aural charm in Urdu, unfortunately in English it can sound like a meaningless jumble of words. I found it best, therefore, to stay as close to the images and let them carry the poem through, where rhythm and rhyme were proving to be elusive to capture in English. Some samples follow:
Waapsi
Yahan kya hai barahna teergi hai
Khala hai, aahatein hain, tishnagi hai
Yahan jiske liye aaye thay woh shai
Kisi qeemat pe bhi milti nahin hai
Jo apne saath hum laaye thay woh bhi
Yahin kho jaayega gar kii na jaldi
Chalo jaldi chalo apne makaan ke
Kiwadon ki jabeen par sabt hogi
Koi dastak abhi beetey dinon ki
The Return
(What is here save a naked darkness
Emptiness, footfalls and a raging thirst
The thing we had come here for
Is not to be found at any price
And what we had brought with us
Will be lost forever if we do not hasten
Hurry! Let us quickly return to our homes
On whose doors might still be etched
The echoes of days past)
*
Muzd-e Inquilab
Hawa ban ke jo qaid hai botalon ke badan mein
Woh sab dev hain
Khauf aur nafraton ke
Woh sab dev ik roz azaad hongey
Woh sab dev jis roz azaad hongey
To is shahr ka ik-ik fard khud se pashemaan hoga
Tilism-e hawas toot jaane par hairaan hoga
Nigahein kabhi aasmanon ki jaanib uttheingi
Kabhi haath koi ishara kareingey
Kabhi honth kuchh bolne ka irada kareingey
Magar kuchh na hoga
Faqat jung hogi
Har ek simt se baarish-e sang hogi
The Harbinger of Revolution
(Captured like air in the body of bottles
Are the genies of fear and hatred
One day these genies shall be released
On the day these genies will be released
Every single person in this city will be ashamed of himself
And shocked at the breaking of the spell of lust
Eyes shall look up to the skies sometimes
At times, hands shall make some signs
But nothing will happen
Only war will break out
And from every direction stones will rain)
*
Anokhi Peshkash
Sisakti hui raat, maghmoom din ki chita mein
Sulagtey huye chund jismon ki
Mahroomiyon ki kahani
Sunaney ko bechain hai
Aur mujhko
Koi dilruba aur adhoora-sa sapna
Sada de raha hai
A Strange Predicament
(Weeping, sobbing night
Restless to narrate the story of deprivations
Of a few bodies
Smouldering on the pyre of sad days
And I
I am beckoned
By some heart-wrenching unfinished dream)
While the ghazal does not allow specificity, the nazm does. And so several of Shahryar’s nazms are on people, places, events. The one on Saadat Hasan Manto’s eponymous short story about a prostitute is titled ‘Saugandhi: Manto ke Naam’ (‘Saugandhi: Dedicated to Manto’). There is another one on
Aligarh Muslim University; several on Khalilur Rahman Azmi; on Razmi Husain, the son of his dear friend Rizwan Husain, who died tragically young in a road accident; on the death of a fine young poet, Asad Badayuni; for his friend and co-editor Mughni Tabassum; for his wife Najma Mahmood; and on the death of his elder brother, among others.
Of Men and Women
Tumhare mere darmiyaan
Hawas siwa koi nahin
Kabhi tum apne jism se
Alag mujhe milo kahin
(Between you and me
There’s nothing but lust
Meet me somewhere one day
Away from your body)
Much of Shahryar’s poetry, especially his nazms, is concerned with matters of the body, with the relationship between men and women. He writes with naturalness and ease and none of the coy camouflage that some poets resort to, nor any of the overt in-your-face sexuality that mars much of modern Urdu poetry. Instead there is an easy acceptance:
Raat tujhe sapne mein dekha
Tujhko chhune ki khwahish ko
Kitni dushwari se taala
(I saw you in a dream last night
And pushed away the desire to touch you
With such difficulty)
Or this silken sensuality:
Jism ki Kashti Mein Aa…
Hawa ke paon is zeene talak aaye thay, lagta hai
Diye ki lau pe yeh bosa usi ka hai
Meri gardan se seene tak
Kharaashon ki lakeeron ka yeh guldasta
Tilismi qafl khulne ki isi sa.at ki khaatir
Hijr ke mausam guzaare hain
Hawa ne muddaton mein paaon paani mein utarey hai
Meri pasli se paida ho
Wahi gandum ki boo le kar
Zameen aur aasman ki wasatein
Mujh mein simat aayein
Alohi lazzat-e nayaab se sarshar kar mujh ko
Main ek pyaasa samundar hoon
Tu apni jism ki kashti mein aa
Aur paar kar mujh ko
Come in the Boat of Your Body
(The winged feet of the wind had come till this stairway, it seems