Urdu Poetry - an introduction

Aakar Patel's article in today's edition of the Mint Lounge serves as a lovely introduction to Urdu poetry. Think it is worth clicking on this link and reading the entire article. For those that lack the patience, am reproducing some sections from the article below :

Faiz Ahmed “Faiz” (Success) died in 1984 and thought Partition was unfulfilling. He wrote a poem about this called August 1947, which opens with this couplet: “Yeh dagh-dagh ujala, yeh shab-gazidah sehar/Woh intezar tha jiska, yeh woh sehar to nahin (This stained light we see in this tattered dawn/This isn’t the morning we had been promised).”

Director Sudhir Mishra named his movie after the Ghalib couplet: Hazaaron khwahishen aisi, kay har khwahish pe dam niklay/Bohat niklay meray armaan. Lekin phir bhi kam niklay.

Kahaan maikhanay ka darwaza Ghalib, aur kahaan waiz/Par itna jaante hain, kal woh jaata tha kay hum niklay (You wouldn’t associate the mullah with the tavern, Ghalib/But this I know: I was leaving it yesterday when I saw him enter).

Ghalib could laugh at himself and that made him unusual, for good poets are pompous. My absolute favourite couplet from him is: “Yeh masail-e-tasawwuf, yeh tera bayaan Ghalib/Hum tujhay wali samajhte, jo na badakhwar hota (These philosophies you spout with such pompous gravity, Ghalib!/People would think you wise, if you weren’t such a goddamn drunk).

One writer I am fond of is the Gujarati polyglot Sheikh Adam Abuwala. Few know him, but all of us know his work. He wrote the ghazals that Gujarati singer Pankaj Udhas sang. Abuwala wrote in Urdu and in very good Gujarati. One couplet of his I like is: “Adam, gajab ni vaat chhe: astik hata amey/Nastik bani gaya amey, karan Khuda mali gayo (I used to be a believer, O Adam/But I stopped after knowing God).” Abuwala had a certain style about him. He spoke German and English, and one of his books is called Adam thi Sheikh Adam sudhi (From Adam to Sheikh Adam!).