Our Master
Five Ghazals of Mirza Ghalib’
Ghazal 1~
(Phir mujhe deed-e-tar yaad aayaa)
Those moist eyes have come to my mind once again;
My heart and liver thirst for a lament again.
Doomsday has yet to halt to take a breath,
Though the moment of your journey is here again.
I would have surely passed my life anyhow,
Why has your street crossed my mind again?
The gatekeeper of Paradise would have quarrelled,
Had I thought of your abode there again.
What is this wilderness before my wilderness?
I imagine my house in a forest again.
Whene’er my boyhood aimed a stone at Majnu, Ghalib,
I remembered my own head again and again!
Ghazal 2~
(Ghar hamaaraa jo na rote bhee to veeraan hotaa)
My house would have been a wilderness
Even if I had not shed tears;
If the ocean was not an ocean,
It would still have been a desert.
About my heart’s narrowness
What complaint should I make;
A kafir it is, if not narrow,
It would still be much confused.
If I bore patience all my life,
The Heaven’s Doorkeeper would let me in;
I wish my beloved’s doorkeeper
Could have imbibed that culture.
When to woe I’ve been indifferent,
Why should I bother my beheading;
Had my head not been struck,
On my knees it would be resting.
Ghalib, who died an age ago,
Is still remembered for his questions:
What would have been, if it was thus,
What would be, if it were so?
Ghazal 3~
(Dil-e-naadaan tujhe huaa kyaa hai)
O naive heart, what the matter is?
For this pain, what the cure is?
I am anxious, but she’s distraught,
O Lord, what the issue is?
I too have a tongue in my mouth,
Ask, what my intent is?
We expect loyalty from those,
Who don’t know what loyalty is.
“Do good and good will come to you”,
What else the mendicant’s call is.
I’m offering my life to you,
I know not what your blessing is.
A thing’s nothing at all, Ghalib,
But if it is free, why curse it?
Ghazal 4~
(Na gul-e-naghmah hoon, na pardah-e-saaz)
I am no musical tone, no song blossoming;
I am just the sound of my own heart breaking.
You are adorning your curls, deeply engrossed, but
I am looking farther, to some far away thing.
We boast to be wise, but this is a self-delusion,
The secrets beneath our chest keep us melting
A bird you are, ensnared by fowler’s love;
Have you still in your wings power uplifting?
You came asking for me – no harm in it;
Helpless I am, and you are the one who’s caring.
Ghazal 5~
(Kisi ko deke dil koi navaa-sanje-phugaan kyon ho?)
When my heart I have surrendered,
Why should I utter cries of pain?
When the breast is without heart,
Why should the tongue in mouth remain?
If He cannot mend his ways,
Then why should we?
Why to be meek and ask,
Why He is angry?
That love I will destroy
Which brings bad name to me;
One who can not bear my grief,
My friend can not be.
I’m in a cage, O friend,
Tell me the garden’s story;
The nest burnt by lightning,
May not have belonged to me.
To ruin my house, it is enough –
This torment, this calamity;
With you as a friend, I won’t need
The Heavens to be my enemy !
….
Translator:
Sunil Uniyal
Sunil Uniyal (1953 – ), born and raised in Lucknow, works as a Deputy Secretary to the Government of India at New Delhi. His haiku and poems first appeared in the early eighties in the Mirror Magazine of Mumbai. He has also been translating Hindi and Urdu poets like Kabir, Sur, Mir, Ghalib and Leeladhar Jagoodi. His haiku and translations have found space in literary e-journals in India and abroad such as Kritya, Muse India, Poetry Chaikhana, Poetica Magazine, Sketchbook, Haiku Dreaming Australia, Notes From the Gean and A Hundred Gourds. His work in translation, The Target is Behind the Sky (Fifty Poems of Kabir) has come out from the Low Price Publications, Delhi, in February 2012.