As Delhi fights an ongoing battle with hatred, it is apt that we celebrate the birth of its greatest romancer, the presiding deity of Urdu poetry, Khuda-e-Sukhan (God of poetry), Mir Taqi Mir who was born in Agra (then ‘Akbarabad’) in this very month in 1722. His autobiography, Zikr-e-Mir, does not give his date of birth but some manuscripts found in the personal library of the Raja of Mahmudabad establish it with reasonable certainty.
 
Mir arrived in Delhi in or around 1733 and made the city his home. It is believed that in Delhi Mir lived at three different addresses — Kucha Chelan, Chandni Mahal and Matia Mahal – all in the heart of the walled city. He stayed in Delhi till 1782 and, during this long period of his stay in Delhi, he remained under the patronage of one or the other nobleman.
 
He was patronised, one after the other, by Itimad-ud-Daula II, Javed Khan, Raja Nagar Mahal, Imad-ul-Mulk, Raja Jugal Kishore and Raja Nagar Mal. With most of them he broke ties on issues of self-respect and principles – matters on which he never compromised, even mildly. In matters of self-respect he was so sensitive that, more often than not, people labeled him as arrogant. In matters of principles, he was dismissed as haughty. He was aware, and rightly so, of the superiority of his work as against the works of most of his contemporaries and insisted that, on merit, he was entitled to a much more exalted stature and status than them.
 
Eighteenth century Delhi had its own Bassis and Iranis. With one royal invasion after the other – the last being of Ahmad Shah Abdali – Delhi was reduced to ruins. Mir could not bear his beloved city being blatantly ravished and eventually went into seclusion. The only way out of this misery, it seemed, was migration to Lucknow where the ruling Nawab, Asaf-ud-Daula, was known for his love for Urdu poetry and patronage for Urdu poets.
 
Finally, in 1782, with a heavy heart and tearful eyes, Mir bid adieu to Delhi for good and migrated to Lucknow where he was received by the Nawab in person. Though he lived in Lucknow till his end, the distance from Delhi always hounded him. For Mir, Delhi’s lanes were no less than an artist’s painting :
 

 
However, he was distraught at the thought that the city and its people were being incessantly plundered and pillaged by one or the other invader. Narrating the plight of the citizens of this frequently ransacked city, he lamented :
 

 
Accounts of his arrival in Lucknow also reveal his profound and rather passionate feelings for Delhi. It is said that the day he arrived in Lucknow, there was a mushaira he had to attend. New to the city of the flamboyant Nawabs, he reached the elitist gathering alone in an old-fashioned and modest dress. Being out of style and not in vogue he was easily noticed, but was not recognized until he came up with one of his most famous and now oft-quoted verses :
 

 
Discovering who he was, the highbrowed attendees embraced him and Mir made Lucknow his home for his remaining life. Though he spent almost 28 years in Lucknow, he never forgot Delhi and would often compare it favourably to Lucknow.

18th Century Delhi had its own Bassis and Iranis. With one royal invasion after the other – the last being of Ahmad Shah Abdali – Delhi was reduced to ruins. Mir could not bear his beloved city being blatantly ravished and eventually went into seclusion.
 
Russell reports that once some leading noblemen of Lucknow called upon Mir and, after exchanging pleasantries, requested him to recite for them. Initially Mir was evasive but when the gentlemen insisted, he clearly told them that they would not understand his poetry, on which one of them remarked :
 
“But we understand the poetry of Anvari and Khaqani – the greatest of Persian poets”.
 
Mir immediately retorted :
 
“I am sure you do. But to understand my poetry what you need to know is the language that is spoken at the steps of the Jama Masjid of Delhi and that knowledge you do not have”.
 
Mir soon had a fall out with Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula too. Once again, it was Mir’s lack of tolerance for what he considered discourteous behaviour on part of the Nawab that made him part ways with his benefactor. The Nawab, however, did not stop paying Mir his stipend. His successor, Nawab Sa’adat Ali Khan continued the tradition but Mir cared two hoots for him too, to the extent that once he even refused to accept robes and money sent to him by the Nawab, asking the messenger to advise the Nawab to give it away in charity :
 

 
Eventually, the Nawab – acting like a present-day university administration, stopped Mir’s stipend and Mir fell into penury. He started growing antagonistic towards Lucknow and regretting his decision to leave Delhi :
 

 
Mir was a poet of love and romance. He lived in an age when Urdu poetry was still in its infancy. In his Ghazals he created an inimitable language and style of his own :
 

 
Mir’s poetry is a poetry of unfulfilled love; it is a poetry of yearning, of desire and of craving:
 

 
On the one hand, the poet was enthralled by his beloved’s beauty :
 

And on the other, he grumbled that falling in love was a headache :
 

 
Despite being the son of a religious scholar, Mir – like Ghalib – did not hesitate in audaciously announcing his incredulity to religion and religious formalism :
 

Mir was a man of traditional values. He was aghast at the changing values of his times in Lucknow. He could not bear the thought that he was living amongst people who were oblivious to old principles, traditions and values which were quintessential to his very existence. Mir’s repulsion to such social transformation became more intense with time and reverberates in his later poetry:
 

 
Mir is the first Urdu poet whose complete works were typeset and printed.  The voluminous “Koolliyati Meer Tyqee” [should be spelt as Kulliyaat-e-Mir Taqi / ‘Complete works of Mir Taqi’] was published in 1811 as a major literary project sponsored by the Fort William College in Calcutta.
 
Mir’s Urdu poetry is spread over six diwans. Till his fifth diwan, composed in an advanced age, his ghazals make it clear that Mir hoped to find refuge in a more cultured and agreeable place than Lucknow. The city seemed gloomy to him and he found it “hard for a man to live (t)here any longer”. By the time the last diwan was penned, the sourness receded. Not because his views on the city changed but because he had no more strength to criticize. He had already lost his wife, daughter and son. His friends were dying one by one. He was penniless and seriously ill with a painful gastrointestinal disease. Despite these hardships, he continued to write and recite :
 

 
On September 21, 1810, Mir died in Lucknow at the age of 88. He was buried in the graveyard of Bheem Ka Akhaara located north of what is today called the City Station. Until half a century ago, a grave situated just before the Chhatte Waala Pul near the City Station railway tracks was believed to be that of Mir.
 
Today, there stands a humungous slum on the spot where the grave once existed and where Mir spent the last three decades of his life. There is no sign either of his house or of his grave. Few years ago, I walked all over the area for hours enquiring about the remnants and relics of the poet’s life (or death). There was hardly a soul in the vicinity who had even heard of the poet, let alone knowing about his remnants. An old resident of the area, one Baqai saheb, who runs a printing press right in front of the spot where Mir’s grave is said to have once existed, was kind enough to treat us to a hot cup of tea and tell us that the area had been usurped by land-grabbers long ago.
 
A lone broken stone erected in a park calls itself the ‘Nishaan-e-Mir’ and, if someone can search for it, an almost invisible and decrepit road-sign at the end of the street reads ‘Mir Taqi Mir Marg’. These are the only tangible signs of this Khuda-e-Sukhan (God of Poetry) that exist in Lucknow today.
 
It seems that Mir had commanded the powers that be to make it clear to future generations that he would not want those admirers to visit his grave, who didn’t care for him when he was alive  :
 

 
After my return from Lucknow, with my friends, Kanishka Prasad and Akila Jayaraman, I also trotted the Walled City with the help of a veteran Purani Dilli photographer. The experience was even more painful than that in Lucknow.
 
Residents of Kucha Chelan,  Chandni Mahal and Matia Mahal – neighbourhoods which Mir had once described as “artist’s canvas” and whose by-lanes once echoed with his poetry, do not even know who Mir was, much less where he lived. My recitation of Mir’s well-known couplet which aptly describes this harrowing state of affairs in Mir’s Delhi was also lost on them :
 

The post Mir Taqi Mir: The Romancer of Delhi appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
Little did we know that the democratic ethos of the city would again, after 200 years be wrecked and ruined, first by authoritarian and indiscriminate police excesses in the campus of one of its most celebrated Universities, and then by hooliganism, violence and vandalism, orchestrated by political hoodlums and lawyers inside the complex of its central Sessions Court. It was, perhaps, for a similar tyrannical era that Ahmed Faraz had said :
 

 
Much as Delhi has always prided itself for being the cultural, literary and Constitutional capital of the country, it has also consistently been witness to wrecks and ruins of democratic spaces, of literature and art and culture at the hands of despots. As we, yet again, prepare to fight for a democratic and free Delhi, let us take a short poetic journey to see Delhi’s cultural desolation which had started long ago and which resonates in the poetry of almost every age.
 
While Mir in the eighteenth century, described himself as a citizen of a deserted and wrecked Delhi, Ghalib, in the next century lamented that the city had become bereft of love and no longer offered bread and butter to thinkers and poets   :
 

 
          This city is now deprived of the sorrow of love, ‘Asad’         
          We’ll live in Delhi, all right, but what will we eat ?
 
His contemporary, Zauq, though he admitted that poetry was no longer appreciated in Delhi, refused to leave in search of greener pastures as he was far too attached to the city’s lanes :
 

 
And their Royal benefactor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, imprisoned to die in Rangoon, calling Delhi his beloved, yearned to be buried here :
 

 
In the next generation, Altaf Husain Haali beseeched his friends not to cause him insufferable pain by talking to him about “The Late Delhi”:
 

          You will come back with a hundred wounds on your chest, Oh Traveller / beware, never go to the ruins of this city
 
Soon after independence, the Keats of Urdu poetry, Majaz, bid a tearful farewell to the city when he was forced to return to Lucknow :
 

 
          Goodbye, oh Delhi, I now go away from your gatherings / crying I go, wailing on my lips I go

 
In the mid eighties, faced with the hostile and ill-mannered attitude of the highbrowed citizens of the First City, Bashir Badr quipped :

 
Fed up of the soaring inflation in the Capital in the nineties, Asrar Jaameyi, a gifted satirist living in penury in the lanes of one of the many unauthorized colonies of Delhi, advised Emperor Zafar to remain in his grave in Rangoon and not yearn for his two yards of land in Delhi :
 

 
And recently Anwar Jalalpuri penned a beautiful obituary to the death of culture and civilization in Ghalib’sDelhi :
 

 
Faiz’s oft-quoted advice to his ‘fellow-lovers’ from Lahore Jail in 1959 seems so apt for the Capital today :
 

 
Equally relevant is Sahir’s‘zulm phir zulm hai' penned by him on the murder of Patrice Lumumba in 1961 but, as literary historian Rakhshanda Jalil puts it, “just as chillingly fitting today” :
 

 
         Oppression is but oppression, when it rises, it washes out
         Blood is but blood, if it spills, it will clot
 
         What do we say about oppression?
         How tall can it stand?
         Oppression is only oppression – from the beginning to the end
         Blood is still blood, it can assume a hundred forms
         Such forms which, even if one tries, do not get erased
         Such embers which, even if one tries, do not get extinguished
         Such slogans which, even if one tries, do not get suppressed
           
 
Let us hope that this ‘zulm’ will stop before too late and that Delhiites will reclaim their democratic, cultural and educational spaces – like Majaz, who when forced to leave Delhi, promised to soon return with vehemence and fervour :
 

The post Repression and Resistance, Delhi 2016: Through the Prism of Urdu Poetry appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
Urdu poetry has always advocated the cause of secularism and promoted our pluralistic traditions in various forms. Urdu poets have adopted peculiar symbols to
promote liberal humanism and abhor religious sectarianism. Irreligion, anti-religion, anti-formalism, equal respect for all religions, national unity, common brotherhood, mulla and pandit bashing – all these trajectories together constitute the secular and pluralistic landscape of Urdu poetry. And it is not just serious poetry that has used these trajectories to raise its voice against hate, humourists and satirists have shared the serious poet’s burden in equal measure – occasionally with far more impact and effect, and the phenomenon is not new. In fact, some of the classicists and masters of romance have used satire to bring home their issues with religion and its preachers. In the 18^th Century, Mir Taqi Mir (d. 1810), like Ghalib in the next, did not hesitate in audaciously announcing his incredulity to religion. In his well-known and oft-sung ghazal which begins with:
 

 
Mir derides religious symbolism, scorns and ridicules its self-appointed sentinels, and finally announces that his faith is beyond their typifications: 
 

 
 
Whose Ka’aba? What prayer-direction?  What Holy mosque? What pilgrim’s robes?
We, the inhabitants of her lane, abandoned all from here
 
The Sheikh who stands naked in the mosque today, was in the pub last night
Cloak, gown, shirt, cap – in inebriation he gave away as tips
 
What do you now want to know about Mir’s religion and faith, he in fact has
Tattooed his forehead, sat in a temple, abandoned Islam long ago
 
The modern satirist is as repulsed by the growing communal hatred today as the classist was with the overpowering influence of the clergy two centuries ago. One of the most gifted humourists of our times, the incomparable Saghar Khayyami (d. 2008) is flabbergasted with the purely personal interests that control communal politics:
 

 
            Has the world ever seen an example
            Of a Hindu home having been burnt down by the Muslim God
            A neighbourhood having been torched by Lord Rama
            Or Guru Nanak having only shown the right path to the Sikhs
 
            Ram, Raheem, Nanak and Christ didn’t teach these things
            It’s the self-appointed custodians of their teachings who corrupt us[i]
           
 
In another hilarious poem, characteristic of Saghar, he uses the example of meat-ban to assail the obviously communal typecasting of Muslims and Hindus on the basis of their perceived food habits:

           
          It’s been a month that Mutton is not available
          At feasts, poets are being fed with ladyfinger
 
          After having a meal of tarot root, what poetic skills will we be able to show?

           
Pakistani poet, Anwar Masood (b. 1935) is appalled at how, in a large part of South Asian societies, religious dogmatism overrides scientific education even in modern times. In an outstanding example of matchless satire, he takes a jibe at the absurd and impractical manner in which the clergy, rather than relying upon modern scientific methods, insists on physically sighting the Eid-moon every year, leaving the faithful wondering till late in the night if they are expected to celebrate the festival the next day :
 

 
Shauq Bahraichi (d. 1964) was a highly underrated poet who few have heard about, though one of his couplets remains high-up in the list of the most popular satirist poems ever:
 

           
A law-clerk (Munshi) to several district court lawyers in Eastern UP, his recent posthumously published collection dazzles with marvelous examples of satire and humour. Like many others, Shauq was convinced that the root-cause of all communal hatred was not religion, but the clergy. In one of his quadruplets, he pronounces the ever-preaching mullas as not only frivolous and foolish but also rude and ill-mannered:
 

 
A similar sentiment is echoed by another poet who renders a unique explanation unto God for having evaded religious instruction:
 

 
Following the same line of thought, Maachis Lucknowi (d. 1970) claims that on the day of judgement, the sinners’ queue will be full of clergymen:
 

 
Urdu satirists and humourists recognize that communalism is not just a phenomenon where followers of one religion are pitched against followers of another religion, but casteism and creating hatred between followers of the same religion inter se is also communalism and equally deplorable. Lucknow has witnessed some of the most despicable instances of Shia-Sunni wars, fought at various levels – political, social, economic, personal and, of course, religious. Some decades ago, when many a Shia intellectual announced their allegiance to the Communist Party, a Shia poet from Lucknow, in an unparalleled example of top-notch satire, ingeniously captured the abhorrence of both these communities against the other:
 

 
The types and kinds of communalism notwithstanding, the essence of communalism lies in hatred, and hatred increases when human values begin diminishing. Sadly, we are living in a world where human values are fading away by the minute; a world, where we must not only be concerned about communal politics but where we must also find a solution to the larger issue, from which stems the issue of communal politics – the issue of man losing his humane character and degenerating into a monster. Ghalib had voiced his concern on this more than 150 years ago, when he had said:
 
            Bas ki dushwaar hai har kaam ka aasaa’n hona
            Aadmi ko bhi mayassar nahin insaa’n hona
 
            Oh! it is so difficult even for random tasks to be rendered easy
            (just as) being humane is not a task easily attainable by man 
 
The global situation has only worsened and become more appalling in the century and a half that has followed. To quote the inimitable Rafiq Shadaani (d. 2008), a compulsive humorist whose biting satire in the Awadhi dialect would give many a stand-up comedian a good run for their money:
 

The post The Secular Agenda of Humourist Urdu Poetry appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The October 2000 edition of Seminar contains an obituary penned by Irfan Ahmad for the renowned Urdu poet, Ali Sardar Jafri, whose 102^nd birth anniversary we celebrated on the 29^th of November this year, just a week before the 23^rd anniversary of what has been the most bald-faced blow to our Constitutional democracy so far. The obituary opens with these words :“It would be violative of the ideals and convictions of Ali Sardar Jafri to write his obituary” and goes on to explain that the poet believed that he would “eternally live in the sweet song of birds and the musical smile of dry leaves” and that, much like Ghalib, “one day all the golden rivers and blue lakes in the sky would reverberate with the music of his being”. While the author of the obituary was obviously alluding to the romantic poetry of Ali Sardar Jafri, it is actually his poetry in defence of secularism, combating communalism and dreaming of an equal and just world,that makes him immortal.

Exactly 23 years ago when a methodical and planned movement devised to massacre our Constitutional ideals of secularism, justice, liberty, equality and fraternity in the name of religion was at its peak, the 79-year old communist poet decided to address God and tell him how his name was being misused to create ruckus :
Hai dharm siyaasat ke madaari ka khilauna
Mazhab ko bana rakhkha hai yaaron ne kharabaat
 
Japtey hain tere dhyaan mein jab Ram ki maala
Kuchh aur bigad jaate hain is des ke haalaat
 
Insaa’n ko bana dete hain insaan ka dushman
Jab Hind ki taareekh pe likhte hain maqaalaat
 
De saktey nahin naan ka sookha hua tukda
Utthey hain chukaane ko jo barson ke hisaabaat
 
Faith is a toy in the hands of the political puppeteer
These blokes have made mischief out of religion
 
When they roll a rosary chanting your name
The situation in this country becomes worse
 
They make men enemies of each other
When they write commentaries on the history of India
 
Those who can’t give even a dry piece of bread
Have sworn to settle accounts for years
 
And when the massacre was successful and led to people killing each other on the streets, he wondered if this land of Ram and Buddha, the sentinel of human dignity, will be rendered barren and promised to donate to his country, whatever blood was left in his body after the on-going riots :
 
Ram-o-Gautam ki zamee’n, hurmat-e-insaa’n ki amee’n
Baanjh ho jaayegi kya khoon ki barsaat ke baad ?
 
Ae vatan, Khaak-e-vatan, vo bhi tujhe de deinge
Bach gaya jo bhi lahu, ab ke fasaadaat ke baad
 
This land of Ram and Gautam, the sentinel of human dignity
Will it be rendered barren after it rains blood this time ?
 
Oh Nation, dust of my Nation, we will render unto you
Even the blood that is left in us after the on-going riots
 
Ali Sardar Jafri was a radical activist and a true chronicler not only of the events that surrounded him, but of his inner moods, feelings, and susceptibilities. Like Frances Pritchett says about Mir, his verse is felt, even by an unsympathetic critic, as ‘moving and powerful’, a kind of poetry which ‘at its best, comes from the heart and goes to the heart’.  He wrote extensively on a variety of subjects, produced insightful documentaries, recited with overwhelming intensity and spoke with great erudition – the underlying theme in whatever he did always being love, compassion, justice and fraternity. He abhorred communalism, detested fanaticism, fought bigotry and intolerance and sought to protect the highest traditions of religious pluralism and social diversity.

Born on 29^th November 1913 in an aristocratic family of the backward Balrampur district, now in Eastern UP, a young Jafri soon saw the darkness that India was plunged into and decided to join politics and write at the same time. He began his career at 17 as a short story writer. His very first collection of short stories, ‘Manzil’ (destination) was considered both seditious and libellous by the ruling British and he had to serve eight months in prison for denouncing the idea of war :

Zeheraalood vo beete hue lamhaat ke dank
Khoon mein doobi hui vo subh ki talwaar ki dhaar
Shaam ki aankh mein baarood ke kaajal ki lakeer 
Aur hafton ke sipaahi vo maheenon ke sawaar 
Jo mere josh-e-baghaawat ko kuchalne ke liye 
Faujdar fauj kiya karte hain yalghaar apni 
Rifle karti hai faulaad ke hothon se kalaam

These poisonous stings of the moments that have passed
That blood-soaked edge of the morning’s sword
In the evening’s eye that kohl line made of gunpowder
And those soldiers marching for weeks and riders for months 
Who, to crush the passion of my rebellion
Continue to attack, army after army
The rifle salutes the lips of steel
 
Not to be deterred, he continued to write. He published his first collection of poetry ‘Parwaaz’ in 1943 and, soon after Independence, in 1948 wrote his magnum opus ‘Nayi Duniya ko salaam’ – a long poem brimming with hope and sanguinity.  Jafri’s dissent was not aimed at state action alone. He attacked social malpractices with equal gusto. In ‘Awadh ki khaak-e-haseen’ he picturesquely describes the social conditions of the downtrodden in the Oudh province ruled by capitalist landlords : 

Ghareeb Sita ke ghar pe kab tak rahegi Ravan ki hukmraani ?
Draupadi ka libaas uske badan se kab tak chhina karega ?
Shakuntala kab tak andhi taqdeer ke bhanwar mein phansi rahegi ?
Yeh Lakhnau ki  shaguftagi maqbaron mein kabtak dabi rahegi ?

How long will poor Sita’s home continue to be ruled by Ravana ?
How long will Draupadi’s clothes be snatched from her body ?
How long will Shakuntala remain caught in the swirl of blind fate ?
How long will this blossom of Lucknow remain buried under tombs?
 
One of the most robust pillars of the Progressive Writers’ Movement, Jafri did not confine his poetry to the trials and tribulations of the people of India alone. He spoke for the African girl (Afreeki Ladki), lent words to the torment of an Abyssinian boy (Habshi mera bhai) and paid tributes to Pablo Neruda, Elia Ehrenberg and Nazim Hikmet.
Jafri genuinely believed in the idea of Indo-Pak peace and friendship. When Pakistani poet Ahmad Faraz extended a hand of friendship to his Indian friends in his oft-quoted words :
tumhaare des mein aaya hoon dosto, ab ke
na saaz o naghma  ki mehfil, na shaayri ke liye
agar tumhaari ana ka hi hai sawaal to phir
chalo, maiyn haath barhaata hoon dosti ke liye
 
I have come to your country, friends, this time
Neither for a get-together of melody and song nor for poetry
If it’s only a question of your ego, then
Here, I extend my hand in friendship
 
Jafri responded with equal eloquence and camaraderie :
 
Zameen-e-Pak hamaare jigar ka tukda hai
Hamein hai azeez Dilli-o-Lucknow ki tarah
Tumhaare lehje mein, meri nawa ka lehja hai
Tumhaara dil hai hasee’n, meri aarzoo ki tarah
 
Karein ye ahd, ke auzaar-e-jang hain jitne
Unhein mitaana hai aur khaak mein milaana hai
Karein ye ahd, ke arbaab-e-janghain jitney
Unhe sharaafat o insaaniyat sikhaana hai
 
Tum aao gulshan-e-Lahore se chaman bardosh
Hum aaein subh-e-Banaras ki roshni le kar
Himalaya ki hawaaon ki taazgi le kar
Phir is ke baad ye poochhein ki ‘kaun dushman hai’
 
Pakistan is a part of our heart
It is as dear to us as Delhi and Lucknow
In your accent is the inflection of my speech
Your heart too is beautiful like my desire
 
Let us pledge that all these instruments of war
Have to be destroyed and buried in dust
Let us pledge that all these masters of war
Have to be taught lessons in civility and humanity
 
You come from the garden of Lahore, carrying flowers
We come, carrying the light of the morning of Banaras
The freshness of the breeze of the Himalayas
And after that, ask “who is the enemy”  ?
 
Jafri had a deep interest in classical poetry in both Urdu and English and himself edited anthologies of Kabir, Mir, Ghalib and Meera Bai with his own scholarly introductions. He wrote plays for the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), produced a documentary film titled ‘Kabir, Iqbal and Freedom’ and the well-known 18-part television serial ‘Kahkashan’ based on the lives and works of seven progressive Urdu poets of the 20th century who he had known personally.
 
As we celebrate the birth anniversary of this defender of our pluralistic and egalitarian traditions, let us hope, in his words, that forces of communalism and intolerance do not rip apart the democratic fibre of this country and dialogue never ceases :
 
Guftgu bandd na ho, baat se baat chaley
subh tak shaam-e-mulaaqaat chaley
hum pe hansti hui ye taaron bhari raat chaley
subh tak dhal ke koi harf-e-wafa aayega
ishq aayega ba-sad laghzish-e-pa aayegaa
nazrein jhuk jaayeingi, dil dhadkeingey, lab kaanpeingey
khamoshi bosa-e-lau ban ke behek jaayegi
sirf ghunchon ke chatakney ki sada aayegi
aur phir harf-o-nawa ki na zaroorat hogi
chashm-o-abroo ke ishaaron mein mohabbat hogi
nafrat uth jaayegi, mehmaan murawwat hogi

haath mein haath liye, saara jahaan saath liye
pyaar ki sau ghaat liye
regzaaron se adaawat ke guzar jaaeingey
khoon ke dariya se hum paar utar jaayein

guftgu bandd na ho, baat se baat chaley

Let dialogue never cease, let talks lead to talks
Till the morning let the evening of our meeting last
Laughing on us, let this star-filled night last
By morning, some word of loyalty, fully moulded, will arrive
Love will arrive, though with trembling feet, it will arrive
Eyes will lower themselves, hearts will beat and lips shiver
Silence will go astray, having turned into a kiss of flame
Only the sound of cracking of the buds will be heard
And then words and voice won't be required any longer
In the signs of eyes and eyebrows will love linger
Hatred will vanish, kindness will be our guest

Holding hand in hand, taking the whole world with us
Holding the gift of love
We will traverse the deserts of enmity and cross over the river of blood

Let dialogue never cease.
 

The post Rhyme, metre, verse, against hate: Ali Sardar Jafri appeared first on SabrangIndia.