Part 1

'Hai kahan tamanna kaa doosra qadam, Yaarab 

Hum nay dasht-e-imkaan ko aik naqsh-e-paa paayaa’

"Where is the second footstep of longing, oh Lord? 

The desert of possibility was but one footstep"[1] 

Divaan-e Ghalib, ghazal 4, unpublished verse.                       

The abstruseness of Mirza Ghalib's poetry was legendary, almost from the moment he started writing it as a young man. In fact, it was one of the most common criticisms, and there were many, leveled against his work. Initially, Ghalib, with his customary cavalier attitude, dismissed such criticisms as the carping of lesser intellects. Eventually, though, he made an effort to acknowledge his critics and later still, admitted that some of them may have been correct. There are many reasons for the complexity of his works, not the least of which is that Ghalib lived in an era when Urdu was still coming into its own as the 'lingua franca' of Northern India. Persian, the language of the Mughal conquerors was still the language of the court and most people were conversant in both spoken and written Persian. In addition, although Urdu, the language formed  during the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, had been formalized by Ghalib's predecessor, Meer Taqi 'Meer',  if one hoped to  make a mark as a writer, poet or any kind of literary personage, Persian was the first choice. Persian was also a much more ancient and thus more richly developed language, more conducive to poetic metaphors and similes. Accordingly, most of Ghalib's poetry is heavily Persianized and assumes more than a working knowledge of it. In addition, unlike Meer, Ghalib made no effort to make his poetry accessible to the non-literary reader, quite by design. Although he was convinced of the greatness of his poetical works, he remarked presciently that the true worth of his poetry would only become evident after he was long gone.                                   

The density of Ghalib's poetry strikes one as soon as we open his 'Divaan' (complete works). By tradition, the first poem of a Divaan is a 'Hamd', an ode to the Almighty and Ghalib's Divaan begins with one of his most loved and most recited ghazals:                                                                                               

 'Naqsh faryaadi hai kis kee shoukhi-e-tehreer kaa 

Kaghazi hai pairhan, har paikar-e-tasweer kaa'

'Against whose mischievousness is the image complaining? 

Every figure is garbed in a paper robe'. 

Ghalib himself explained the second verse (Anjum 1985) as referring to an ancient Iranian custom in which someone seeking justice would appear before the king wearing a paper robe as a symbol of protest against injustice. The first verse is more enigmatic still until one remembers that this is a 'hamd'. The 'image' is Creation itself, us, the world around us and everything in the Universe which is lamenting the whimsy of the Creator at having created it. Existence itself is like pictures, merely notional and, as such, it is a cause of grief and sorrow and suffering. He goes on: 

 'Kav kav-e sakht jaan-e-hai tanhaee naa puch 

Subh karnaa shaam kaa laana hai ju-e sheer kaa' 

'Ask not about digging through the tough life of solitude 

Turning night to day is like carving the milk stream' 

Here is a reference to the fabled Shahnama, an enormous poetic opus written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi around 1000 AD and a favorite subject of writers and poets through the ages .The Shahnama, considered the national epic of Iran, tells of the mythical and historical past of Iran from the creation of the world up until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century. 

This verse refers to story of the love of the Sassanian King, Khosrow II towards his Christian princess, Shirin. It recounts the story of King Khosrow’s courtship of Princess Shirin, and the vanquishing of his love-rival, Farhad by sending him on an exile to Behistun Mountain with the impossible task of carving stairs out of the cliff rocks. In one version, the unfortunate lover, Farhad, is exiled and sent to carve a ‘stream of milk’ through a stone mountain if he wants to win the hand of Shirin. This story (and particularly the carving of the stream as a metaphor for accomplishing something close to impossible) finds reflection in the poetry of many poets of the region through the ages. Ghalib continues: 

'Jazbaa-e-bay ikhtiar-e-shauq dekha chahiyay 

Seena-e-shamsheer say bahar hai dam shamsheer ka'

'Oh, to observe the unrestrained passion of the sword 

Whose breath spills out of its chest' 

Mirza says the unrestrained passion of the lover to die for the beloved has infected even his sword which is struggling to jump out of its scabbard to slay him for love. 

The next verse is an admission by the poet about the obscurity of his verses and the difficulty even the learned, or perhaps Ghalib himself, have in understanding them. 

'Aagahee daam-e-shunidan jis qadar chahay bichaey 

Mudda'aa Anqaa hai apnay aalam-e-taqreer kaa'

'No matter how awareness spreads its net of hearing 

The goal of my speech is the Anqaa' 

The 'Anqaa' also known in Persian as 'Simurgh' is the modern Persian name for a fabulous, benevolent, mythical flying creature. The figure can be found in all periods of Greater Iranian art and literature, and is evident also in the iconography of medieval Armenia, Byzantium and other regions that were within the sphere of Persian cultural influence. 

The Simurgh made its most famous appearance in the same ‘Shahnama’ mentioned above which relates how Zal, the son of Saam, was born albino. When Saam saw his albino son, he assumed that the child was the spawn of devils, and abandoned the infant on the Alborz mountain. 

The child's cries were carried to the ears of the tender-hearted Simurgh, who lived on top of this peak, and she retrieved the child and raised him as her own. Zal was taught much wisdom from the loving Simurgh, but the time came when he grew into a man and yearned to rejoin the world of men. Though the Simurgh was terribly saddened, she gifted him with three golden feathers which he was to burn if he ever needed her assistance. 

Upon returning to his kingdom, Zal fell in love and married the beautiful Rudaba. When it came time for their son to be born, the labor was prolonged and terrible; Zal was certain that his wife would die in labour. Rudaba was near death when Zal decided to summon the simurgh. The simurgh appeared and instructed him upon how to perform a cesarean section thus saving Rudabah and the child, who became one of the greatest Persian heroes, Rostam. 

In Arabic story tradition, the Anqaa's single defining trait is his not-there-ness. Whenever you try to catch him, he's gone. Thus in poetry and literature 'the meaning is an Anqaa', is also an idiomatic way of saying that something is meaningless. Ghalib thus, rather ruefully, admits to the obscurity of his verses and says their meaning is sometimes beyond even their author. 

It should be noted that Ghalib was a great admirer of the metaphysical, Sufi poets including Bedil, Hafiz and others and his Divaan is replete with references to the same. The works of Sufi mystics are meant to be intelligible only to those who have been initiated into its secret meanings and are thus, inaccessible to the casual reader. While Ghalib proudly claimed that heritage, he was also never far from making fun of himself as in this verse: 

'Yeh masail-e-tasawwaf, yeh teraa bayaan Ghalib 

Tujhe hum wali samajhtey, jo naa baada khwaar hota'

'These matters of Tasawwuf (Sufi wisdom) and your poetry, Ghalib 

We would accept you as a prophet, if only you weren't a drunkard' 

He ends this ghazal with another characteristically dense verse: 

'Baske hoon Ghalib, aseeri mein bhi aatish zair paa 

Moo-e-aatish deeda hai halqaa meri zanjeer kaa'

'Although in bondage, Ghalib, I am restless (such that) 

A singed hair is a link of my chain 

'Aatish zair paa' (literally, 'fire under foot') is a beautiful literary simile for restlessness, the urge to not stay still but what could the second verse mean? As it happens, even litterateurs disagree. 

On her comprehensive website “A Desertful of Roses: The Urdu Ghazals of Mirza Asadullah Khan ‘Ghalib’” Dr.Frances Pritchett cites some examples of what litterateurs make of this verse: 

Bekhud Mohani thinks the circles of the chain look like eyes-- eyes which are fire-raining and from which sparks of the fire of love are emerging, and which make the prisoner of love restless and uneasy. 

Vajid thinks Ghalib is referring to the fact that even though the lover is in chains, they cannot restrain him because the fire of his love burns the links of his chains like a hair exposed to fire (Moo-e-aatish deeda, literally, 'a hair that has seen fire'). Still others have dismissed the verse as meaningless.

Ghalib was well aware that many considered his poetry unnecessarily complicated, others dismissed it as indecipherable. He never attempted to remedy this although he acknowledged his critics in his poetry, remarking once, rather ruefully : 

 'Mushkil hai z-bas kalaam mera ae dil 

Sun sun kay issay sukhanwaraan-e kaamil 

Aasaan karnay kee kartay hain farmaish 

Goyem mushkil w-gar na-goyem mushkil' 

'Complicated is my expression, o heart 

'"Simplify it!" say the learned ones upon hearing, burdened am I if I speak,  

And more so, if I do not' 

Part II. 

"The flower replied: You fool! Do you imagine I blossom in order to be seen? I blossom for my own sake, because it pleases me, and not for the sake of others. My joy consists in my being and my blossoming." 

Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860. 

Ghalib once remarked that he had done quite enough through his poetry and prose to ensure that his name would live on until the end of time. More than 200 years after his birth, the steady stream of works on his life and poetry makes his pronouncement seem prophetic. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), one of Germany’s most loved romantic poets and a contemporary of Ghalib cautions against attributing too much of what occurs in a poet’s life to his work warning that such a judgment ‘deprives the poem of its virginity and tears asunder its mysterious veil’ (Prigarina  2000, 94).However, it goes without saying that any person’s life is ultimately reflected in their work, the more so if they are artists. 

The traditional definition of the form of poetry known as ‘Ghazal’ is that it is not ‘subject specific’ unlike another poetic form, the ‘nazm’ whose subject matter can usually be guessed with a fair degree of accuracy from its title. One of the defining features of a Ghazal, though, is that there need not be any continuity of theme or thought even from verse to verse, each of which can be a poem in itself. Ghalib’s ghazals are faithful to this rule but like those of all true masters of the genre, there is an overarching unity in each specimen. This is evident if we look in depth at one of his well loved and unusually long ones. It  begins: 

‘Muddat hui hai yaar ko mehmaan kiyay huay 

Josh-e-qadah say bazm chiraaghaan kiyay huay’ 

‘So long has it been since our beloved was a guest 

Since we lit up our gathering with the exuberance of the wine cup’ 

According to Pritchett the verses all speak in a mood of nostalgia, and all announce an intention of going back to the good old, bad old days of wild passion and romance. Having refused to learn from experience, the lover is ready to start all over again, even if only in his imagination. 

In explaining its subtext, Faiz Ahmad ‘Faiz’, another acknowledged poetic master divides it into several sequences (Faiz 1985). The first verse above, laments Ghalib’s separation from his friend/lover but not just that, the second verse mourns the passing of the ‘bazm’, the revelry, the joy, the celebration that accompanied every meeting with the beloved. In fact, as mentioned earlier, Ghalib is mourning all those celebrations, all those joys that have passed on into oblivion with the decline of the court and all its trappings. He continues: 

‘Kartaa hun jamaa phir jigar-e-lakht lakht ko 

Arsaa hua hai daawat-e-mizhgaan kiyay huay’

‘Once again I gather together my liver’s shards 

A long time has it been having made a feast for the eyelashes’ 

The use of the ‘liver’ (‘jigar’) is special to ghazals. Unlike English poetry where a forlorn lover locates his pain in the heart, in a ghazal, the liver is the emblem of fortitude, steadfastness and endurance over time. Ghalib is once again collecting the shattered pieces of his ‘jigar’ to ‘make a feast for the eyelashes of the beloved’, which presumably are what tore it apart in the first place. Once again, the poet longs to bring together the old festivities, even at the expense of great pain. 

Faiz has also pointed out that anything in pieces (like the aforementioned ‘jigar’) is unable to feel pain (Faiz 1985). Once collected back together, it will at least feel the pain again and perhaps bring tears to the eyes and evoke memories of happier days. 

Ghalib continues his description of his pain:  

‘Phir vaz-e ehtiyaat say ruknay lagaa hai dam 

Barson huay hain chaak garebaan kiyay huay’

‘(My) circumspect style is suffocating to me 

Years it has been (since) having torn apart the collar’ 

It’s been long enough, says the poet, that we have held ourselves back. Its time to tear apart our collar (a poetic simile for madness or a state of trance) and rejoin that state of derangement. He goes on: 

‘Phir garm naala hai sharar baar hai nafas 

Muddat hui hai sair-e-chiraghaan kiyay huay’ 

‘The breath is once again hot like shower sparks 

So long has it been that we have strolled amongst fire-works’ 

Ghalib wishes to light up the ‘mehfil’ (the festival) this time with the flaming showers of his breath. 

In the next verse, once again, Ghalib alludes to a physical torment to recreate an old feeling. 

‘Phir pursish-e-jaraahat-e-dil ko chala hai ishq 

Samaan sad hazaar namakdaan kiyay huay’

‘Once again, Passion is off to tend the heart’s wounds 

Equipped with a hundred thousand salt-dishes’ 

This time ‘passion is off to tend to the wounds of the heart’. How? By rubbing salt on them of course! (actually ‘having equipped itself with a thousand salt dishes’). According to Ghalib, that is what the heart desires, to feel that pain again, that same longing. 

In the next verse comes another beautiful description of a lover’s pain: 

‘Phir bhar raha hoon khaman-e-mizhgaan ba-khoon-e-dil 

Saaz-e-chaman tarazi-e-daaman kiyay huay’

‘Once again I’m filling up the pen of my eye-lashes with the heart’s blood 

Having prepared the hem for ‘garden adornment’ 

The poet is preparing to perform a kind of adornment on his garment-hem, using his bloody tears as they drip from the 'pens' of his eyelashes. 

The physical image behind this idea is that the grieving lover might be seated in a hunched-over position with his head very much lowered, so that his bloody tears would drip directly down and land on his garment-hem. 

Next, Ghalib says that the heart and eye are both preparing for their meeting with the beloved. 

‘Ba hamdigar huay hain dil-o-deedah phir raqib 

Nazzara-e-khayaal kaa samaan kiyay huay’ 

‘The heart and the eye are again rivals 

Having gathered the means for sight and imagination’ 

As Pritchett explains, the eye might seem to have the upper hand here for all it needs is the sight of the beloved until one considers the deeper meaning. While the sight of the beloved may require physical presence, the heart can conjure up all manner of visions, imaginings, memories, fantasies, longings, all this without even seeing the object of love! 

The next verse has a sting in its tail: 

‘Dil phir tavaaf-e-koo-e-malamat ko jaaey hai 

Pindaar kaa sanam kadah veeran kiyay huay’

‘Once again the heart goes to perform ‘tavaaf’ (circling the ka’aba) of the ‘street of reproach 

Having ruined the temple of conceit and arrogance’ 

Pritchett explains that as a rule, the lover's quasi-religious devotion to the 'street of blame' is based on its being the beloved's street, and the beloved is the 'idol' to whom he devotes, in a way that shocks and horrifies respectable people, the passionate love that ought to be reserved for God alone. Thus when we learn in the first line that he is planning to perform 'circumambulation' of this 'street of blame', we're not at all surprised; it's just the sort of sacrilegious thing that lovers are notorious for doing. 

In the second line though, we encounter a temple (literally ‘idol house’) that's not located in the beloved's street at all. Instead, it's the idol-house of 'conceit' or 'arrogance' and it's a place to which the speaker was formerly so devoted that his abandonment will leave it 'desolate'. There's an obvious symbolic reading here: respectability and worldly reputation are 'idols' too, and the passionate lover must entirely renounce them. 

Or as Faiz points out (Faiz 1985), the ‘street of the beloved’ is the ‘Ka’aba’, Islam’s holiest place, the house of Allah himself and the poet’s own ego, his vanity, his pride is the temple. Ghalib thus underlines a basic truth of Sufi thought. Love (for the divine) is the only Truth while love of the self is but vanity, one is the Ka’aba and the other a temple of false idols. 

With this verse ends one sequence and the next one begins. 

‘Phir shauq kar rahaa hai kharidaar kee talab 

Arz-e mataa-e aql-o-dil-o-jaan liyay huay’

‘Passion seeks a buyer, once again 

Having presented (as goods) intelligence (the ‘head’), the heart and life (itself)’ 

Faiz (Faiz 1985) interprets this as a search by the head and heart for a ‘buyer’ (or ‘seeker’, ‘enthusiast’ etc) who radiates all those qualities of love enumerated before such as bringing together the ‘jigar’ to feel the pain of love again, to rub salts into the wounds of the heart, to have the eyes and the heart long for the beloved again, to leave the vain temple of one’s self and head to the temple of the beloved and so on. However, as Pritchett points out, it cannot be just any buyer. It must be someone special, unique and irresistible, someone who can ravish the lover with just a glance. 

The next sequence of verses describes the results of this search and, according to Faiz, the verses follow a pattern that cannot be tampered with lest the meaning of the whole section be lost. The first verse sets the scene for what is to come: 

‘Dau-Re hai phir har ek gul-o-lala par khayaal 

Sad gulsitaan nigaah kaa samaan kiyay huay’

‘(once again)Thought runs across every rose and tulip 

Having made a hundred gardens for the gaze’ 

Ghalib says his thought has created a captivating scene of a hundred gardens with many more flowers, each more beautiful than the next. Why? 

‘Phir chahtaa hoon namaa-e dildaar kholnaa 

Jaan nazr-e dil farebii-e-unvaan kiyay huay’

‘(Once again) I wish to open the beloved’s letter 

The first stage is the letter from the object of desire. The beloved has addressed the letter herself but just the title is so bewitching and the lover is so besotted with the beloved that he wants to offer up his life for it before even opening the letter. 

Pritchett has pointed out that other commentators have equated the title (‘unvaan’) as ‘redness’ (‘surkhi’) perhaps of ink. This would be an elegant touch since the same redness could refer to the life-blood of the reader. The title of the letter hints that its contents and the pursuit of such fiery love may require the sacrifice of the lover’s life-blood. 

We then move on to: 

‘Maangay hai phir kisi ko lab-e baam par hawas 

Zulf-e siyaah rukh pay pareshaan kiyay huay’

‘(again) Desire wishes someone on the roof’s edge 

Black curls scattered over her countenance’ 

This verse paints a beautiful picture of a recurring scene in many cities in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent especially in the old days. Women would let their hair grow long and after washing it, the easiest way to dry it would be to go up on the roof and dry it in the sun. Thus, a young woman might inadvertently be displaying her long, lustrous hair on the roof without the slightest flirtatious intention but in that case, why at the ‘edge’ of the roof instead of the middle, hidden from view? In any case, let us remember that the verse refers to a fantasy created by ‘Desire’. 

Also, when the beloved is far away, on the roof, one can only see a glimpse of her silhouette, through the ‘black curls’ of her hair. Ghalib then moves on to the next stage of desire where the beloved is now ‘in front’, face to face with the lover. 

‘Chaahay hai phir kisi ko muqaabil may aarzoo 

Surmay say tez dashnaa-e mizhgaan kiyay huay’

‘(again) Desire wants someone in front 

Having sharpened the eyelashes with Kohl’ 

‘Surma’ or Kohl (elsewhere called ‘collyrium’) is also a constant subject in Urdu poetry. It is a mixture of soot and other ingredients used predominantly by women in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and South Asia to darken the eyelids and as mascara for the eyelashes. According to Pritchett, the beloved's gorgeous dark eyes are surrounded with collyrium, which enhances their beauty and thus their power to 'speak' to the dazzled lover. Not only that, the kohl has sharpened the eyelashes into daggers in preparation for what was alluded to in the second verse, the tearing apart of the lover’s ‘jigar’ so he can experience the ecstasy of love again. 

Finally the lover has reached his goal, a visit with the beloved and she is like an early spring after a long winter of thirsting. 

‘Ek nau bahar-e naaz ko taakay hai phir nigaah 

Chehraa farogh-e mai say gulsitaan kiyay huay’

‘(again) Sight observes a flirtatious early spring 

Having made the face a garden with the brightness of wine’ 

First there was the letter, then her countenance at a distance, then close by and finally, face to face. After reaching the summit of desire begins the descent back into sadness. The lover realizes that it was all a mirage. There is no beloved, no meeting with her, it was all a futile dream. 

‘Phir jee main hai kay dar pay kissi kay parray rahen 

Sar zair baar minnat-e-darban kiyay huay’

‘(once again) We have resolved in our heart to prostrate ourselves at someone’s door-step 

Having placed our self in debt to the door-keeper’ 

Even though there is no hope of ever beholding the beloved, let alone being at her side or in her arms, the lover would at least like to lie at her door in the hope that she might pass by or perhaps take pity on him and invite him inside. Either way, the besotted lover is at the mercy of the ‘darban’, or door keeper to allow him to lie there and not drive him away. In the next verse, the lover realizes that there is no hope of ever beholding his beloved: 

‘Jee dhoondtaa hai phir wohi fursat, kay raat din 

Baithay rahen tasawwur-e janaan kiyay huay’

‘The heart longs, once again, for that leisure, when day and night 

(we would be) Sitting in contemplation of the visions of the beautiful one(s)’ 

In place of her countenance, he pleads for at least the leisure moments when he can console himself with her image, an activity he would like to engage in ‘day and night’. 

In the last verse, we come to the bitter end: 

‘Ghalib hamen naa cher kay phir josh-e ashk say 

Baithay hain hum tahayyia-e toofan kiyay huay’

‘Ghalib, leave us be for through the turmoil of tears 

We sit, prepared for a typhoon (of tears)’ 

Even the memory of the beloved is denied to the lover and so all he is left with is the passion of his grief which he intends to convert into a stormy torrent of tears, perhaps to wash away his grief and maybe his life with it. 

Part III. 

"All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind." 

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 'The Communist Manifesto", 1848. 

Besides his love of enigmatic, metaphysical poetry, Ghalib also had the distinction of being a witness and chronicler of a tumultuous era. He was born in 1797, just as the Industrial Revolution was picking up steam in England and a few years after the French Revolution put an end to monarchy in that country. These events were destined to forever end the feudal system hitherto prevalent in those countries for thousands of years and shake human history to its foundations.  The English had already arrived in India under the guise of traders long before Ghalib's birth and their East India Company or 'Company Bahadur' as it was known to Ghalib's contemporaries would soon become a most effective and brutal instrument of Imperial exploitation as the wealth and prosperity of India were siphoned off to finance the Industrial Revolution in England and Europe. By the time Ghalib reached maturity, the once mighty and unimaginably rich Mughal Empire was in terminal decline and he would live to see its last days. The Sepoy revolt of 1857 (also called the First Indian War of Independence), its subsequent defeat, the brutal retributions by the victorious British and the sack of Delhi was the final nail in the coffin of the tottering Empire. After the war, the British Crown formally annexed India and exiled the last Mughal king Bahadur Shah Zafar to Burma where he died in penury. Ghalib would live on for more than 10 years after the horrific events of 1857, lonely and sick, with many of his closest friends and contemporaries having being hunted down and killed by the British as revenge against the uprising. It was the definitive end of an era and Ghalib was its scribe par excellence in the voluminous collection of letters he left behind and other works. 

In these, he details the social changes going on around him in an extremely astute manner. A world which had existed for several millennia truly was ending and for a sensitive artist like Ghalib and many others it must have felt like all that they had known and revered, was ‘melting into air’. As a sensitive artist, he was well aware of the tumultuous social changes going on around him. The arrival of the British and the eventual colonization of India had resulted in an entire way of life fading and eventually disappearing forever. All of this happened in Ghalib’s lifetime and while the old feudal/court system was fading, nothing had yet appeared to replace it. 

Interestingly, for a poetical figure that looms so large over the landscape of South Asia and increasingly beyond it, Ghalib had resigned himself to being ‘just a poet’. 

In a letter to Shafaq, he talks of poetry as being his predestination (Prigarina 2000, 20): 

“…I do not take after my ancestors…like Sultan Sanjar, for feat of arms; it was not my fate to make a name like Bu Ali (Abu Ali Ibn Sina or Avicenna), in science; following in the footsteps of the sages of the olden times. I told myself: let me be a dervish and be my own master. But the inclination to poetry, my companion since eternity, captivated me unawares and tricked me into believing that polishing the mirror of words and showing to the world the image of meaning in them is also an enviable profession….I had to do as I was told and I set my boat in the ocean of poetry, which is nothing more than a mirage. My ‘qalam’ (pen) became my flagstaff…”

He describes poetry (and art) worth admiring in this verse:

‘Qatray main dajla dikhaee na day, aur juz mein kul 

Khel larkon ka huwa, deeda-e-beena na huwa'

"If ‘dajlaa’ (the Tigris) not be seen in a drop or the whole in a part 

It is but a child’s game, not the ‘seeing eye’” 

However, according to Faiz (Faiz 1984, 103) an artist’s responsibility does not end here. Once he or she has found the ‘seeing eye’, it then becomes his responsibility to show what he or she sees to the rest of the world and then to ‘enter into its turbulent flow (to change its course)’. Great poetry becomes ‘great’ only when it speaks to some universal aspect of the human condition and uplifts the spirit and also when it takes its creator and its observer beyond the harsh realities of every day life to a place where ‘writing can be a waking dream’.

In the end, a great artist competes only with himself (or herself). He or she knows that the ultimate purpose of art is not to gather accolades or riches but to illuminate the farther reaches of the soul, to shed light on our deepest aspirations and dreams and encourage us to grasp for the Divine inside all of us. This is what Faiz is referring to when he says: 

‘Kaun aisa ghani hai jis say koi 

Naqd-e-shams-o-qamar kee baat karey 

Jiss ko ho shauq-e-nabard humsay 

Jaye, taskheer-e-kainaat karay’

‘Who here is generous enough to award us the Sun and the moon? 

Whoever would grapple with us, let him first go and conquer the universe’ 

 Ghalib, through his poetry, confirms that an artist creates art because he or she has no other choice, because the art cries out to be born ‘for its own sake’ for its own ‘being and blossoming’. In the end, through his beautiful, metaphysical poetry, he uplifts the human spirit, helping ordinary people survive turbulent times by creating a world that transcends. 

The author is a Psychiatrist practicing in Arkansas, USA. He can be reached at ahashmi39@gmail.com

First published in The Friday Times, Lahore. 

Works Cited: 

In Urdu 

Faiz Ahmad Faiz.1985. Mata-e-Lauh-o-Qalam. Karachi: Maktaba-e-Daniyaal.

Faiz Ahmad Faiz.1985. Nuskha hai Wafa. Lahore: Maktaba-e-Karwaan.

Khaliq Anjum, 1985. ed. Ghalib kay khutoot (Vol 2). New Delhi: Ghalib Institute.

Mirza Asad-Ullah Khan Ghalib. 2010. Divaan-e- Ghalib. Lahore: Maktaba-e-Jamal.

Natalia Prigarina.1998. Mirza Ghalib.Trans.M.Usama Faruqui.Maktaba-e-Daniyaal,1998. 

In English

A Desertful of Roses. The Urdu Ghazals of Mirza Asadullah Khan "Ghalib";online at http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib/ (accessed February 6,2010)

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.The Communist Manifesto.online at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ (accessed February 6, 2010)

Prigarina, Natalia. Mirza Ghalib: A Creative Biography; Trans.M.Usama Faruqui.Oxford University Press, 2000.

Shahnamah. Firdausi, The Epic of Kings (1010), trans. by Helen Zimmern: online at MIT http://classics.mit.edu/Ferdowsi/kings.html (accessed February 6,2010)