At the Splendor...I Stared.
By Jigar Moradabadi
[Interpretive translation of the Urdu by Siyaah]
At the splendor, with an appreciative, capacious gaze, I stared
What else could I see- but at her, I stared. [1]
At my own reflection, presented to my gaze, I stared
A mirror there was face-to-face, wherever I stared. [2]
In her sanctuary of grace, where could I stand-
At the imprints on the veil at the door, I stared. [3]
Some such nights of separation went by as well-
As if it were her, presented to my gaze, at whom I stared. [4]
With every glance, the grandeur of beauty changed, O Jigar
At every glory of the transforming world, I stared. [5]
----
Translator's Notes
One aspect of note in Jigar's ghazals is his command on the rhyme- often, he has two opening couplets (rather than the mandatory one for the typical ghazal) with all verses in rhyme.
Translating this was much tougher than it first appeared. The words had to be very precise in terms of their meanings in several places, yet had to be open to interpretation in two ways- for an earthly beloved, and for the Spiritual as well (the word 'her' can be replaced with 'Him' for that effect - in Urdu, the two words are the same). Suggestions for improvements are most welcome.
[1] jalwa: splendor; ba-qadr: showing the proper respect, admiration and appreciation - valuing something at its proper worth; zarf: capacious, being able to hold much. I chose 'I stared' to convey the sense of wonder and almost helplessness conveyed through 'dekh-te rahe'.
[2] ru-ba-ru: face-to-face.
[3] hareem-e-naaz: hareem means santuary or sacred place, house, and often also refers to the enclosure of the sanctuary at Mecca. Naqsh-o-nigar: decorations, engravings, designs, imprints. I prefered 'imprints' as it also suggests that what is seen on the veil is a manifestation or imprint of the sacred that is hidden from sight- one sufistic interpretation here would be that the world is an imprint of the Creator who is veiled from wordly sight.
[4] firaaq: separation.
[5] lehza: a look, a glance, a moment. Jahaan-e-digar: digar means next, other, another. This was the most difficult couplet to translate - Jigar's choice of every word gives it a variety of meanings. Jahaan-e-digar could be read as the 'next world'. Coupled with the first line, it could imply the various aspects of the beloved's beauty that the poet observed with every glance made him compare it to 'other world'-like beauty. Yet, it could also imply that the poet, through witnessing the changing beauty of this world in general, had a spiritual experience of 'transition to' the other world. I used 'transforming world' for jahaan-e-digar as it preserves all interpretations and brings the poet's experience alive through the words.
There is much more here, open to interpretation.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Jalwa Baqadr-e-Zarf-e-Nazar
Jalwa Baqadr-e-Zarf-e-Nazar
[By Jigar Moradabadi]
Jalwa baqadr-e-zarf-e-nazar dekhte rahe
Kya dekhte hum unko magar dekhte rahe
Apna hi aks pesh-e-nazar dekhte rahe
Aaina ru-ba-ru tha jidhar dekhte rahe
Unki hareem-e-naaz kahaan aur hum kahaan
Naqsh-o-nigaar-e-parda-e-dar dekhte rahe
Aisi bhi kuch firaaq ki raatein guzar gayin
Jaise unhi ko pesh-e-nazar dekhte rahe
Har lehza shaan-e-husn badalti rahi Jigar
Har aan hum jahaan-e-digar dekhte rahe
---
One of my favorites from Jigar, grows on you slowly but surely...is open to more than one interpretation. It reads so well as poetry sung to an earthly beloved - yet Jigar's verses often seem to imply Sufi angles and the meanings could apply to the Spiritual 'beloved'. In this ghazal in particular, the two layers of meaning flow through so seamlessly. Listen to it rendered by Abida Parveen here.
[By Jigar Moradabadi]
Jalwa baqadr-e-zarf-e-nazar dekhte rahe
Kya dekhte hum unko magar dekhte rahe
Apna hi aks pesh-e-nazar dekhte rahe
Aaina ru-ba-ru tha jidhar dekhte rahe
Unki hareem-e-naaz kahaan aur hum kahaan
Naqsh-o-nigaar-e-parda-e-dar dekhte rahe
Aisi bhi kuch firaaq ki raatein guzar gayin
Jaise unhi ko pesh-e-nazar dekhte rahe
Har lehza shaan-e-husn badalti rahi Jigar
Har aan hum jahaan-e-digar dekhte rahe
---
One of my favorites from Jigar, grows on you slowly but surely...is open to more than one interpretation. It reads so well as poetry sung to an earthly beloved - yet Jigar's verses often seem to imply Sufi angles and the meanings could apply to the Spiritual 'beloved'. In this ghazal in particular, the two layers of meaning flow through so seamlessly. Listen to it rendered by Abida Parveen here.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Sunday, November 25, 2007
The Story
I must finally start writing this story. For I have nothing left but this.
I am still in all sorts of doubts. A story is your creation, but it also creates you, for others to see. In this I am somewhat comforted by the fact that I might never have anyone read this. In any case, though I always wanted to be a writer, I stopped trying. I could never write anything that sells. One has sold oneself enough already - now how painful to sell even the story of that sale. I could never bring myself to change a single word, or edit a line. How cruel a punishment for the sin of exposing oneself, to have parts sliced off. What is then left is neither you, nor them - those who would read it. Let them read me as it is, or not at all. Perhaps not at all is so much better. For everyone.
I have nothing left. Everything that I ever wanted, never came to me. It came tantalizingly close to make one's desires and hopes reach where they could. And worse, it came close again when one had survived and moved on. To have it come back close again is to wrench out one's guts all over again. To feel the pain of the desire and the loss. And to feel the movement of time and realize that the loss was that much bigger, for nothing, not even it itself, can bring it back, once the time is gone.
But I might be excused for writing in generalities. No matter how specific the pain, it occurs to one as the most general state of one's life. Nothing is specific - one either loses it all or wins it all. The rest is just make-believe.
How easy it is to be born in this world. And yet how difficult to live. So easy to be born in fact that one makes no decision and no conscious effort about it. It just happens. Would that anyone would care to ask - here is the list of things you will have, here is how the world is and will be - would you like to be here? Although, knowing humans, one wonders if they wouldn't be foolish enough to still want it. Yet to stay alive requires so much effort - biological - to breathe every moment, to eat, to excrete, and to spend every moment making arrangements for these, or for the illnesses surrounding these. Psychological - to think about things around - the bewilderment of it all - nothing makes sense. At first, or later. Not till the end. Yet one must think and be enticed to believe there is free will and choice and freedom to act and determine our lives. What nonsense. Where did these ridiculous thoughts originate?
For we know nothing at all. And what is choice or freedom or anything, without knowledge? Any man standing up and contemplating about the thing closest to him - himself, is faced with the most basic questions for which there have never been any answers.
And so was I born, with ease, without so much as knowing about it. Yet consciousness came early - what a burden. And let the optimists charge me. The fact that they do so suggests their own insecurity in their house of cards. The more one lives, the more one suffers - and there are no two ways about it. When one ignores one's suffering, one can, in moments of intoxication, almost convince oneself that all is great, that life is wonderful. But these people are not in their senses at all. In fact, these people are not alive at all. For anyone alive, could not ignore the suffering - of one's body, every moment that it breathes and tries to survive on this planet, of one's soul that tries to fit into the body and make sense of what it is doing on this alien planet. Not to mention the continuous suffering of all others that one cannot be shielded from, for in the very act of trying to shield, one perceives and registers.
Those who teach one to write ruin one forever. For it is through avoiding all influence that one can sustain oneself, not the other way round. I have not read for long. Every word tears one apart. Not to mention the images and sounds and such. It tears one apart from oneself - snippets of this and that person and this and that life - that don't hold together, and never can. They only confuse and influence to render one meaningless. For it is only one's own story that holds together - every snippet, every little day and hour and moment - it is a complete story - yet so hard to tell. There is so much in it. So much that we avoid observing ourselves. So much that we must not know, to survive. And it is best that way, for to tell it to others makes it another snippet in someone else's life that adds to meaninglessness, and nothing more.
----------
A suddent burst of prose, unedited. Some might find it too dark, but that's in line with this space. This is fast becoming a place for experiments of all kinds in (re)discovering myself...but perhaps that is what a blog is about...(?)
I am still in all sorts of doubts. A story is your creation, but it also creates you, for others to see. In this I am somewhat comforted by the fact that I might never have anyone read this. In any case, though I always wanted to be a writer, I stopped trying. I could never write anything that sells. One has sold oneself enough already - now how painful to sell even the story of that sale. I could never bring myself to change a single word, or edit a line. How cruel a punishment for the sin of exposing oneself, to have parts sliced off. What is then left is neither you, nor them - those who would read it. Let them read me as it is, or not at all. Perhaps not at all is so much better. For everyone.
I have nothing left. Everything that I ever wanted, never came to me. It came tantalizingly close to make one's desires and hopes reach where they could. And worse, it came close again when one had survived and moved on. To have it come back close again is to wrench out one's guts all over again. To feel the pain of the desire and the loss. And to feel the movement of time and realize that the loss was that much bigger, for nothing, not even it itself, can bring it back, once the time is gone.
But I might be excused for writing in generalities. No matter how specific the pain, it occurs to one as the most general state of one's life. Nothing is specific - one either loses it all or wins it all. The rest is just make-believe.
How easy it is to be born in this world. And yet how difficult to live. So easy to be born in fact that one makes no decision and no conscious effort about it. It just happens. Would that anyone would care to ask - here is the list of things you will have, here is how the world is and will be - would you like to be here? Although, knowing humans, one wonders if they wouldn't be foolish enough to still want it. Yet to stay alive requires so much effort - biological - to breathe every moment, to eat, to excrete, and to spend every moment making arrangements for these, or for the illnesses surrounding these. Psychological - to think about things around - the bewilderment of it all - nothing makes sense. At first, or later. Not till the end. Yet one must think and be enticed to believe there is free will and choice and freedom to act and determine our lives. What nonsense. Where did these ridiculous thoughts originate?
For we know nothing at all. And what is choice or freedom or anything, without knowledge? Any man standing up and contemplating about the thing closest to him - himself, is faced with the most basic questions for which there have never been any answers.
And so was I born, with ease, without so much as knowing about it. Yet consciousness came early - what a burden. And let the optimists charge me. The fact that they do so suggests their own insecurity in their house of cards. The more one lives, the more one suffers - and there are no two ways about it. When one ignores one's suffering, one can, in moments of intoxication, almost convince oneself that all is great, that life is wonderful. But these people are not in their senses at all. In fact, these people are not alive at all. For anyone alive, could not ignore the suffering - of one's body, every moment that it breathes and tries to survive on this planet, of one's soul that tries to fit into the body and make sense of what it is doing on this alien planet. Not to mention the continuous suffering of all others that one cannot be shielded from, for in the very act of trying to shield, one perceives and registers.
Those who teach one to write ruin one forever. For it is through avoiding all influence that one can sustain oneself, not the other way round. I have not read for long. Every word tears one apart. Not to mention the images and sounds and such. It tears one apart from oneself - snippets of this and that person and this and that life - that don't hold together, and never can. They only confuse and influence to render one meaningless. For it is only one's own story that holds together - every snippet, every little day and hour and moment - it is a complete story - yet so hard to tell. There is so much in it. So much that we avoid observing ourselves. So much that we must not know, to survive. And it is best that way, for to tell it to others makes it another snippet in someone else's life that adds to meaninglessness, and nothing more.
----------
A suddent burst of prose, unedited. Some might find it too dark, but that's in line with this space. This is fast becoming a place for experiments of all kinds in (re)discovering myself...but perhaps that is what a blog is about...(?)
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Siyaah-e-Dil
Use kya, khud ko bhula dunga
Is tufaan ko bujha dunga
Main teri raah mein ab bas
Har ek lamha naya dunga
Mohabbat kya, qayamat kya
Main farq inme mita dunga
Hai darya uske ishare par
To kashti hi duba dunga
Naye rangon ki ek duniya
Siyaah-e-dil se bana dunga
[by Siyaah]
----
An earlier attempt at a musalsal ghazal - a somewhat unusual theme and state of being - finally had the courage to post.
Is tufaan ko bujha dunga
Main teri raah mein ab bas
Har ek lamha naya dunga
Mohabbat kya, qayamat kya
Main farq inme mita dunga
Hai darya uske ishare par
To kashti hi duba dunga
Naye rangon ki ek duniya
Siyaah-e-dil se bana dunga
[by Siyaah]
----
An earlier attempt at a musalsal ghazal - a somewhat unusual theme and state of being - finally had the courage to post.
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