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DTSTART:20240929T133000Z
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URL:https://atuh.org/events/adab-sarai-2/
SUMMARY:Adab Sarai - 2
DESCRIPTION:\n\n\nA metaphor’s multidimensionality has to do with the rea
 der’s horizon and his understanding of poesy. \n\n\n\nThe Anjuman Taraqq
 i Urdu (Hind) recently started Adab Sarai\, a series of programmes to forg
 e a link between Urdu literature and the creative literature of other Indi
 an languages. At a session held on 29 September 2024\, Mr Ranjit Hoskote\,
  a renowned poet of Indian English\, first delivered a learned talk on Mee
 r Taqi Meer\, regarded as ‘Khuda-i Sukhan’ God of Poetry. This may b
 e found on pp 9-24 of the special issue of Urdu Adab (Volume 68-9\, Iss
 ue 270-74)\, the Anjuman’s journal\, on Meer. The talk was followed by
  a recorded interview with Mr Salman Khurshid (pp 25-41. The transcribed v
 ersion of the interview follows — Editor. \n\nSalman Khurshid (SK): On
 ly a little while ago\, Mr Hoskote presented a fascinating and detailed ta
 lk highlighting the beauty of Meer’s poetry. At the same time\, he elabo
 rated on the issues he encountered while translating Meer into English. Th
 e talk would undoubtedly have delighted Meer aficionados. However\, Mr Hos
 kote\, there are still a few specific issues emerging from your talk that 
 we would like you to throw further light on.\n\nThe first and most importa
 nt question is Meer’s presentation language. We all know well that in Me
 er’s days\, ‘Hindi’ was the term generally used for the language he 
 expressed himself in\, and it was the term he used\; nowhere did he use th
 e word ‘Urdu’. But the Hindi of that time was different from what we c
 all Hindi nowadays\, modern Hindi indeed. The real Hindi had the same scri
 pt as today’s Urdu. However\, the controversy regarding Meer’s Hindi a
 nd the Hindi of today has a long pedigree\; we will discuss it another day
 . In your talk\, you dwelt on the issue of Sanskritised Hindi. But as I sa
 id\, this is a day of poetry\, and we are glad to have a renowned poet lik
 e you. We want to discuss issues related to Meer’s poetry.\n\nThe questi
 on has long intrigued me\, but I haven’t had a chance to seek clarificat
 ion from a scholar like you. You referred to the title ‘Khuda-i Sukhan
 ’ in your talk\, often used for Meer. In the Preface to your work The H
 omeland’s an Ocean: Mir Taqi Mir\, you have discussed the many genres Me
 er chose for his poetic expression. These include ghazals\, qasidas\, mas
 navis\, and rubais. Was the title ‘Khuda-i Sukhan’ bestowed upon hi
 m because he effortlessly spanned many genres?\n\nRanjit Hoskote (RH): Sal
 man Khurshid Saheb\, to my mind\, when we refer to Meer as ‘Khuda-i Sukh
 an’\, we transport ourselves to the age of literary creativity when Urdu
  poets and writers were not mentally circumscribed\, and their creative ex
 pression was not confined to ghazals\, rubais and qasidas\; instead\, 
 they were also involved in investigations and other scholarly pursuits. Me
 er wrote a tazkara (bio notes) called Nikat ush-Shuara\, and he also pe
 nned his autobiography\, which we know as Zikr-i Meer. Such a wide range
  is not found in any other Urdu poet. While ghazal was his most widely u
 sed and most effective vehicle of expression\, Zikr-i Meer has a decisiv
 e importance in his prose works. Its unique significance lies in the fact 
 that even though it was written in Persian\, the research so far tells us 
 that it was the very first autobiography penned by an Urdu poet.\n\nMeer's
  autobiography is divided into three parts. The first is devoted to a desc
 ription of his father’s qualities. Meer informs us that his father was a
  Sufi\, giving his family a definite identity. The second part is very clo
 se to being a shahr-ashob (lament on a city’s destruction\, presenting
  a picture of the way Delhi was looted and ravaged. The third part is a sm
 all collection of obscene jokes and anecdotes. I would like to bring the a
 udience to an appreciation of Zikr-i Meer because its text takes us clo
 se to a poet and creative writer whose vision could not remain circumscrib
 ed by this or that particular genre. At the same time\, the lovers of Urdu
  and Persian poetry in India would consider the text of the last part of t
 he book unprintable even in our century.\n\nSK: You have talked about the 
 three sections of Zikr-i Meer. Whether the poet made this division consci
 ously or unconsciously is challenging to fathom\, though this didn’t aff
 ect the quality of the work. The last section of Zikr-i Meer\, which Meer
  himself dubbed as Jokes\, has remained\, as we know\, unpublished so far
 —except in an English translation by C.M. Naim. Dr Abdul Haque\, a forme
 r General Secretary of the Anjuman\, got the manuscript of Zikr-i Meer c
 onverted into book form in 1928\, but bereft of its last section. Only 98 
 years later\, the efforts of the incumbent General Secretary\, Ather Farou
 qui Saheb\, have had the last section\, beautifully translated into Urdu b
 y Ms Sadaf Fatima\, restored in a new edition of the book. Though I won’
 t enter into the question here\, I think this kind of censorship was a fal
 lout of the Victorian morality imposed upon us by the colonial regime. Tod
 ay\, more than a poet’s autobiography\, Zikr-i Meer may well be regard
 ed as a documentation of that age's literary and historical trends. Now th
 at this last section has come out\, we may hope that\, in this birth trice
 ntenary year of Meer\, it will add a new dimension to our understanding of
  the poet’s life and work. Can it indeed do so?\n\nRH: to use the beauti
 ful expression of Walt Whitman a poet and critic of the English language\,
  who was a near-contemporary of Ghalib\, ‘I contain multitudes’. The h
 uman mind and its complexities are indescribable. An individual has many a
  world within. There is a surfeit of feelings and thoughts. To me\, theref
 ore\, these jokes may give rise to several perspectives for consideration 
 and may thereby open a new chapter regarding Meer. They may also help us p
 ostmortemise our existing hypotheses. In this sense\, they are a pretty va
 luable part of the book.\n\nIn my opinion\, this third section of Zikr-i 
 Meer also tells us that the particular kind of puritanism which we have s
 o far been emphasising in our aesthetic treatments and reactions is a prod
 uct of the current system of teaching and learning which has played a deci
 sive role in the evolution of our moral values. The reason is that Victori
 an values still largely dominate our scholarly perspectives about the worl
 d. Salman Saheb\, you have already referred to Victorian morality. The Bri
 tish Government's policies framed our curricula\, which were oriented most
 ly towards churning out ‘native Englishmen’ to fulfil the governance n
 eeds of the British rulers. As such\, not only was our whole system of edu
 cation metamorphosed under the British\, but our society also assumed an e
 ntirely new shape. As I have indicated\, combined with Victorian morality\
 , the rulers’ interests were shaping our pedagogic system. It was thus t
 hat during the 1850s\, 1860s and 1870s\, a substantial part of Indian lite
 rature was dubbed obscene\, ugly and immoral. When Dr Abdul Haque publishe
 d a truncated version of Zikr-i Meer\, he was unconsciously driven by thi
 s mentality. On my part\, I feel we should seriously reflect on this menta
 lity\, which we have internalised because of the colonial system of educat
 ion so that we now view everything from a British perspective. This coloni
 al hangover is the biggest problem facing us\, and the current economic po
 licies are boosting it more powerfully than ever in the past.\n\nSK: The p
 ortion of deleted Zikr-i Meer does not only have obscene jokes. There ar
 e sexually explicit stories and anecdotes relating to forbidden topics dur
 ing the Victorian age\, such as homosexuality. Yet\, our minds are still b
 ogged down by this Victorian sexual morality.\n\nRH: We should benefit fro
 m research about Mughal society or that period of India’s history when s
 ocial attitudes regarding sex and gender identity displayed greater openne
 ss. These witticisms may inspire us to take a new look at that age.\n\nSK:
  In your research on Meer’s work\, have you come across similar jokes by
  Meer’s contemporaries from which we may conclude that the Mughal regime
  had different perceptions about scholarly and literary pursuits compared 
 to British perceptions\, which did not consider sex taboo?\n\nRH: There ar
 e several such references\, and I am well aware of this theme.\n\nSK: In t
 he course of your presentation\, you cited a couplet by Ghalib:\n\n Rekht
 e ke tumhi ustad nahi ho Ghalib\,\n\nKahte hain agle zamane mein koi Meer 
 bhi tha.\n\n(Ghalib\, you're not the only master of Rekhta\,\n\nThey say t
 here was one Meer in the days bygone.)\n\nIf we adopt a modern viewpoint\,
  it won’t be wrong to say that we need to make efforts anew to rediscove
 r Meer because our understanding is coloured by Ghalib’s towering presen
 ce in Urdu and Persian poetry. Work on this project has been afoot for the
  last several months. My question is: Why do I understand Meer the way Gha
 lib understood him? Why is it so that\, compared to Meer\, Ghalib appears 
 closer to us? Is it because our views on literature derive from Ghalib’s
  ideas?\n\nRH: There are three distinct and fundamental reasons for it. 
 First\, printing started in Ghalib’s time\, and he could compile his poe
 try and publish it. At least five editions of his diwan came out during 
 his lifetime. His published work had to pass the test of his own evaluatio
 n. To me\, the second reason was that his correspondence with his friends 
 and disciples established the image of an all-embracing personality in his
  lifetime. This didn’t fall to the lot of any other poet.\n\nSuch an ima
 ge of Ghalib’s personality got a boost\, even from those who worked on p
 ost-1857 history. However\, in Meer's case\, misplaced evaluation and admi
 ration harmed his renown. The term ‘Khuda-i Sukhan’ is the admiration 
 of this very kind\, which makes us feel that we have pulled someone down f
 rom his throne but\, by compensation\, have left his title untouched. Mode
 rn investigation and research on Meer have harmed him by keeping him confi
 ned to a small circle. Post-1857 critics like [Muhammad Husain] Azad and [
 Altaf Husain] Hali did not do Meer justice. He was presented in the image 
 of a broken-hearted lover\, an incarnation of grief and agony\, though he 
 indeed has much more to offer. I think this kind of presentation installed
  a particular image of Meer in people’s minds because of its repeated oc
 currence. The representation of Ghalib in popular culture has been an impo
 rtant reason for his fame. Ghalib’s couplets in Hindi cinema inspired ly
 rics\; films were produced on his life\; he was well received in TV serial
 s.\n\nSK: Meer and Ghalib felt their times were going through mighty trage
 dies. While Meer was an eyewitness to the depredations perpetrated by Nadi
 r Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali\, Ghalib had first-hand experience of the reb
 ellion of 1857. Suppose a modern-day reader has his eyes riveted on Ghalib
 ’s tragedy more than Meer’s tragic life. In that case\, it is because 
 the uprising of 1857 had a more lasting and heart-rending impact on us\, w
 hile Meer’s personality has a historical hue. Does this influence our pe
 rspective on his poetry\, or are there other reasons for it?\n\nRH: You ma
 y agree with me if I say that one of the reasons Ghalib influences us is t
 hat\, for us\, 1857 was a more tragic event and the mightiest moment of ou
 r recent history. I have used ‘we’ here\, but I don’t know what this
  ‘we’ may mean. This may well refer to a particular generation or a sp
 ecific sensibility. Undoubtedly\, 1857 was a significant turn in our histo
 ry. It led to the demise of the Mughal Empire and the passage of power int
 o British hands. This started full-fledged colonial domination in the coun
 try. This was a substantial and perceptible reality for us.\n\nMeer breath
 ed his last in 1810. It was not in some distant past. However\, to an exte
 nt\, the eighteenth century is misty for us. Interdisciplinary studies wel
 come academic development in our times. However\, understanding the eighte
 enth century may be quite tricky for historians because there was\, at the
  time\, a lack of framework for indigenous research and the rules of imper
 ialist historiography were yet to develop. The country was in a vortex-ind
 uced by distinct cultures coming together. This was not confined to those 
 living alone in north India. Various segments of the Indian population\, l
 ike those of European origin\, those of Indian origin and those of West As
 ian origin\, were involved in this unprecedented process of cultural amalg
 amation.\n\nAll these reasons have made the eighteenth century problematic
  for a particular genre of historiography. Moreover\, because of their non
 -familiarity with Urdu and Persian\, many historians\, let alone the commo
 n public\, cannot access primary sources for the period. The study of the 
 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will likely grow increasingly complex 
 in the coming days and also suffer more distortions.\n\nSK: You referred t
 o the role of cinema in Ghalib’s popularity\; what could be the cause of
  it? When I tried to find references to Meer in our cinema\, I came across
  one in a TV serial on Ghalib\, when the latter heard a faqir singing pat
 ta patta\, buta buta. Is it a coincidence that the background in the film
  was the same as you had referred to\, or is it that the fascination with 
 the serial was for some other reason that remained concealed because its p
 resentation was different?\n\nRH: This is something contradictory\, though
  I am sure that Hindi and non-Hindi cinema experts must have grappled with
  it. There may have been a time between the 1930s and the 1960s when films
  were being made about the Mughal period\, or at least were being planned\
 , though they remained unfinished. The writers involved in such projects\,
  including the progressive writers\, were votaries of classical music and 
 Urdu poetry\, which were most suited for their purposes. This was the peri
 od when Ghalib entered Hindi cinema\, though his language and ideas were t
 oo high-flown for most to grasp. The reason is that\, from the viewpoint o
 f intellectuality\, Ghalib’s couplets were expressive of complex\, rathe
 r extremely tedious\, ideas. Compared to Ghalib\, Meer deserved more incr
 edible popularity. Meer straightforwardly expressed himself\, and his lang
 uage was everyday language. This is the language not of the elite but of t
 he masses\, spoken on the stairs of Jama Masjid in Delhi. I have no conclu
 sive answer to your question which will satisfy everyone. Yet\, I feel tha
 t there is now a greater focus on Ghalib’s personality in this age of so
 cial media. It has boosted him even more. We hope this ‘Adab Sarai’ se
 ries will also help take Meer’s poetry to the neophytes in the circle of
  Urdu lovers.\n\nSK: We now come to the global perspectives regarding Urdu
  poetry in the age of Meer and Ghalib. For example\, we may talk about Goe
 the\, William Blake and William Wordsworth in the context of Meer\, Shelly
  and Walt Whitman in Ghalib. However\, must we place these two poets in a 
 Western context to evaluate them? Do such comparisons give us a fair idea 
 of their significance?\n\nRH: Obviously\, this is not possible. While Goet
 he and some of his contemporaries did have an idea of Sanskrit poetry\, I 
 am unsure how much they knew about Urdu poetry or how much the Urdu-wallas
  knew about the poetry of the West in that age. Suppose I have referred t
 o these poets in the preface to my book. In that case\, it is only because
  most often people\, and more so Urdu critics\, regard the eighteenth cent
 ury as a dark and blind alley. Hence\, we see a rising trend that regards 
 Urdu poetry of the eighteenth century as something that does exist but wit
 hout any link with other intellectual trends. As such\, when we say that t
 hese poets were active in an age when the creations of Baudelaire\, Walt W
 hitman and Alfred Hayes were coming to the fore\, it by no means posits th
 at some link existed between them. When we describe Baudelaire as a modern
  poet in the context of Paris\, we are also aware that Heinrich Heine was 
 striving to impart a meaning to Germany that stood badly divided in his da
 ys and that Whitman was seeking to write a new and comprehensive story for
  the United States. Then\, why do we regard Ghalib and Meer as somewhat st
 range creatures of a strange language? After all\, they\, too\, were invol
 ved in broader happenings! They\, too\, should be the epitome of meaning f
 or us\, more so because the Mughal Empire occupied a place of eminence on 
 the world’s map at the time. I mean that this should prompt a study of t
 hese histories with all the more humbleness. However\, what we go on shout
 ing about is that we are proud of being Indians\, and then we start boasti
 ng about one or another imaginary period gone by. We do have much more tha
 n imaginary pasts to be proud of.\n\nSK: Let us return to our homeland\, D
 elhi. In your book\, you have referred to Khan-i Arzu\, Meer’s maternal 
 uncle. Talking about his life\, you have outlined the circumstances that l
 ed to a Shia-Sunni rift in his family. Did a change of faith play some rol
 e in determining Meer’s attitude to humankind?\n\nRH: This is a question
  I grappled with in my preface\, yet I don’t have a positive and clear-c
 ut answer to it. It is evident\, however\, that whatever happened between 
 Meer and Khan-i Arzu’s family was because of Meer’s declaration that h
 e had converted to the Shia faith. You may be aware of other reasons for q
 uarrels in the family. But I feel this was the rock on which this relation
 ship foundered. In this declaration of conversion\, we may look for elemen
 ts of Meer’s sympathy with the have-nots and his commitment to the oppre
 ssed because Shi’ism may be more conscious of injustice and resistance. 
 However\, it requires greater study and research to prove my point.\n\nSK:
  Whenever we talk of the Shia-Sunni relationships\, the nature of Delhi-Lu
 cknow relations also comes to the fore. You also said in your preface that
  Meer had conquered Lucknow but still loved Delhi. This is something quite
  obvious. But what circumstances compelled him\, like so many others\, to 
 go to Lucknow and pass the rest of his days there? What imprints did this 
 migration leave on his poetry? How did this migration and his stay in Luck
 now impact his poetic attitudes? He was settled in a city he disliked.\n\n
 RH: The sequence of events is quite unclear. However\, regarding his stay 
 in Lucknow\, he seems to have bogged down with disappointment. He could no
 t adapt himself to the city in any manner. This was natural for a sensitiv
 e being like him\, whose life\, in its entirety\, remained a journey of th
 e mind. Of course\, people like Sauda were already there\, Khan-i Arzu had
  also left for Awadh\, and Meer eventually reached Lucknow\, but all this 
 was because of changes in the equations of power and the patronage system.
  There is no mental trait behind Meer’s migration. It is born directly f
 rom the need to make two ends meet. Whenever we look towards the eighteent
 h century\, we see a change in the centre of power. Power and dominance we
 re now exercised by the navvabs\, once the Mughal empire's subedars. As we
  know\, whether it is in Awadh\, Bengal or Hyderabad\, these navvabs have 
 now become sovereigns.\n\nI cannot say with certainty that these navvabs c
 ould not be attacked from the North West. Interestingly\, these navvabs w
 ere themselves rebels\, in a sense. The quest for power was all the more i
 ntense in their case\, and as part of it\, they were attracting the men of
  talent and scholarship to their side. For example\, they were particularl
 y keen on merchants and writers. They forged relationships with the East I
 ndia Company\, which proved their undoing. These were\, however\, later de
 velopments.\n\nIn my opinion\, Meer’s life was marked by constant tormen
 t for a homeland in an alien land. His poet contemporaries were then at an
  advanced age and unable to shift their affiliations.\n\nMeer’s sense of
  affinity with Delhi was powerful\; I have used a term derived from contem
 porary sensibility (ecological thinking). I have used it to highlight his 
 state of mind. This was no nostalgia. Meer was then not lamenting about th
 e things that had died away\; he was grieving about the present going to p
 ieces around him. Grieving about the present\, which is falling to pieces 
 around one\, is different from lamenting about the past\; the force with w
 hich this finds expression in Meer’s work is quite rare. He had bid adie
 u to Delhi only under extreme compulsion.\n\nWe have some evidence from A
 ab-i Hayat in support of our contention. There are also anecdotes about h
 ow he remained disturbed and detached during his Lucknow days. When he fir
 st appeared in public in Lucknow\, the youth there made fun of him and guf
 fawed because of his appearance. What is there\, you may ask\, to laugh at
  if a person appears in courtly attire\, carrying a sword at his waist and
  wearing a pair of pointed shoes? If you cast a look around even today\, y
 ou will chance upon someone trying to scrape together the shreds of their 
 lives and leave for somewhere. Not everyone has a feeling of sympathy and 
 generosity for such resourceless migrants. Open a newspaper any day\, and 
 you will find a slew of stories of this kind.\n\nSK: This is an important 
 viewpoint about migrants of our age. You have discussed the pedigree of Hi
 ndi\, Rekhta\, Hindi-Urdu relationship\, etc. Whatever was written in that
  period was Hindi. However\, it differed significantly from the Hindi we k
 now today\, which Professor Alok Rai discussed in detail in his Hindi Nat
 ionalism. So\, would you like to shed some light on how Hindi became Urdu?
 \n\nRH: May God pity me! It is a protracted debate\, though the preface of
  my book has sought to sum it up in a clumsy manner. The thinking behind t
 his effort was that a particular type of linguistic excess was committed i
 n the name of a new nationalism against languages and their continuity. Wh
 at the ideologues of modern Hindi did in its name was to grab various and 
 sometimes contradictory linguistic and cultural elements peculiarly and ma
 ke them part of modern Hindi in the name of linguistic uniformity. The con
 cerned region extends from Rajasthan to the eastern end of the Doab and fr
 om the Shivaliks to Telangana.\n\nI have explicitly referred to Telangana 
 because my viewpoint has something to do with it. Generally\, what is not 
 known is that since the beginning of the eighteenth century\, Delhi-based 
 poets of Urdu\, Hindavi or Hindi have been steeped in the Deccani traditio
 n. Historians of Urdu literature haven’t been large-hearted enough to ac
 cept it. A surprising thing is that Meer\, too\, didn’t take it. There
 fore\, there is a pressing need to dwell on the mutual relationship of lan
 guages. Any particular language is independent of other languages yet link
 ed to them. Do linguistics experts scrutinise whatever give and take occur
 s between languages? We have indeed gained much from this process\, and it
  has also strengthened Urdu.\n\nIt was on the foundation of Urdu that the 
 magnificent and magical world of Hindi cinema around 1960 was erected. Som
 e people dub it a foreign language because its sources lie outside India\,
  but if we take the trouble to explore its history\, the first instance of
  it is to be seen in a part of India itself. Next\, in Shahjahanabad\, it 
 becomes Zaban-i Urdu-i Mualla. Urdu remained in vogue for about two decade
 s\, but then its meaning changed to something else\, and this particular m
 eaning went out of circulation. Emperor Shah Alam used the term Rekhta for
  his language\, and Meer used the term Hindi. Around 1780\, however\, Urdu
  came into vogue for the new language\, used for the first time by British
  linguist and Indologist John Gilchrist\; before him\, we don’t find the
  term being used as a language name. The term didn’t stick for a conside
 rable time. Still\, this deliberate attempt to impart an artificial name t
 o the language should be considered part of the British policy to keep the
 ir subjects divided.\n\nThe popularity of Urdu as a language name started 
 when the movement to forge modern Hindi began to gain strength\; this was 
 an attempt to import more Sanskrit-based words into the language's vocabul
 ary — distinct from the old Hindi or Hindavi. In his letters\, Ghalib us
 ed the term Urdu only once or twice. Moreover\, in one place\, he even mad
 e a gender mistake and used Urdu as a masculine noun: ‘Mera (my) Urdu i
 s better than others.’ This was because Ghalib might not have been clear
  about using this new\, and then quite infrequently used\, name for Hindi.
  This situation continued till the publication of standard books developed
  by Hali and Azad and by then\, an unfortunate period had begun in the pol
 itics of South Asia when the distinction between language and religion was
  obliterated. This destroyed the shared legacy. An outcome of linguistic p
 olitics\, communal politics\, and the politics of new nationalism was that
  it was dubbed Hindi as Urdu\, and its script was changed to Nagri.\n\nSK:
  Now\, there remain two rather technical questions. But I feel a poet can 
 best answer them.\n\nThe first question is about blank verse or free verse
 . Blank verse and prosaic verse are very strange terms. Creative writers c
 an express themselves in either prose or poetry. In Urdu\, both azad nazm
  (free verse) and nazm muarra [blank verse] have metric forms. In Urdu
 \, composing azad nazm is more difficult because we use the feet of a si
 ngle metre\, dividing arbitrarily in different stanzas. In nazm muarra\, 
 however\, all the lines have equal length. The concept of prose poetry\, n
 asri nazm\, was never accepted in Urdu. Nasri nazm\, or call it whatever y
 ou may\, has absolutely nothing to do with metre or lyricality. The Hindi 
 people used the term equivalent to ‘free verse’ in English or Azad naz
 m in Urdu to give heft to their prosaic verse. I beg your pardon if I am m
 istaken\; I think free verse and blank verse are two distinct categories i
 n English poetry\, and their rhythm is generally absent from Hindi free ve
 rse. What do you think about it as a poet of English?\n\nRH: The rhythm of
  an English poem is almost similar to that of an Urdu poem\, though identi
 fying this similarity is sometimes tricky because of their different cultu
 ral milieus. Rhythm is central to the poetry. I have always been perplex
 ed by the moves that confuse the free prose poetry of Hindi with the free 
 verse of English and free from rhythm.\n\nAs a poet\, apart from sticking
  to a metre in poetry\, the issue of acoustic continuity is no less criti
 cal. In its gist\, rhythm is not very different from metre. What is the mu
 sicality of a language? How do we proceed with it? This is a fundamental q
 uestion regarding poetry. We must also remember that people often loosely 
 talk of pentameter and hexameter without any idea of their historical cont
 ext. These were essential elements of ancient Greek poetry.\n\nThese metre
 s were later transferred from English poetry to Urdu poetry by those engag
 ed in new poetry. The question about the irkaan/ feet of metre should be r
 aised here: Do we know the length of a run as Meer did? What fascinates 
 me about Meer is that he continued experimenting with various irkaans/fee
 t. I was perplexed at how his experimentation began\, but then I felt his 
 prosody experiments were derived from Khadi Boli or Braj. The main thing a
 bout poetry is not whether the rules of prosody have been strictly followe
 d. Still\, we have to see how the broad rules of prosody have been observe
 d and how one has deviated from them in an artistic and dexterous way so t
 hat the poetry culture remains intact. This demands an extraordinary maste
 ry of prosody.\n\nSK: The second technical question is about how the eraa
 b (punctuation) and\, in particular\, izafat are dropped in poetry by s
 ome people. In your opinion\, how does it impact poetry and prose?\n\nRH: 
 In this translation\, I have used the symbols of pause. Metaphors don’t 
 necessarily assume multidimensionality and breadth if we drop symbols and
  izafat. The multidimensionality of a metaphor has to do with the mental 
 horizon of the readers and the grasp of poetry. It has nothing to do with 
 a critic’s explanations. In Urdu poetry\, the symbols of pause and the 
 izafat mainly come in handy for readers. Therefore\, in an English transl
 ation\, we need to see the meaning of every word coming out of a poet’s 
 pen. Thus\, even if a particular word has been used\, the dimensions a rea
 der can see in it depend on their calibre. This is what Ghalib termed ‘a
 n eye seeing a veritable river in a single drop’.\n\nSK: A renowned poet
  like you should also offer some advice for young translators. In your vie
 w\, what are some crucial points that one should remember while translatin
 g a piece of poetry?\n\nRH: I have always been wary of offering advice. Ho
 wever\, I would like to know what you mean by a young translator. I am no 
 longer young. Quipping apart\, as a friendly artist\, I would like to tell
  the new translators that they would benefit if they began to see a poem i
 n differing contexts. When the context is clear\, a poem presents itself t
 o a translator\, particularly more meaningfully. Therefore\, an important 
 thing is that it is not always easy to think about a book as a whole. Stil
 l\, suppose you concentrate your attention\, as a translator\, on the work
  as a unit and the feel of its possible dimensions.\n\nIn that case\, almo
 st every aspect will be apparent to you\, even those not apparent to the c
 reator. Creation is an altogether different process. What I am trying to s
 ay here\, in fact\, is that translation is a very hard nut to crack. It re
 quires a mastery of both the languages and a familiarity with their specif
 ic subject and the genres to be translated. Profit or fame shouldn’t be 
 the goal of translation. Neither should a translator understand that it is
  an easy task. To me\, translation is a specific kind of creation. During 
 a translation\, one fully dedicates oneself to the process. The state of a
  writer’s mind during creation differs from what a translator undergoes.
  A translator must have an idea of the world and the life that gave rise t
 o the text. In reality\, this is not a search for ‘correct words’\; he
 re\, a literary concept has to be amalgamated with some other literary con
 cept so that the creative sheen of both remains intact. While undertaking 
 a translation\, one needs to be aware of the cultural background of the ti
 me and place where that particular piece originated and\, from that cultur
 al perspective\, how the words were used in the piece under translation. O
 nly after that can a translator decide whether to take up a particular tex
 t for translation. A translator must also know the journey of the words fo
 und in the two languages. If a translator observes these principles\, his 
 work is bound to become a part of the linguistic currents and creative pro
 cess.\n\n[Ranjit Hoskote’s interview with Salman Khurshid was transcribe
 d in English by Sadaf Fatima\, who subsequently edited it.] \n\n&nbsp\;\n
 \n[embed]https://youtu.be/v3ipGWEKMrk[/embed]\n\n&nbsp\;\n\n&nbsp\;
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 -sarai-second-edition.jpeg
LOCATION:India Habitat Centre\, Gulmohar Hall\, India Habitat Centre\, New 
 Delhi\, Delhi\, 110003\, India
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END:VEVENT
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