SAHIR’S MESMERISING WISTFULNESS

This night, this moon light
When then ever again?
O do hear out
Heart’s tale’s refrain!

On tree twines the sleepy moon light
In your thoughts lost the moon light
In another while, tired, will return
This spring like night
Shall never again return
Another moment or two is this while
O do hear out
The heart’s tale awhile.

On waves’ lips in shifts and shuffles
A slow steady melody’s mire
Inside of wet winds
Scurries a coldish fire
In this beauteous fire try you too to burn
Giving to life’s song yet another turn
Let now heartbeats’ tongue loosen from yearn
This night, this moon light
When ever again?
O do hear out
The heart’s tale’s refrain!

Spring on way out
Youth in wane
Under stars’ shadows
Give the stories the churn
Once, having called you
They start on track
Shall these spring caravans
Not turn back
Come, still is life a youth’s boon
O do hear out
The heart’s croon.

Moon lit nights
Oh, those love’s flights
Don’t know
Where ever they went lost!

Your voice comes
From fallen stars
I hear your steps sound
Among silent sights
The wet air
The high cloud
Tell your tale’s ruth
For you in torments
This my coals wrapped youth
In breast the smoke’s swirls
O do hear unfold
The heart’s tale’s whirls.

On waves’ lips hang
Those lost tales
Those hopes’s gardens
All turned to wilderness’ naughts
Where shall I find your whereabouts
All trysts are gone cold
Don’t know where went lost
Having passed, those earlier times
Devastated lies ambition’s domain.

This night, this moon light
When then ever again?
O do hear heart’s tale’s refrain!

SAHIR APOGEE
(na to karvaan ki talaash hai)

Neither seeking a caravan
Nor in the look out
For fellow traveler
This my crazed obsession
It seeks but your passage!

This my ill fated craving
Death alone is its denouement
Now, nothing but death really
Whoever dispenses poison
In medicine’s guise
Such healer’s touch
Is my sought out prize.

Your love is my cherish
Your love, too, my relish
Heart is love
The body too
Besides, my life’s very thread
Why, if you tested it
Faith itself is but love
How could I abandon thy love?
My lifetime’s pursuit true!

Only one oneself hurt
Can appreciate another’s hurt
I address the wick’s flame
Not those in attendance
For, it boils down to love.

It is even common fate
By morning shall burn to ash
Be it flame
Be it the moth, all
For, such is love’s enthrall.

Neither by heartlessness
Nor by gallows
Neither by daggers
Nor yet by swords
Was ever conquered love
Such this Majnu’s calls
Before which no Laila
Was ever held back
No! By no walls.

By light banter if demanded
I would offer my very life
Yeah! What is life?
I would part with
The very moral, the upright!

Off high brow eye is ordained
That I am to die
Poison is presented
Commanded to be drunk
When I drink on
Is bemoaned, ah!
He dies not
When I do die
Is said, but you must live on!

Love-faith’s custom is strict
At every step a wall erected its way
But love is free
Neither Hindu
Nor Mussalman is love
Faith unto itself
A moral all its own is love.

Equally, the Sheikh
And the Brahmin ignorance,
Love is that truth’s thundering élan!

Love doesn’t care
For religion
Nor any for the castes
Thousand Barats sank in warm bloods
On this very love’s account
Three cheers to love’s fount!

The path of love is doubtless hard
Take it not so easy
For, again, it is love!

Very treacherous indeed is
The trail to the water hole
What water shall I fetch from Yamuna?
That I went water gathering
O friend! Look!
As I was ready
Came Krishna crossing my path
Mind Him! I cried
What water shall I fetch, Sakhi!
Save my drape’s honor!

Whenever Krishna flute played
Would emerge the all ornate Radha
Oblivious of propriety
Impropriety
Abandoning all censure anxiety.

Oh!
How did Janak’s darling daughter
Wholesomely become!
Wearing those love’s garlands
Meera! The Meera
Thirsting after Darshan-Jal
How she downed poison cup
Entreating, now by Your Grace
Look! Keep my solace!

The Allah’s
And the Rasool’s message is love
Hafiz word is love
Koran is love
Gautam and Messiah’s wish is love
This Creation is body
But the breath is love
Sarmad is love
Mansoor too is love
Moses is love
Kohitoor is love
Dust even is turned to idol
And idol itself to god
The height is that
Man himself turns God
Thanks to this very love’s prod!

Indian song! Honey like sweet, water like flowy, ocean like deep, stars like pulling, of meanings full, the lovely Indian Song!

And, just to name one recent genius artist, Sahir Ludhianvi burst over us as a big blue monsoon cloud drenching our souls deep inside with exuberance of Indian Song!

We are ever enamored of it, aren’t we?

Phailli hui hain sapnon ki bahein
aa jaa chal dein kahin door!
Vahi meri manzil
Vohi teri rahein
aa jaa chal dein kahin door!

Oonchi ghata ke saye tale chhup jayein
Dhoondhali phiza mein
Kuchh khoyen kuchh payen
Sanson ki lai par
Koi aisi dhun gayen
De de jo dil ko dil ki pnahein

Jhoola dhanakta
Dheere dheere hum jhoolein
Ambar to kya hai
Taaron ke bhi lab chhoo lein!
Dekhen na peechhe
Murh ke nigahein
Aa jaa chal dein kahin door!

India Song! A multifaced jewel of peak creativity, mind enrapturing sheer magic by the pen of lyrical poet, by the keys of heavenly composer, by the Saraswati blessed Kokil Kantha of the melodious songstress, not to speak of fluidly dancing Tabla beats, deep resonating Pakhawaj bols, and Dholak’s inimitable Dutta Ram Dha Dhin Dhin Dha echoes!

excerpt from an unpublished essay INDIA SONG

Generally, our adoration for Sahir’s oeuvre exhausts itself around his better known film songs. But that is so because we tend, as a matter of course, towards conventional rather than the unconventional. Even so, it is not without good reason, for not only are songs a very popular ‘artifact’ of Indian life, but also because Sahir has raised his songs too to a pedestal that is reached, as they say, once in thousand years. After all, Sahir’s songs are distinguished by extraordinary brilliance of his literary creativity’s fireworks!

Of course, his idiom is at once colloquial, extremely simple prosody at that so that every word, every phrase Sahir uses easily relates to our own experience and situation, often enough an exact fit. It is so good, so amazingly accurate that we marvel at Sahir’s facility with words, in fact his overpowering mastery of his particular genre.

I have always sought after the springs of his muse. Even though that is a matter of serious academic research at university level, my hunch is that those secrets lie concealed in his adolescent years in Ludhiana- his personal vicissitudes, the ‘Talkhi’ of his intercourse with people he came to have to do with. Just as out of filthy mucks grows beautiful lotus, so must have sprouted from social reaction’s stink what later on added up to Sahir philosophy on the art of poetry, in a word Sahir geist.

Now, Sahir’s medium was majorly Urdu, another rich harvest from Hindustan seeds. But then we also know that the poet was a completely enlightened soul. An open hearted citizen whose mind was occupied only by the very best in human values. I can say, from what I know of him by my engagement with his thought as given in his verse, that Sahir was quite an otherworldly fellow. How I wish I could write his biography!

I shall here particularly showcase his deftness with the art of poetry per se using two of his scintillating songs written in chaste Hindi. I don’t think any other poet reached those towering heights of accomplishment, doesn’t matter in Hindi or Urdu language. And each of the two songs ought to put Sahir at the very peak of poetry art’s Himalaya.

In the one case, drenched with profoundness, Sahir verse dwells on life’s innermost truths such as stem from deepest fathom of knowledge of spirituality. Lord Krishna Himself did delineate at length on the central place of ATMNAH (Gita-6/5), loosely translated mind, as regards successful denouement to human life. Sahir the mortal has actually called that locus ‘Mana’ as he writes MAN RE TU KAHE NA DHIR DHARE.

Each word, each phrase is a class apart, over and above the golden worth of the represented supreme knowledge, oh! Seminal meaning. The carried Hindi lyricism itself drips with sweeter than honey cadences. Staccato alliteration, as in the phrases KAHE NA DHIR DHARE, NIRMOHI MOH NA JANE, RANG PE KIS NE PEHRE, ROOP.. astounds our subtler sensibility, again in turns inspiring, enriching and deepening our insights.

Another equally wondrous example follows from Sahir’s expertise in rhymed meter. It generates in the mind of Rasik (English has no equivalent word really) such fountains of joys- poetry’s joys- than mind begins to ‘melt’, oh! Fluid with feel and emotion; heart soars, into its own moving emotion’s tangential trajectories, high up exuberance canopy held in art’s glittering skies. Oh! This Sahir thief steals from us our very own hearts! In broad day light as it were!

Here are, viewed in exact context, the resplendent rhymes.

RASIK KO NAINON MEIN
RAKH LOONGI PALKEIN MOOND MOOND

AAJ SAKHI PEE DALOONGI
MEIN DARSHAN JAL KI BOOND BOOND

LE AAO KALIYAAN GOOND GOOND

This is called other worldly mood of muse!

This is called super rich poetry! Oh! Divine! As of gods!

Such divinely laid was Sahir soul indeed!

If this was Sahir excursion into Hindi letters, imagine Sahir stars and galaxies pulsating upon Urdu firmament. By God! It is one off!

As our Chandrayaan makes its moves over the moon and it fills our hearts with prideful joy, I am directly taken to Sahir’s very seminal poem MERE AHAD KE HASINO with which this unfailing optimist celebrated to his time the inauguration of Sputnik.

His words are unique, to say the least.

Here are they

MERE SATH REHNE VALO!
MERE BAAD AANE VALO!
MERE DAUR KA YEH TOHFA
TUMHENIN SAAZGAAR AYE
KABHI TUM KHALA SE GUZRO
KISI SIMTAN KI KHATIR
KABHI TOM KO DIL MEIN RAKH KAR
KOI GULAZAAR AYE.

English translation:

O my contemporaries!
O my successors!
May this gift of my time
Prove for you a boon
Now you may tumble through spaces
Seeking a fairy ‘silverine’
Now may some petal cheeked fairy
Holding you in heart
Come to you, smart.

I salute Sahir, a truest Bharat Ratan!

Self appointed?
Well! So be it!
As long as Sahir juices flow!

I even sing of hope
Weave on Sahirish dreams
Troubled folks!
Come away from listlessness’ scums
Be you yet living’s bubbling creams
As indeed those inspiring Sahir deems!

Rebel!
Revolt!
Speak up!
Join hands, by need
Take to arms!
Bands upon bands
India wide
Taking matters in own hands
Sahir Banner flying high
Let’s end nation’s this wild run
Bring in instead redemption’s sun
To rise, to shine over our darkened sky
Try!
Oh! try!
By each breath
By each wistful sigh
Try! Try!! Try!!!

Sahir was Kalidas spirit
modernly!

He came, he saw, he conquered
We missed the new time’s homily!
Nor was Sahir grand poetry’s last star
He himself did forecast
Better than him would be!
Nation’s redeeming recipe!

The great ancient bard
Was a free soul
In a free sovereign pure nation
Oh! So very Susanskrit!
No wonder he proved
Art’s most glorious gem!

Sahir came to world
Burdened, born into reactionaries
The nation itself a tissue of
Subjugation riddled terrible gore
Distorted under centuries of alien misrule
The Panjab barbarians’ first feast
Babur would upon each conquest
Sit down to count decapitated Hindu heads
Nanak himself described those mistimes
Islam in Jihad’s fury
Aurangzeb out to rob India
Of its pristine Indianness
The Firangi yet pucca Haraamda
Still worse, yet outheroding Herod!

This was Sahir’s milieu
Rotten stinks of denationing fares
Off which he weaved magics!
That’s a true wonder!
If Kalidas flourished
In nation’s free airs.

Sahir’s is so
A many splendored work
Of top creative creation
Under severest of circumstance
A full spectrum of rich thought
Deep fathom of society’s hideous depths
His art itself diacritical rainbow
Upon our perception’s horizon.

Today, as our nation
Bursts at its corruption’s seams
It flounders!
The folk lies floored
Sahir word is the way out’s mantra!

Says Sahir, “ye insaan ke dushman samajon ki duniya
Jala do ise foonk dalo ye duniya”.

So showing light
At the dark tunnel’s end
Sahir leads
All it needs now
Is cumulative concerted action
Folks joining hands
Converging into a meaningfull fist
In unity lies unconquerable might!

Complex yet straight is the path
Aana hai to aa rah mein kuchh fer nahin hai!
Besides, lays out Sahir
Ek se ek mile to insaan
Baas mein karle kismat!

I often ask
Why wouldn’t Sahir Fans set example?
Turn their common Sahir joy
Into constructive seminal force?
Now the nation is free
Ab koi gulshan na ujrhe
Sahir Sea teems with such pearls!

O strollers along this
Wondrous sea shore!
Stop! A step away
From pebbles and stones
Engaging your eye
Seethes deep Sahir Sea bosom
Replete with gems, rubies and pearls.

Search! Research! Sahir is our Kalidas today!

Not Ghalib
That incorrigibly derailed locomotive
Ever MAIYAAB!

Not Iqbal, peak promise
Degenerating into parochial Islam
Vivisecting our grand subcontinental nation.

Not Faiz
All of one high intellectual sortie.

Sahir shining!
And Sahir work
Like pole star upon sky
A guide, guide post
Yet our camarade
Today, Sahir is our Kalidas host!

(You enrich uranium to make atom bombs, which devil’s work wreaks but havoc of death and destruction and devastation
You enrich Sahir to make soft sweet songs which gentle work keeps but promise of renaissance and resurgence and redemption
The one, soul decivilizing fare, must not be!
The one, soul civilizing fare, must be!
Which is which?)

Sahir out-Ghalibs Ghalib!
In the ring about poetry’s peak excellence.

Ghalib was sure a remarkable genius
Imploding though within self’s confines
Master of conquering finesse
Mother of poetry’s lapidary phrase
Seminal? No, not really
Wise? Yes, of course
Raconteur of sorts
From life’s Leiden
Truisms of pithiest gists
On inadequacies of life,
Undone by lack of prop
Robbed of deserved critique
For, the Zauks and the Momins
Came stuck in Urdu’s habitual marsh
Ghalib was wondrous lotus
Growing from Urdu mucks.

But this our singular Sahir!

Fire of irrepressible spirit
Flame of enlivening hope
Romance’s Himalaya Height
Fully awake to mortal sins around
And as duty bound
Countering despondency
With refreshing romanticism
Romance that sustains us unfortunates
Still starved of living’s truest fates
By scheming villains’ “baits”.

Sahir could fetch from despair’s darkest fathoms
Beauteous pearls of profound thought
Sing paeans of unrivalled ennobling ideas
One off!
Always calling forth
Come! Let’s weave dreams!
For, if we didn’t
Life would die as venoms stung
Ever cursed, no smile but horrible scream
Still seen in perpetually mauled multitudes’ stream
What waste of lives!

Sahir’s magic word impels
Go! Catch the mirth’s star
Oh! But first mend minds
Capitalism rogued humanity
Bring to bear on manhood
Sense for womanhood’s due
Her Hasti with veneration imbue
Women are pious
Paragons of virtue
As by God created
Far above meager men they stand
Us bearing mothers
Us adoring sisters
Us alluring wives.

Man! What do you do?
Reducing them to Chakle hives!
Flesh dirts and filths!
Shame on you!

Don’t you send youth into wars!
Why, don’t you make wars!
Give idle hands work to do
Give eyes dreams
Give hearts hopes
To minds wistfulness’ dopes!

So lived Sahir
A spring board to action
A harbinger of inceptive change
Ghalib just sallied forth
However rich of stylish phrase.

Ah! But one swallow
Does not a summer make
Now in Sahir Magic word’s wake
Folks! Carry the flame to fruition!
Translate Sahir
Into living’s audacious idiom!
Burn down oppressing facades!
Tear down repression’s forts!
Delhi is still very much Aurangzeb
Our freedom still half the sprint
False its Republic mint!

Sahir uplifts, even exalts mind
Ghalib’s is depressing resigned wind

Wails not the despondent Ghalib?

ISHAQ NE GHALIB NIKAMMA KAR DIYA

Soars not Sahir into art’s heady heavens?

BANDE KO KHUDA KARTA HAI ISHAQ

That says it all.

Ghalib is no match for the far more advanced Sahir geist
That super duper imagination’s flight.

Oh! Sahir out-Ghalibs Ghalib!

Alas! Sahir verse is pearls before swines
Their banalities
versus Sahir’s divines!

Sahir is action’s seminal germ
If Ghalib is much ado’s whining husks!
If Ghalib had reparteeing wit
Sahir has searing scorn
Life is no bed of roses either
For none!
It is man made rankling’s staying thorn
Yet thorn upon painful thorn.

Laughters!
What laughters?
Buddha Himself frowned
The philosopher came on
Don’t just interpret
Change the world!
An overaged unrequited cry
Of perennially troubled humanity
Sahir did then add his mighty mite
We stand challenged
We, the present’s Sahir Bright!

Sahir refreshes
Sahir word is but flares
To lead us from darkness to light
Shivaji’s sword edge, sharp
Rana Partap’s valor breath
Rani Jhansi’s rebellion harp
At once germane! Guide!
Yet why won’t we abide?
The need is even world wide.

Sahir Soul speaks
‘To my time
I did my best’,
Yet Sahir Soul asks
‘To your time
My protégés!
Are you doing the rest?’

Your childhood I bless with youth
And as soon I get into sort of ruth.

My little child!
My garden’s little sapling!
To save you from circumstance’s storm
Today I drape you in
Into love’s raiment
Tomorrow you will miss this weak prop too
Tomorrow will fail this weak prop too
Tomorrow you must traverse thorny path
Burn under life’s sun’s searing wrath.

On your brow is
No nobility’s stamp
Oh! Those few kisses of love
What worth are they?
Of mothers like me
The loves don’t much weigh!

O my innocent angel!
What knows you yet?
For whose sins you would recompense
Among these religions and faiths scarred humans
Any and every look you beget
Is to be frowns dense.

Your child hood I bless with youth
And as soon fall into sort of ruth.

I should say, here is to Sahir a salute per Rapology:

RAPOLOGY

Eyed is the unlucky thing enough
Innocent smile to villain mind is sought design
Haya, hallmark of Indian beauty
Just the armour’s chink
The scheme was run through thoroughly
In motions of sorts
Spots spied, earmarked
Temple where none suspects
DC office behind
Barred to public
The air, the ambience?
No point, for rulers
Live in their ivory towers
Given to golden speech
Too preoccupied handling
Their self made malaise
Developing India a laisser faire
Simply put capital’s Jungle Raj
Blind pursuit of money
By hook, by crook
Their probity’s sanctum sanctorum!

So, the Shaitan shuffles
Amid alluring Kama’s irresistible ruffles
Fuelled on by Bollywood lecher Dom
Why, now even imported Pom Poms!
Says their King Khan
Hum Hain Naan!

Rest is all so very Alec Smart
The deadly play: they come inebriated
In cars, buddies all
Of one soul in ill earned monies’ regard
Here flung the door
There seizes the aroused arm
Sucking the poor prey in
Innocent ‘gal’, for
What else is teenage?

Quick! Gas!
Windows shut
Tinted is glass
You! First!
Me?
Shut up! Come on! Now!
Drive around, you!

The prey cries
Fends, her arms tied
Her mouth gagged
With Kama blinded bites
Hands are at tearing clothes
Bearing bosom
Ploughing proceeds
No God listens
Or then sees!
Though Upanishad has
God sit right through
Right there in all hearts
Good or the evil!

Ploughing is on, merciless!
Amid killed cries
Scotched sobs
Shot supplications
Harrowed eyes beseeching
O brothers!

But these are Haraami bloods
These nouveau riches
Of some rotten seeds!

Jump you over
Now give me drive
Comes on the next
Over virtually dead flesh
Surely woodened soul
Deflowered!
Hurrying into tissues torn
Bleeding sinews
A human soul disrobed
Despoiled, desecrated the
Sacred womb
That bears here Nanak
There Gautam
A mini Mother India raped!
In modern progress’ icon
Car, a moving car!
By these laisser faire neo Indians!

Think!
Martyrs such sacrificed their lives
For such skunks and racoons!
Sullage of society!

What stink fruit of soured freedom!

Shame on Republic’s President!
Shame on Prime Minister!
Shame on Home Minister!
Shame on you all!
Drown you in CHULLU BHAR PANI
You free India’s disappointing KAHANI!

You are real stinking scums
Of utter misrule
Into horrible Karma
Devoid of all Dharma.

You are deaf and dumb
And you are blind
Is this how it goes?
In a republic, true, genuine
To its innocent citizen kind?

Answer! You bloody fools!
Answer!
Is this how?