‘GHALIB’ the thinker

KalamKashGems of Literature, Rubaru
ये क़िता "ऐ शहनशाह-ए-आस्माँ औरंग" आपने गुलज़ार साहब द्वारा रचित TV show या उनकी किताब “मिर्ज़ा ग़ालिब” में ज़रूर पढ़ा या सुना होगा जो ग़ालिब ने आखिरी मुग़ल बादशाह को अपने हालात का बखान करते हुए लिखा था। वैसे तो यह क़िता आप रेख़्ता पर उर्दू में पढ़ सकते हैं पर क्योंकि बहुत से लोगों को उर्दू पढ़नी नहीं आती है, इसलिए मैनें इसका देवनागरी में अनुवाद कर दिया। साथ ही कुछ कठिन शब्द हैं जिनका मतलब मैनें नीचे दे दिया है।

हैं और भी दुनिया में सुख़न-वर बहुत अच्छे

कहते हैं कि ‘ग़ालिब’ का है अंदाज़-ए-बयाँ और

–ग़ालिब

There are so many great poets,
it’s said that Ghalib has another style of narration

-Ghalib

Mirza Beg Asadullah Khan or Mirza Ghalib was an Indian, Persian/Urdu Poet, popularly known by his pen names ‘Ghalib’ and ‘Asad’. He was born in Kala Mahal in 1797 in Agra where he spent his childhood and adolescence. In 1805 when Ghalib was 5, his father Mirza Abdullah Baig died in a battle in Alwar and was buried in Rajgarh. After then his uncle Mirza Nasrullah Baig Khan raised him, but in 1806 he fell off an elephant and died. In 1810 at the age of 13, he married Umrao Begum, daughter of Nawab Ilahi Bakhsh and moved to Delhi.

Ghalib fought a lot against his destiny. He struggled financially a lot, as he depended only on royalty patronage and never had a job. But, not only financially, he struggled with a lot of things like his father and uncle’s death, his brother’s death due to schizophrenia in 1857 and much more. It is also said that he was a bit unhappy with his marriage.

ACHIEVEMENTS

As Javed Akhtar says about Ghalib, he was really not just a poet he was a thinker. You can relate his every quote to any phase of life, he doesn’t write with just only Emotions or just only Logic. As he was a great poet, he became an important courtier of the royal court of the Emperor. And was appointed as a poet tutor for the Emperor and his eldest son Fakhr-ud din Mirza.

Ghalib got the titles of Dabir-ul-Mulk(secretary of state) and Najm-ud-Daula(star of the state) from the Emperor. He also got the place of Royal Historian in the Mughal Court & so, never worked and subsisted on the imperial patronage of Mughal Emperors. He got his fame posthumously.

CAREER

Ghalib started composing Urdu Poetries at the age of 11. But he learnt Persian and Turkish too, as both languages were spoken at home. At the age of 14, Ghalib met Abdus Samad a newly converted Muslim tourist from Iran. Who stayed at his house for about 2 years and taught him Persian, Arabic, philosophy, and logic.

Before him, the Ghazals were written as an expression of love, but Ghalib wrote Ghazals in many other subjects expressing philosophies, travails, and mysteries of life.

In his career, he valued Persian over Urdu. He had a great knowledge of the Persian language, which was a point of pride for him. He majorly composed a lot of qasidas for numerous patron rulers and also wrote a lot of Ghazals and Mathnawis in Persian. Some of the published works in the language are, May-ḵāna-ye ārzū (a collection of poems), Panj ahang, Mehr-e nīmrūz (history of the universe from its creation to the death of Mughal Emperor Humayun), Dastanbu (an eyewitness account of the 1857 revolt and its aftermath), and his last significant work in Persian was Qaat’i-e Burhaan, a critique of Burhaan-e-Qaat’i (a controversial Persian dictionary). A few years before his death, he has written more than 11,000 poems in Persian and 1,700 poems in Urdu.

THE KOLKATA JOURNEY

During the British Raj, the Emperor of Delhi became a British pensioner and was kept under strict supervision by the British. The British grew suspicious of him and suspended his pension. This made Ghalib travel to Kolkata and make an appeal to the British Governor General about his pension.

When Ghalib went to Kolkata, he fell in love with the city. The journey made a huge difference in his literary journey, after which he started writing in Persian. He realized that the world is quite bigger than he thinks. He participated in numerous literary events while he was living in Kolkata. During this period, he penned numerous works like Safar-e-Kalkattah(which describes his journey and his love for Kolkata), two masnavis in Persian Chiragh-e Dair (Lamp of the Temple) and Bad-e Mukhalif (Adverse Winds).

DEATH

Ghalib died in Ballimaran, Delhi on 15 February 1869. And was buried in Hazrat Nizamuddin near the tomb of Nizamuddin Auliya.

Even the Legacy was intact posthumously, and a museum of Mirza Ghalib was housed on the third floor of the Ghalib Academy building on 22 February 1969.

MAJOR WORKS

There are so many literary works by Ghalib. But here I am listing only 10 major works by him.

1. Ghalib
2. Deewan-e-Faarsi
3. Deewan-e-Ghalib
4. Khutoot-e-Ghalib
5. Qadir Nama-e-Ghalib
6. Qate Burhan
7. Urdu-e-Mualla
8. Dīvana-e-G̲h̲ālib
9. Qādir nāmah
10. Urdu letters of Mi̲rzā Asaduʼllāh K̲h̲ān G̲h̲ālib