Shahryar by Rakhshanda Jalil

Author:Rakhshanda Jalil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2018-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

(The night bathed first in dew then in tears

Thus it did descend in our homes drop by drop)

*

Aankh ki yeh ik hasrat thi ke bas poori hui

Aansuon mein bheeg jaane ki hawas poori hui15

(The eye had this one desire that has been fulfilled

Its greed to be drenched in tears has been fulfilled)

*

Mahaul mere shahr ka haan pur-sukoon na tha

Lekin bata huwa qabilon mein yun na tha16

(Yes, my city was never very peaceful

But neither was it divided into camps like this)

*

Guzre thay Husain Ibn-e Ali raat idhar se

Hum mein se magar koi bhi nikla nahin ghar se17

(Husain, son of Ali, passed this way last night

But none of us stepped out of our homes)

*

Har khwaab ke makaan ko mismaar kar diya

Behtar dinon ka aana dushwaar kar diya18

(Having destroyed the house of every dream

The coming of better days has become difficult)

*

Jo kehte thay darya nahin hai

Suna hai unse koi pyaasa nahin hai19

(Those who said that there is no river

I have heard no one is thirsting for them)

The random sampling above, chosen from his five major collections, amply demonstrates an inescapable fact about the ghazal, one that Shahryar himself admitted, namely its ‘generality’, its inability to say exact things precisely or with any degree of elaboration. The two-line couplet allows no scope for details; the sher comes through a foliage of words. This verbiage can be both its strength and weakness. The way a poet can elaborate, explain, put forth an idea or a concept in a nazm, he simply cannot in a ghazal. And, yet, in a mushaira, Shahryar only ever recited his ghazals, never his nazms. In the popular imagination, he remained – despite the large numbers of excellent nazms he wrote – a poet of the ghazal.

Writing for Cinema

Zindagi roz naye rang badlati kyun hai

(Why does Life change colours every day)

Shahryar’s film lyrics have caused him as much harm as the fame they brought his way. There is no denying that his songs made him a household name and enabled his words to reach those nooks and crannies of the popular imagination that an Urdu poet – no matter how popular – in this day and age could not hope to reach merely through his poetry being read in books and journals or heard at mushairas. Yet, it must also be acknowledged that in the popular imagination he became etched as a lyricist and not a poet of gravitas and merit. It seems especially ironic for two reasons: one, Shahryar was an academic. His entire professional life was played out at the much-respected Urdu department of the Aligarh Muslim University and his frame of reference was always the world of letters, not sounds alone. Secondly, his fame as a lyricist rests on a body of work that is far slimmer than his output as a poet.

The bulk of Shahryar’s songs are for films made by Muzaffar Ali: starting with Gaman (1978), Umrao Jaan(1981) and Anjuman (1986), followed by his songs for three incomplete films that are still in the nature of ‘works in progress’, namely Daman, Zooni and Noorjahan aur Jahangir.

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