The Hidden Garden by Gopi Chand Narang

Author:Gopi Chand Narang [Chand Narang, Gopi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353052898
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2021-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

Hallmark of a Distinctive Creativity

agarche gosha nashiin huun main shaa’yiron mein Mir

p mere shor ne ruue zamiin tamaam kya

Although I quietly sit

in a lonely corner

in the galaxy of poets,

but my lyrical voice

has conquered the world.

The above couplet makes it clear that right from the beginning Mir had a feeling that he was different from other poets. His creativity was such that even in his younger years he was writing couplets that were distinctive. This distinguishing characteristic became his hallmark in later years. Sauda’s couplet that we read above was nothing ordinary. It had all the markings of rhetorical and crafty poetry. But it doesn’t touch the reader’s heart in the same way as Mir’s couplet. What is the secret? A good couplet has a mix of inventive meaning, free flow, and a heart luring quality. The presence of such elements and mellowness separate Mir’s couplet from that of Sauda. As a first step, it is worth noting that Sauda’s couplet contains a medley of nouns such as chaman, sub-h, jangju, saba, tegh, aab, kaam—seven in all. Mir has just one noun—dil-e sitam zada—around which the whole couplet is built. The effortless verbal structure used by Mir was far ahead of his time, unique among his contemporaries, and a primary reason for the genial and affable sweetness of his verse that left arty and lofty poets like Sauda far behind. Syed Abdullah has mentioned a couplet by one of Sauda’s disciples where he wonders how a poet who wrote in the common colloquial language could surpass a poet like Sauda who wrote in the rhetorical modes established by the great Persian masters like Naziri and Zahuri.7 Here is his couplet:

jo aisi zabaan mein ho ghazal us ko kahien bad

aur lehje mein ho aa’m ke so paaye vo tauqiir

Isn’t it strange that a ghazal

written in an ornate language

is labeled worthless?

And the one in ordinary speech

gets all the respect?

The term commonplace or ordinary speech, often used for Mir’s verse, was the principal misleading factor. We would address it later. The vital point here is that Mir’s simplicity is deceptive, and it deceived the critics for centuries. This idea was so widespread that even Mir’s metaphorical caveat was not taken note of for quite some time.

koi saadah hi us ko saadah kahe

hamein to lage hai vo a’iyaar sa

Only a simpleton would call him simple.

To me he looks like an ingenious sorcerer.

Mir makes this assertion time and again. Using conversational language does not make his verse simple. We will unfold this deception step by step.

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