The Muslim Question by Raziuddin Aquil

Author:Raziuddin Aquil
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789386495563
Publisher: Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Published: 2017-05-12T04:00:00+00:00

zahe shah-e wala guhar kam bakhsh

ke ghachchi buz kard pichchi wa pakhsh

(Well done! Jewel of the prince, Kam Baksh

The little opening of the goat is ruptured into a gaping hole.)

Note the poet’s deployment of phrases in the radif (last words of the couplet), which highlight the contradictory qualities of the prince: bakhsh (generosity and forgiveness) counterpoised with pakhsh (beastly suppression and disfigurement). Further down in the verses, Zatalli becomes more explicit and declares that the prince’s repeated penetration (‘ghusera ghuseri’, shoving and thrusting) causes the goat (called Manohar) to begin silently moaning in pain (‘ghusera ghuseri ke mi-kard shah/manohar pari khufiya mi-kard aah).17

Understandably aghast with Zatalli’s charge of bestiality, imagined or real, Kam Bakhsh, who reportedly had a lot of affection for the untamed poet, sacked him from service. The resultant poverty, as the poet writes in his verses, reminded him of the comfortable life he led under the patronage of the prince— all the delicacies (faluda, firni, shirni) he savoured, the comfortable bed he slept in and the time he spent in the company of women (faluda wa firni che shud, pan bhatta wa shirni che shud / aan bistar wa balein kidhar, ke jafar ab kaisi bani).18 Following his sacking, Zatalli was forced to leave Deccan and, mercifully, Kam Bakhsh spared his life. He wrote that God saved his head, despite the fact that he antagonized the ruler (ba badshah tayin bayr ki, sar par khuda ne khayr ki).19 Zatalli writes he regretted his utter lack of tact in provoking the prince, though he had done it for the fun of it. He says he realized that it was too late to undo the damage and lampoons himself in the poem ‘hasb-e haal-e khwud gufta’ by asking in the radif, ‘jafar ab kaisi bani’ or ‘Jafar, how does it feel like now’.20

Banished from the Deccan, the poet chose to stay in Delhi and was engaged, for a period, in the service of Aurangzeb’s second son, Prince Muhammad Muazzam, who succeeded his father to the Mughal throne and was subsequently known as Bahadur Shah I. It is possible that Zatalli ended up antagonizing his patron once again by writing a scandalous spoof called Gand marawwa nama, or Gandu-nama (‘An Account of a Catamite’),21 though it is not clear whether he wrote this before or after his dismissal from Bahadur Shah’s service. One couplet of this satire was too explicit to leave any doubt about the character of the king:22

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