In the company of Ghalib

Two of Ghalib's verses have, at different milestones of my weary existence, drawn me deep into the ocean of imagination, gently beckoning me into an intimate, almost audacious dialogue with the master. I have never regarded these spiritual echoes as attempts at criticism of the genius of Ghalib's divine poetry. Rather, they are merely my modest, trembling responses, devotional offerings (niyaz) to verses that have remained permanently etched in the recesses of my memory, despite its dwindling reservoir.

The first catalyst was that haunting couplet:

Ho chukin Ghalib bala'en sab tamam

Aik marg-e-nagahani aur hai

(Ghalib says that all calamities have finally passed, except for the one sudden death that remains.)

While Ghalib's thought lingered in my mind, my own response took a slightly different turn:

Zindagi hai jo nagahani hai

Maut barhaq hai, woh to aani hai

Life itself, I realised, is the true unexpected event unfolding from moment to moment; it is the beautiful, unpredictable anomaly. Death, conversely, is the absolute certainty, the undeniable truth from which none of us can escape. Perhaps it is only with advancing age that this apparent paradox begins to reveal its meaning. We spend our lives treating death as a rude interruption, though it is, in truth, the only appointment that was fixed for us from the dawn of creation.

The second verse visited me in a starkly different setting:

Dhanpa kafan ne daagh-e-uyoob-e-barahnagi

Main warna har libaas mein nang-e-wujood tha

(The shroud has hidden the stains of my nakedness; otherwise, in every earthly attire, I was a disgrace to existence itself.)

The occasion was the burial of an old friend in Karachi. As we stood around the freshly dug grave, some relatives, in the timeless manner of human gatherings everywhere, whispered their mundane observations about the deceased. There was no profound solemnity in those fleeting remarks; death, even when heavy with grief, rarely silences the chatter of the living. Ghalib's couplet followed me home that evening, echoing in the quiet. I found myself wondering whether the kafan, or shroud, does something far more complex than merely cover the mortal remains. It symbolises an attempt to conceal the imperfections that were so painfully visible during life.

My own humble response emerged as:

Marne pe sab hi aib numayan thai hamare

Kehne ko hum aasuda-e-khaak hue hain

In the finality of death, perhaps our shortcomings are laid bare to the world we leave behind, even as we are politely said to have found rest beneath the silent earth. It was another of those moments when Ghalib's words opened a door, and my own imagination, with far less authority but equal sincerity, wandered through the threshold.

Years later, quite recently, while walking along a quiet trail in Milton, Canada, a sudden, fierce gust of wind caught me unawares. At my age, with the frailties that accompany the twilight years, I felt a fleeting, whimsical sensation that the wind might dissolve me and carry me away. The thought defied logic, but poetry has never sought permission from reason. I wrote:

Gard-e-ghubar-e-rah hue khaak ki tarah

Tark-e-safar kiye to zamana guzar gaya

We spend so much of our existence travelling, both literally across borders and metaphorically through time, that eventually the traveller becomes indistinguishable from the dust upon the highway. And when one finally halts the journey, one looks back to discover how much of life has already quietly slipped into the past.

Perhaps that is why the concept of migration has taken on a different, more poignant meaning for me in these autumn years. For decades, Canada has been a familiar, gentle second home. My wife and I have regularly spent large parts of the year here, wrapped in the warmth of our son, his wife, and our grandson, all proud Canadian citizens. Yet it was only last year, at our son's gentle urging, that we finally began the formal immigration process. What had once been a series of prolonged visits gradually took on the quiet, enduring permanence of a final home.

For someone born amid the historic upheavals of Partition, migration is a defining scar of my generation. Decades later, the journey continues in a different form, with the old traveller once again facing departure, arrival, and the elusive meaning of home.

That bittersweet sentiment distilled itself into another couplet:

Kab talak rote raho ge hijraton ka gham liye

Kya kabhi khana-badoshon ki taraf dekha nahin

Perhaps every migrant carries the ancient soul of a nomad within them. We change our countries, our houses, and our postal addresses, but the haunting question of where we truly belong remains stubbornly, beautifully alive.

And then came perhaps the strangest test of love: to encounter, after decades, the very beloved whose glimpse had once been a life's longing, and yet have to avert one's eyes:

Lo imtahany ishq ki manzil bi aa gaee

Sarf-e-nigah kar kay guzarna parra hamay

Because space in an op-ed is always an unyielding master, I shall not burden the reader with the intricate circumstances or the heavy thoughts that gave birth to each of these humble attempts at poetic monologues. I will simply leave a selection of my mutafarriq ash'aar, these independent verses, here, like small, polished stones left along a winding path, allowing them to speak in their own quiet manner:

Ab to hujoom-e-gham mein tera gham hai is tarah

Ik shama jal rahi ho kisi aaftab mein

Kaisa mai-khana hai saqi, ke jahan peene ko

Tishna-kaami se bhare jaam-o-sabu rakhe hain

Is qadar mehv-e-tamasha hoon teri duniya mein

Kaun uth kar gaya mehfil se, mujhe hosh nahin

Dayar-e-ghair mein aa kar base hain aakhir-e-shab

Chiragh-e-zeest bujhe ga to phir seher hogi

Allow me to conclude with a brief confession in verse. I composed this qit'a while reflecting on the daunting audacity of taking even a minor liberty with the themes of Ghalib, whom I regard, without an iota of doubt, as the supreme architect of Urdu poetry:

Ghalib ki hai dehleez, zara soch ke jaana

Ik aalam-e-afaaq hai us khaama-gari mein

Har lafz jahan behr-e-tilismat ho goya

Darya ko kya bandh wahan koza-gari mein

To approach Ghalib's world is to stand at a threshold where every word contains an ocean, and every thought opens into an expanding universe. Whatever my modest verses may amount to, they are never an attempt to stand alongside his light. They are merely the fragile footprints of a devoted reader who, having wandered so long through the enchanted, moonlit corridors of Ghalib's poetry, occasionally forgot his own insignificance enough to answer back.