Akser Shab-e-Tanhaee Mein

Some verses enter memory like long-awaited companions; others slip quietly into the subconscious until we scarcely remember when they arrived. Such was my introduction to a late nineteenth-century poem by Nadir Kakorvi, best known by its opening line, Akser Shab-e-Tanhaee Mein. I encountered it in my college Urdu textbook and, for some inexplicable reason, took an instant liking to it. Only recently, while revisiting the poem on YouTube, did I discover that it was an adaptation of Thomas Moore's Oft, in the Stilly Night, written in 1818.

English poetry has never quite captured my imagination. Perhaps I was nurtured on the Urdu ghazal and nazm, whose idiom of longing speaks beyond words. Yet Moore, through Kakorvi, found his way into that exclusive domain. It was a quiet revelation that emotions rooted in one literary tradition can cross into another and acquire a fragrance of their own.

Last night, I listened to an old rendition of the poem. Decades ago, I found it pleasant, but it left no lasting impression. Sleep was a willing companion, and Ghalib's lament had not yet acquired a personal meaning. Today, however, sleep has become an elusive beloved. In such moments, Ghalib's couplet needs no explanation:

Maut ka aik din mu'ayyan hai

Neend kyun raat bhar nahin aati

Last night was different. The familiar verses touched a tender chord, and Kakorvi's words stirred memories deep within a restless soul. Had the poem grown more beautiful, or had I become more receptive to its melancholy? In twilight years, solitude acquires another meaning. People and places left behind return uninvited, and the silence of night gives their memories room to speak.

The recording also brought back Reshma's magical rendition from the 1980s. Without formal training, she possessed something elemental: a voice from the parched earth of the Thar Desert, carrying the wanderer's yearning. A famous story recounts Indira Gandhi inviting her to sing at the prime ministerial residence - a testament to how her voice crossed borders, classes and languages. One did not need to understand every word to feel the sorrow in her singing.

Perhaps this connects Reshma with Moore and Kakorvi. Words and cultures may differ, yet the heart recognises its own language. A melody, like a verse, reveals its full meaning only when life has prepared us to hear it.

The comparison between Moore and Kakorvi is especially rewarding. Moore's Oft, in the Stilly Night evokes a world wrapped in quietude, whereas Kakorvi's adaptation brings the soul's loneliness to the fore. Moore describes sleep approaching, its chains about to bind him. Kakorvi's kuch der pehle neend se is gentler, lingering in the interval before sleep claims the senses. The English suggests restraint, almost imprisonment; the Urdu preserves the ghazal's tenderness.

Moore writes of fond memories bringing the light of other days around him. In Kakorvi's imagination, the past becomes shama-e-zindagi, the candle of life, illuminating the darkness within. Kakorvi's dil-e-sad-chaak gives grief tangible form; Moore's broken hearts are rendered with restraint. Each expresses a shared human experience through the idiom of his own tradition.

One of Moore's most memorable images is that of a deserted banquet hall, its lights faded and guests departed. An Urdu reader can readily imagine the mehfil after the last guest has left, the music has ceased, and the lamps are dying while echoes of laughter linger. Those present may have believed their gatherings would endure, but time has its own arrangements.

This is the secret of enduring poetry: it waits for life to teach us how to understand it. A verse that pleases us in youth may return decades later with startling intimacy. The words have not changed; our memories and absences have. Adaptation, at its finest, is an act of hospitality. Kakorvi did not make Moore any less Irish by giving his poem an Urdu soul; he gave its melancholy another home.

Some lamps illuminate a room; others illuminate the past. And there are nights when, in solitude, we discover a grief so deep and enduring that it defies simple comfort. Who else could have captured that quiet ache better than Ghalib:

Logon ko hai khurshid-e-jahan taab ka dhoka,

Her roze dikhata hon mai ek daag-e-nihaan aur