Oh Lord, let this two-toned rose find place in the corner of the turban of acceptance

And let thanks be due from me to him who looks upon it with favour.

— Ghalib, Dibachah, Gul-e ra’na

IN poetry’s colourful garden what would be more appropriate than a beautiful, two-toned rose? Ghalib named his first intikhab (1828) Gul-e ra’na, because it presented a selection of his Urdu and Persian poetry in equal measure. Most people think that Gul-e ra’na means a beautiful rose. But Ghalib had picked a title that reflected his extraordinary felicity with words and also to appeal to those ada shinasan who have a taste for the complexity of language.

The preface (Dibachah) to the volume, in Ghalib’s formal but flamboyant Persian prose, has a passionate tone. He talks about being away from his home and the challenge of a new environment. Justifying the inclusion of the Persian with the Urdu, Ghalib explains that this colourful garden has two doors:

(The second door to this colorful garden I have named Gul-e ra’na, presented to the Persian taste,

[whose poetry is] a wine that brings down enemies and which vanquishes the one who is a [full] man.)

In the Mo’i’idul Fuzala, Gul-e ra’na is defined as a flower that is red and yellow (zard-o-surkh). Bahar-e Ajam gives more details: It is a two sided flower (gul-e do rui); the inner part is red and the outer yellow (andarunash surkh-o-birun zard bashad). The dictionary also suggests that “two-coloured” could also be used to imply two-faced. The following delightful she’r is by Vahshi (Yazdi Kirmani):

*Bulbul an beh ke fareb-e gul-e ra’na na khurd

Keh du roze ast vafadari—e yaran-e du rang*

(Better that the bulbul is not deceived by the two-coloured rose;

Because the loyalty of two-faced friends lasts only two days)

The tazkirah, Gul-e ajaib, quotes a she’r by the Urdu poet Bedad:

*Sar pe dastar-e basanti bar mein jamah qirmizi

Khub gaya dil mein hamarey us gul-e ra’na ka rang*

(Head adorned with a yellow turban, and dress a wine-colour red

My heart was delighted with the colourful style of that gul-e ra’na)

Ghalib undertook the long journey to Calcutta [Kolkata] to present his pension case before the British Governor General. He left Delhi in November 1826 and travelling through important cities, meeting with the poets and elites along the way, he reached Calcutta in February 1828. He stayed in Calcutta for about a year and half and returned to Delhi in November 1829.

Calcutta’s Western ambiance made a deep impression on Ghalib’s alert mind. He met a lot of writers, especially Persian poets, attended mushairahs where he participated in lively debates on current Persian usages. In Calcutta he met Maulvi Sirajuddin Ahmad. The latter was an influential personality who edited the weekly Ainah-e Sikandar. Ghalib and Maulvi Sirajuddin became close friends. Ghalib also published his poetry in the Ainah-e Sikandar.

It was at Maulvi Sirauddin’s behest that he made a selection of his Urdu and Persian poetry and called it Gul-e ra’na. The Gul-e ra’na was not published. The selection process for Gul-e ra’na must have inspired Ghalib to make another, more comprehensive version from his Urdu majmu’a. The second intikhab, known as Divan-e Ghalib was made with an intent to publish. Its publication was delayed for more than 10 years; it was finally published in 1841. It is possible that the publication of Divan-e Ghalib eclipsed the importance of Gul-e ra’na. Quite likely, Gul-e ra’na would have been lost to us if it’s preface and conclusion had not been published in the collection of Ghalib’s prose works. A few pages of Gul-e ra’na were first discovered by Maulana Hasrat Mohani but were lost after his death in 1951.

The story of the recovery of Gul-e ra’na is told with inimitable flair by the well-known Ghalib scholar Malik Ram. Forever in the quest for rare books, one day Malik Ram was presented with an inconspicuous looking manuscript by his friend and mentor, Saiyyed Naqi Bilgrami. Its cover bore the title, Mutaffariq Kalam-e Ghalib (Assortment of Ghalib’s Poetry). The year was 1957; the manuscript was the Gul-e ra’na.

This rare manuscript had been in the library of Saiyyed Karam Husain Bilgrami, a wealthy nobleman from Bilgram in present-day Uttar Pradesh who was known for his patronage of poetry. Saiyyed Karam Husain often visited Calcutta and was introduced to Ghalib by Maulvi Sirajuddin Ahmad.

Soon Ghalib and Saiyyed Karam Husain became good friends. It was at the latter’s challenge-like request that Ghalib composed the impromptu qita on chikni dali (betel nut).

When Ghalib compiled the Gul-e ra’na, Saiyyed Karam Husain also requested a copy and arranged for a scribe to copy it for him. The manuscript stayed in the family and was passed down the generations until it was gifted to Malik Ram sahib. For various reasons Malik Ram could not publish an edition of the manuscript until 1970 but he wrote two important articles introducing the newly discovered manuscript. Meanwhile, another manuscript of Gul-e ra’na found in Lahore was edited and published in 1969. This one is in Ghalib’s own hand. At present there are four known codices / nuskhas.

The selection in Gul-e ra’na is evenly split between Urdu and Persian. The number of Urdu verses is 455 and the number of Persian verses is also 455. The interesting fact is that the Urdu verses have been selected from 116 ghazals while the Persian from only 27 (the Persian selection includes verses from a qasidah, a qita and a masnavi also). This confirms the well-known assumption that up to that time, Ghalib had been writing mostly Urdu poetry. We now know that there were at least three Urdu majmuas before Gul-e ra’na. They are as follows: the 1816 Divan in Ghalib’s own handwriting (Bhopal), the 1821 Divan (Nuskha-e Hamidiyya, Bhopal), the 1826/7 Divan (Nuskha-e Sherani, Lahore).

The 1816 Divan has only 13 rubais in Persian. The 1821 begins with a qasidah in Persian but there are no ghazals. This changed during his Calcutta stay. In Gul-e ra’na the Persian ghazals are not arranged by radif. This shows that they were simply copied from Ghalib’s personal notebook or bayaz. There are reasons why Ghalib decided to include his Persian poetry for his first, acknowledged intikhab. He had been embroiled in heated debates regarding his Persian usage, notably an ongoing one about the Indian Persian poet Mirza Qateel and other Indian Persian poets. Ghalib’s response had been a long masnavi in which he was openly derisive and dismissive of “Indian” poets who wrote in Persian because they used substandard or rather unidiomatic language. The only exception he made, somewhat grudgingly, was Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil whom he had always admired. The masnavi was titled ‘Ashti Namah’ (Reconciliation note). The title was later changed to ‘Bad-e Mukhalif’ (Contrary Wind). The manuscript of Gul-e ra’na in Ghalib’s hand includes ‘Ashti Namah’.

Gul-e ra’na is an invaluable text because it helps us understand Ghalib’s logic in his selection process, both here and later for his 1841 Urdu divan which he presumably undertook after Gul-e ra’na. Since the selection for the Urdu divan was made so close to the episode of his denouncing Indian Persian poets, he may have avoided including she’rs that were very Bedilian in style. While Ghalib was extremely sensitive to criticism; he set exacting standards for himself too. From the beginning, he edited and constantly revised his poetry. This is evident when we compare the existing majmuas. He had excluded as many as 25 ghazals from the 1816 majmua when the next copy of his divan (presumably the 1821) was prepared. They were mostly his earliest ghazals and were not ostensibly as finished as his later work. Examples of his verses from tazkirahs such as Tazkirah-e Sarvar, Bagh-e Mehr and Tazkirah-e Zaka are not included in his current divan. This indicates that he had distanced himself from and did not care to look back on his early work. But it also shows Ghalib as not being careful in preserving all of his poetry. It appears that he did not keep personal copies of each subsequent divan as it was updated. There is a fascinating trail of corrections and updates in the margins of the manuscript Divans available to us.

The four nuskhas of Gul-e ra’na have significant variations. The three published editions are by Saiyyed Vazirul Hasan Abidi, Lahore 1969, Janab Malik Ram, Delhi 1970 and Saiyyed Qudrat Naqvi, Karachi 1975. Each edition has a scholarly introduction full of details about the texts. No other poet’s work in Urdu has excited such a large number of scholars and readers as Ghalib. There are more than a hundred commentaries on his current divan. But very few pondered the question why Ghalib cherry-picked the verses he chose to publish.

Hardly anyone has questioned what to do or how to deal with the corpus that Ghalib elected to discard or disregard. Ghalib’s sojourn to Calcutta, the interactions with new audiences, his first brush with publishing, his encounter with active criticism of his Persian usage, were all factored into his relationship with his poetry.

With a self-reflexive lighthearted tone, Ghalib introduces us to his Urdu section of Gul-e ra’na:

(How would anyone have known the matters of my heart? My choice of verses brought me out into the open)

Ghalib lived and wrote in turbulent times. His struggle to make a lasting impact on readers is an ineluctable feature of his poetic career. We have to read both the current and mustarad verses to get a fuller sense of the development of this great poet’s genius.