Parrhtay phirein gey galiyon mein in rekhton ko loag
Muddat rahein gi yaad yeh baataan hamaariyaan

[Roaming in the street, people will keep reciting the verses composed in Rekhta/ These, my words, are destined to last for long]

Many a time poetry brushes against prophesy, the poet a sage and presaging as well. The above couplet by Mir Taqi Mir smacks vatic about his Rekhta poetry.

His assertions — “Saaray aalam per hoon main chhaaya hua/ Mustanad hai mera farmaaya hua” [I have overwhelmed the whole world/ All I utter becomes authentic] or “Ta hashr jahaan mein mera divan rahay ga” [My divan will survive until the Day of Judgement] — are not just talli, or expression of poetic hubris, but straight truths, for Mir has reigned supreme in Urdu poetry for 300 years.

Born in 1723 in Agra, Mir’s life was full of toil, drudgery and suffering. His autobiography Zikr-i-Mir details the political, economic and social turbulence of his times, showing how heartlessly Nadir Shah, Ahmad Shah Abdali and local contenders for power plundered and pillaged Mughal India, especially Delhi. Neither the city nor Mir’s house and heart were spared: “Yeh nagar sau martaba loota gaya” [this city has been looted a hundred times]. For him, Dilli and dil [heart] were two sides of the same coin, and the coin was his being.

His father, Ali Muttaqqi, died when Mir was just 11. All Muttaqqi left behind were 300 books, which Mir’s elder half-brother, Hafiz Hasan, seized. What Mir inherited from his father was an unshakeable belief in ishq [love], junoon [passion] and a responsibility to feed the family — a threefold burden unbearably heavy for a child.

Commemorating Mir Taqi Mir, the undisputed master of Rekhta, in the 300th year of his birth

Moving to Delhi to look for patronage and to live with his maternal uncle — poet and scholar of Persian Sirajuddin Ali Khan Arzu — Mir learned from him and suffered at his hands too. His ambivalent relation to Arzu might have spurred his junoon — romanticised later by critics and taken as a springboard for the interpretation of Mir’s poetry on love.

Though full of misery, loneliness and intermittent displacement, Mir’s life was long. A cursory look at his vast oeuvre — six divans in Urdu and one in Persian, more than two dozen masnavis, qasidas and marsiyas [elegies] etc — suggests a relation between creativity and longevity: one can live to write and vice versa.

In Nikat-ush-Shura [Biographical and Critical Survey of Urdu Poets], Mir calls his poetic style “andaz”, literally meaning style, to differentiate himself from his contemporaries. In his poetry, meanwhile, he uses the additives “jaadu” [magic] and “sehr bayaani” [enchanting way of uttering].

In one verse, he says: “Baat ki tarz ko dekha tau koi jaadu tha” [Glancing at his manner of utterance, we picked that it was magic]. In another, he says: “Shaair naheen jo dekha tu tau koi saahir hai/ Do chaar shair parrh kar sab ko rijha gaya hai” [Not a just a poet, you are a magician/ By just reciting a few verses, you have enchanted everyone.]

Jaadu perfectly defines how, through particular use of language, a poet creates an illusionary world full of insight, meaning and vision. Interestingly, Ghalib called his poetry “ganjina-i-maani ka tilism” [a talisman of the treasure of meanings].

However, the talisman operates quite distinctly in the poetry of these two greats. Mir’s jaadu lies more in ‘how’; Ghalib’s largely in ‘what’. Mir’s poetry stirs the carnal aspect of our being; Ghalib’s addresses the cerebral. Ghalib’s major concern was subverting the existing meaning of things and creating new meanings out of adam [the non-existent] or, in Ghalib’s words, out of the gulshan-i-na aafreeda [unborn garden]. But this doesn’t mean that Mir’s poetry lacks in thought, or can be straitjacketed in the category of kaifiyat [mood].

Classical Eastern criticism coined the terms ‘maani’ [meaning] and ‘kaifiyat’ to describe cerebral and corporal types of poetry. Mir’s poetry is awash with both, though the latter predominates. However, scores of verses in all six of his divans blur the boundaries of maani and kaifiyat, exhibiting a magical fusion of feeling and thought, intuition and intellect. Resultantly, a sort of ramz [implicativeness] comes into existence.

Mir Sahib ka har sukhan hai ramz
Bay haqeeqat hai Sheikh kya jaanay

[As each word occurring in my poetry is implicative/ The Sheikh is unable to fathom its perplexed reality]

By calling his poetry “ganjina-i-mani ka tilism”, Ghalib zeros in on the enchantment nurtured by the treasure of meanings, whereas Mir, terming his own ramz, focuses on that which is ‘more than, and beyond meaning.’

Meaning is pointed, straightforward, linear, contextualised and anchored in a particular experience of time. It is solely a product of thought, which bestows on it the power to explore, interrogate and even subvert whatever it comes across as, be that a daily experience, political narrative or literary text.

On the other hand, ramz isn’t just a sign or rudiment of meaning. Rather, it’s a set of insinuations, innuendo and mysterious allusion to unspecified things, to beings, to experiences. Ramz tells little, connotes slightly, but suggests a lot. As ‘sheikh’, ‘Zahid’, ‘mullah’ and ‘pandit’ stay confined to the outward aspects of religion, so the language of ramz and the realities embedded in it remain inaccessible to them.

The general consensus is that Urdu has produced three great poets: Mir in the 18th century, Ghalib in the 19th and Allama Muhammad Iqbal in the 20th. But Mir Taqi Mir has been called khuda-i-sukhan [the god of poetry]. Of course, there is a legion of qadirul kalam [exercising full command over language] poets, but the ‘god of language and poetry’ is only Mir Taqi Mir.

He was khuda-i-sukhan because he fashioned a new style and proffered various novel themes in Rekhta which, in the 18th century, was reckoned the inferior language of common, illiterate people in comparison to the elite Persian. Never one to boast of his ancestral Syed nobility, he did compose a divan and a few books in Persian, but poetry in Rekhta was, is and shall remain his forte.

Modern writers frequently use the word ‘takhleeq’ [creation], but in the classical literary dictionary we find the word ‘sannai’ [making]. Mir calls himself “sanna” [maker]:

Sanna-i-turfa hain hum aalam mein rekhtay kay/ Jo Mir ji lagay ga tau sab hunar karein gey

[We are marvellous makers of Rekhta in the world/ The moment our heart is at peace, Mir, we shall exhibit our poetic skill]

Takhleeq and sannai are not synonyms. Takhleeq is destructively creative, referring to something created out of nothing. It takes upon itself to create new language or, at least, new diction, brand new aesthetics and new realities, at the cost of breaking away from tradition and historical linearity.

Sannai is a kind of artifice that deals with existing things and realities. Its raw material is real, present, daily, observed reality, or what is received through tradition and history. But rather than merely mirroring the existent or the tradition, it makes poetry out of them. In this context, we can understand why Mir uses the word “baatein” [utterances] for his poetry.

Baatein hamaari yaad rahain phir baatein aisi na suniyay ga/ Parrhtay kaso ko suniyay ga tau dair talak sar dhuniyay ga

[Do keep alive the memory of my utterances, for no one afterwards will be there to make such utterances/ Whenever you happen to listen to them, you will be captivated for long]

In Urdu, the all-encompassing word ‘baat’ refers to things, matters, issues, subjects — real or imaginary, commonplace, or intellectual. There are at least three reasons to designate Mir’s poetry as baatein.

First, it is close to oral communication. The poetic lines meld the borders of speech and lettering, or of the emulating and making. It is the zenith of any art where the process of making doesn’t foreground. For instance, “Wasl us ka Khuda naseeb karay/ Mir ji chahta hai kia kia kucchh” [May I have a meet-up with my beloved/ Mir, my heart harbours so many desires] is the epitome of Mir’s art, in which the realms of prose and poetry are magically alloyed.

Second, 18th century north India’s literary culture was largely oral, a culture of baatein. Poets and daastaangoh transmitted their works orally to their audience. Mir’s divans were handwritten, but their accessibility was limited. Posthumous publication meant he couldn’t personally experience the wider pleasure and power of the printed word. Yes, his poetry contains the terms ‘kaaghaz’ [paper], ‘likhna’ [write] and ‘mussawada’ [manuscript], but his was a time when only a few elites had access to the written word.

Interestingly, Mir employs ‘mussawaday’ in the following verse, which insinuates the ‘inaccessibility of the manuscript’:

Dil mein kitnay mussawaday thay walay
Aik paish uss ke roobaroo na gaya

[My heart had many manuscripts/ But none could be placed before him]

Third, Mir’s poetry encompassed a multitude of issues pertaining to daily, real, emotional, political and intellectual life. As bataai [oral communication] never comes to an end, the relevance of Mir’s poetry shall not cease to be felt and rejoiced.

The writer is a Lahore-based critic, short story writer and Professor of Urdu at the University of the Punjab. His most recent publication is Naey Naqqad Ke Naam Khatoot. He tweets @NasirAbbas65

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 16th, 2023