TO say that the appeal of Ghalib is timeless is to say the obvious. Indeed it is a ranked understatement. Ghalib’s poetry has fascinated generations of Urdu lovers. His poetry is one of those rare phenomena that never face the threat of getting antiquated. The life and times of Ghalib have been thoroughly researched and written about in the subcontinent, as has been done elsewhere, albeit on a smaller scale. But such is the disarming charm of the man that every now and then someone sets out to do it all over again.

There is something about the man that makes us love him. And it is not too difficult to locate what that ‘something’ is. His life — dotted with everyday financial difficulties and the wider denial of his craft — had shades of experiences that mark the existence of the common man even today. It is not without reason that he is known by such terms of endearment as ‘Chacha Ghalib’ and ‘Mirza Nausha’.

The birth of a genius in any case is not an everyday happening. If Allama Iqbal is to be taken on face value, it takes “thousands of years”. But even if you take out the element of overstatement that is an integral part of our poetic tradition, it still takes a century to produce a poet of real substance. Ghalib, for sure, was one.

Without much of a debate, the last three centuries have belonged to Meer Taqi Meer, Ghalib and Iqbal in the realm of Urdu poetry. It is a glittering chain that linked the 18th century to the 20th. The world of Meer, generally speaking, is one of crippled and helpless creatures wailing over a litany of woes, while that of Iqbal is inhabited by super-humans almost in denial of their ground reality.

Compared to these two, the world of Ghalib is that of perfectly normal human beings that we come across in our everyday life. That immediately facilitates the reader’s connection with Ghalibian cosmology regardless of the linguistic barriers that a modern reader would sometimes find difficult to decipher.

It may sound like a bit of a conundrum, but Ghalib, for sure, is everyone’s genius next door. To capture a life so unique is, to say the very least, tricky. You want to underscore the ‘genius’ part but without diluting the ‘next door’ qualifier. The slightest tilt towards the latter, however, entails the serious risk of compromising the former. It is like having to walk the tightrope all through the process.

The fact that Gulzar, the much decorated craftsman and himself a poet of some distinction, was able to do it with absolute adroitness for television audiences some quarter of a century ago is now part of the larger Ghalibian folklore. The serial portrayed the life and times of Ghalib for all times to come and for audiences around the globe. To date, it remains a reference point for many.

The puritans might have scoffed at the idea of putting the legend of Ghalib on television — especially with the character shown singing his own verses — but it was every bit worth the effort. A thousand books on Ghalib could not have taken the lore forward like the movie did and continues to do even for those who may not be as comfortable with the literary finesse otherwise.

Every age has its preferred mode and medium of expression, and when it was done back in 1988, film and television, indeed, were well on their way towards overtaking the written word. In today’s online world, it is ‘Ghalib’, the tele-serial, which is introducing Ghalib, the poet, to the young, helping keep the man alive for posterity, and enchanting millions of those who are already awestruck by the creative output of the master crafter that Ghalib, indeed, was. The credit must go to Gulzar for having thought of something so unique and for having the belief to execute it in practical terms.

It is some accomplishment that in the domain of moving images, Ghalib arguably rivals the still image painted in Yaadgar-e-Ghalib by Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali that remains a landmark in literature on the poet. Hali’s lucid, everyday diction had much to do with the distinction that the book achieved.

While summing up, Hali had indulged in a bit of sarcasm about the changing social ethos of the time, saying: “I concede that I undertook this gigantic task neither to fulfil some immediate public necessity, nor in the larger national interest. It has been a labour of love and that needs no further motive. It is something like the breeze which just blows, like the river that just flows.”

The story, as narrated by Gulzar in the preface to the screenplay that has been published recently, is no different. It remains a labour of love for him as well. Taking on the generally held belief that the Ghalib household had two domestic servants; “Kalloo, who remained with him till the end, and Wafadar, who used to heavily stammer”, Gulzar had insisted that there was a third servant there. “I was the third one. The other two earned their freedoms with their physical deaths; I remain Ghalib’s servant to date.”

Had it not been for such emotional attachment and, indeed, the intensity of such attachment, Gulzar, or anyone else for that matter, could not have penned the script with such poise and aplomb.

Having spent time with Ghalib as his disciple, Hali had enough material to paint his sketch with. Gulzar was not as lucky. He had to depend on indirect sources. The pain he must have taken for “10 or 11 years” in gathering his raw material is evident by the simple fact that the Ghalib we see in the movie is remarkably, almost incredibly, close to the image we think of while going through volumes and volumes of letters that the poet had written in his life.

From Wali Deccani and through Meer, Zouq, Momin and right down to Daagh, all those great lives have been described by others in their own different idioms. It is Ghalib that we know in person through his letters. And therein lies the thrill. They must have served a great purpose for Gulzar, but simultaneously it would surely have been a killing limitation.

Since Ghalib had reinvented the art of writing letters — converting them from monologue to dialogue — the true spirit of his life, his struggles, his frustrations and his great capacity to keep intact his characteristic humorous undertone, any image of Ghalib other than what Gulzar portrayed would have simply been a crime in the eyes of all those bewitched by the charm of Ghalib.

The publication of the movie’s screenplay, both in India and Pakistan in recent times, is like having the best of both worlds — the worlds of celluloid and print — and browsing through it is often as gratifying an experience as going through Deewan-e-Ghalib itself. This, in many ways, is meant to be the ultimate compliment to anything related to Ghalib. If you have doubts, check it out for yourself. It’s a dare!

The reviewer is a Dawn staffer.

Mirza Ghalib: Aik Sawanahi Manzarnama

(FILM SCRIPT)

By Gulzar

Maktaba-e-Daniyal, Karachi

ISBN 978-969-419-054-9

272pp.