The following extract has been taken from Saif Mahmood’s book Beloved Delhi: A Mughal City and Her Greatest Poets, from the chapter ‘Mir Taqi Mir: The Incurable Romancer of Delhi (1722-1810)’. The passage has been edited with permission from the author

If you want to rubbish Winston Churchill’s claim — “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it” — you must try to look for the relics and remnants of the life of Mir Taqi Mir — that fiery romancer of Delhi, that fiercely self-respecting poet, that passionate lover and that quintessential Dilliwala, whom Urdu literature today knows as Khuda-i-Sukhan [The God of Poetry]. It was Mir who, in the words of the noted critic Jamil Jalibi, “brought the Urdu language out of the royal court and made it stand on the staircases of Delhi’s Jama Masjid.” It was for the same Mir that Mirza Ghalib would later say:

Rekhte ke tum hi ustaad nahin ho, Ghalib
Kehte hain agley zamaane mein koi Mir bhi tha

[You are not the lone master of Rekhta, Ghalib / They say, in days gone by there was one Mir, too]

And whom the Poet Laureate of the last Mughal court, Ustaad Zauq, would envy:

Na hua, par na hua Mir ka andaaz naseeb
Zauq, yaaron ne bohot zor ghazal
mein maara

[They couldn’t, they just couldn’t earn Mir’s style / Zauq, the fellows worked hard on their poetry]

This was Mir. And he wrote history. But history treated him rather shabbily. ...

A young Mir arrived in Delhi in or around 1733 and made the city his home. It is believed that in Delhi Mir lived at three different localities — Kucha Chelan, Chandni Mahal and Matia Mahal, all in the heart of Shahjanabad. All three localities exist to this day and are a short walk from each other. Kucha Chelan ... used to be a sought-after neighbourhood in the 18th and 19th centuries and many of the city’s elite lived here. The area later became home to some distinguished scholars, including the renowned Persian academic Imam Bakhsh Sahbai, the noted Islamic scholar Mufti Kifayatullah and the legendary educationist Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. During India’s freedom struggle it became a Muslim stronghold and was home to, among others, Asaf Ali, the prominent freedom fighter who would later become independent India’s first ambassador to the United States of America and after whom one of Delhi’s major roads is named. Asaf Ali’s house in Kucha Chelan was regularly visited by leaders across parties, including Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It was in Kucha Chelan that Jinnah in 1941 launched Dawn, now Pakistan’s most prominent daily, as a weekly publication of the Muslim League supervised by Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, who would later serve as Pakistan’s first prime minister.

The second neighbourhood where Mir lived, Chandni Mahal, is the locality just behind Delite Cinema on Asaf Ali Road and is believed to have been named after a mahal (palace) that once stood here. Today the most prominent landmark of the locality is its police station. Matia Mahal, where Mir moved next, is the area facing Gate No 1 of the great mosque Jama Masjid, and it, too, was named after a palace that stood here in the early 17th century. ... Today the area is famous for its roadside eateries and a few bookshops on the stretch known as Urdu Bazaar, mostly selling Islamic religious literature.

When Mir reached Delhi, the reins of the Mughal empire were in the hands of Muhammad Shah Rangeela and Delhi was overflowing with poetry and literature. ... Mir soon came in contact with a prominent nobleman, Khwaja Muhammad Basit, who in turn introduced him to Samsamud Daula Shah Nawaz Khan, the imperial paymaster and marshal of nobility in the Mughal empire. Samsamud Daula had known Mir’s father and had immense respect for him. Out of sympathy for Mir, he made provision for a daily stipend for him from his own treasury. ... Now that he was assured of a daily income, Mir first found quarters for himself in Kucha Chelan. Awestruck by the sheer splendour of the place, he would later marvel at its grandeur:

Haft-aqleem har gali hai kahien
Dilli se bhi dayaar hote hain
[No lane opens into seven climes anywhere else / Places like Delhi do exist]

Thus began Mir’s poetic journey in Delhi — a place he remained passionately in love with till he breathed his last.

Mir seems to have initially stayed in the city for about six years. In 1739, the year which marked the invasion of Delhi by Nadir Shah, Samsamud Daula was killed in the Battle of Karnal and Mir was, once again, left without any financial support. He returned to Agra but the decision proved to be disastrous. In Agra, Mir, who was 18 now, saw a girl who was already married and fell in love with her. He started meeting her discreetly and she reciprocated his love. Mir started dreaming of a life with her and when he was not with her, he would spend all his time thinking about her. He was consumed by love. One day the girl met him and told him that she did not see a future with him and that it would be best that they parted ways. Mir was heartbroken. When his family came to know of the affair, they mistreated him so badly that the already dejected and disconsolate Mir lost his mental balance. At night, he would be scared to look at the moon, for whenever he looked at it, he would imagine the girl sitting inside the moon. Her image would haunt him. His mental state deteriorated. His family resorted to spiritual cures, and when they did not succeed, they locked him up in a tiny cell and starved him. When even this did not improve his condition, a healer advised them to drain the ‘bad blood’ out of his body. The already starved, confined and psychologically fragile young man was made to bleed until he fell unconscious. When he got a little better and regained some strength and mental balance, somehow, miraculously, he escaped his family and made his way back to Delhi. However, this incident, which is narrated by Mir in one of his long poems —‘Masnavi Maamlaat-i-Ishq’ [Affairs of Love] — had a lasting effect on his mind and he would experience occasional bouts of madness till the end of his life.

Javed Khan, the darogha [police chief] of the Mughal court during the reign of Muhammad Shah Rangeela, had risen rapidly through the ranks after Rangeela died in 1748 and was succeeded by his pleasure-loving son Ahmad Shah Bahadur. Javed, who was a handsome transgender, grew close to Ahmad Shah and was soon so powerful that he was said to be the de facto Emperor. As long as Javed was alive Mir did not have to fend for himself. But Javed soon overreached himself and, on a couple of serious state matters his advice proved calamitous for the Emperor. … In September 1752, Javed was killed by Safdar Jung’s men, and Mir again lost all patronage.

However, as before, his patron-less days did not last long. By killing Javed, Safdar Jung had made enemies in the Mughal court and soon a rival faction led by Imadul Mulk, a prominent minister, started to become powerful. Imadul Mulk was himself a poet of sorts and occasionally invited Mir to ‘mend’ his poetry. In him, Mir found not only a wealthy but also a very powerful patron. In 1754, Imadul Mulk oversaw the dethronement of Ahmad Shah Bahadur and his replacement on the Mughal throne by Azizuddin Alamgir II. In the meanwhile, Mir had also come in touch with Raja Jugal Kishore, who served as the agent of Alivardi Khan Mahabbat Jung, Nawab of Bengal, in the Mughal court. Raja Jugal Kishore was fond of poetry too, and, in fact, considered himself a poet. He requested Mir to be his ustad and help him improve his poetic skills, but Mir did not think much of his verses and, not finding them worthy of improvement, is said to have “scratched a line across most of them.” Remarkably, this didn’t seem to ruin his chances with Jugal Kishore, who did Mir the favour of introducing him to Raja Nagar Mal, deputy minister in the Mughal court, who took a shine to the poet. Soon Mir became a close confidant of the Raja and remained in his patronage for almost 14 years. …

After Nagar Mal ... Mir did not find another patron in Delhi. By the mid-1760s, he was in dire straits. … With no patronage, Mir was forced to fend for himself — in the only way he knew. Right outside the Qila-i-Moalla, the Jama Masjid was a great tourist attraction for visitors. With its lively surroundings, it had also become a favourite haunt for locals who spent their evenings relishing the delicious kebabs sold by its wide, sweeping steps. And around the mosque had come up shops selling various necessities. Mir would sit on the steps of the Jama Masjid and compose verses not only for visitors, but also for traders. If he needed medicines, he would compose a verse or two for the pharmacist who would offer him the required medicines in lieu of his verse. If he wanted to buy clothes, he would pay the cloth-merchant in poetry.

Tourists and shopkeepers would buy him food in exchange for his couplets. In this pursuit, he wrote a number of verses praising the physical appearance of men he wanted to buy from. These and other verses have led to a debate about Mir’s sexual orientation. There is no doubt, though, that Mir did write homoerotic verses. He also wrote verses which, by current standards, would probably qualify as obscene. But scholars, including Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, believe that in those days homosexuality and pornography were not frowned upon.

So Mir had created a barter system of sorts and made poetry his currency. But how long could such an arrangement go on? Soon he sank into penury. On the one hand, life in Delhi was becoming unbearable on account of this woeful financial condition and, on the other, he could not bear his beloved city being repeatedly plundered. He eventually went into seclusion.

The only way out of this wretchedness, it seemed, was migration to Lucknow, where the ruler, Nawab Asafud Daula, was known to be a great lover of Urdu poetry and a generous patron of Urdu poets. Sauda had already migrated to Lucknow and later died there. So had Aarzu. Finally, in 1782, a year after Sauda’s death, with a heavy heart and tearful eyes, Mir bid adieu to Delhi for good and migrated to Lucknow:

Ab toh jaate hain bu’tkade se Mir
Phir mileinge agar khuda laaya
[And so we depart from this house of idols, Mir / Perhaps we’ll meet again, if God brings us back]

Beloved Delhi: A Mughal
City and Her Greatest
Poets
By Saif Mahmood
Speaking Tiger, India
ISBN: 978-9388070546
368pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, September 23rd, 2018