Duniya ne tajurbat-o-hawadis ki shakl mein
Jo kuch mujhe diya hai woh lauta raha hoon main
It's bugging me, this sher. Stooopid, mediocre sentiment, the refuge of every abused-child-turned-axe-murderer. Where the hell are you, regurgitator chappie? come, justify your existence, tell us what you think, show us why someone took the trouble to make you!
3 comments:
Mohtarma, this is a very unfair comment on an imporant sheyr by Sahir.
Literally interpreted, your point is perhaps correct. However, one has to keep in mind that Sahir is returning his bitterness as poetry, so the sheyr actually contradicts itself in its literal connotation.
In another sense, very much like Faiz's 'Mujhse pehli si mohabbat meri mehboob na maang', Sahir's sheyr marks a return to realism, and highlights the fact that his poetry takes its inspiration from reality and does not trace itself to mysticism. This gives a 20th century feel (or a 19th century, if one goes by the European developments in the 19th century) to urdu poetry, in contrast to Ghalib who attributed divine origins to his poetry:
Aate hain gaib sey ye mazaami khayal main,
Ghalib sareer e zaaman nawain kharosh hain.
Chappie’s ghost, eh? :-)
Just, this wasn’t literary criticism – a tangential, gut reaction to one isolated layer of the sher. And ‘chappie’ of course isn’t Sahir (tauba!) but a composite of people who are predictable as to input and output. All of us are products of our inputs and experiences – garbage in, garbage out. A few though surprise us by reacting differently to the very same experiences. Given the same circumstances or backgrounds, occasionally a unique individuality emerges that is not the just the result of these factors, but something more. I really like those kinds of people – individuals, non replicable individuals. I’m explaining this badly, I think.
As to poetry or any other work emerging from gaib vs tajurbat, I confess I find ‘gaib’ infinitely more appealing. And that has nothing to do with what century we find ourselves in.
Truth, like Hamlet's murdered father, has to sometimes make its appearance as a ghost...about the ghaib and tajurbat, it is perhaps a topic for another debate !
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