Book Review | Diligently unfurling Ghalib

The cover of this diligent and elegant introduction to Ghalib’s life and work —for the academic as well as the dilettante — proclaims:
���Hoga koi aisa bhi
‘Ghalib’ ko na jaane…”
I consequently have to admit that growing up in India one is aware that Ghalib ka naam tho sab koi jaane. Of course, I knew of him as perhaps the foremost poet of Urdu; that he lived through the Indian mutiny and that there were some ambivalent reports of his allegiances and behaviour within and during it; that he professed to be half a Muslim as he drank alcohol but didn’t touch pork.
I recall the one couplet that my friends and I had memorised:
“Kown hai jo nahin hai haajatmand
Meri haajat ko kown ravaa karega?��
Dr Anisur Rahman, critic, poet, translator and former professor at Jamia Millia University has now, through the translation of two hundred selected couplets of Ghalib’s verse, granted the reader a comprehensive guide to his musical and philosophical talents and conceits.
After an appreciative foreword by Professor Vinay Dharwadkar of the University of Wisconsin, USA, there is a brief introduction to Ghalib’s life and troubled times.
Then the verses — written in Urdu, Devnagari and Roman phonic script — presumably to read aloud and savour the sound and music of the verse. Then in brackets, the dictionary meanings of the Urdu words and phrases in the couplets, followed by Anisur Rahman’s translation into English verse which, expertly renders them in faithful rhyme.
On the opposite page to each couplet Dr Rahman provides the reader with a comprehensive philosophical exposition or explanation of the verse. The critical explanations extend into Rahman’s analysis of the mechanisms of the poem telling us — to choose just one instance — that a line which begins with “it is said��� ends with “and so it’s true”, giving us in one line the ambivalent demotic of the authority of truth.
This approach is, I assume, aimed at conveying the charm of Ghalib’s poetry through its rhyming and metrical music and its aphoristic and philosophical construction and meaning, leaving very little to the interpretation or imagination of the reader. Take for instance this couplet:
“Ranj se khuugar hua Insaan, tho mit jaataa hai ranj
Mushkilein mujh per padii itnii ke aasaan ho gaen��
The translation:
“When man is used to sorrows,
sorrows leave man for good
So many hardships I suffered
So very well I stood���
Then the critical explanation (needed??):
“If pleasure is a short season in life, sorrows and sufferings, too, come to an end at one point of time…. “
���And the hard-covered book is beautifully designed.
The Essential Ghalib
Anisur Rahman
HarperCollins India
pp. 448; Rs 799