The Taste of Words: An Introduction to Urdu Poetry Read Online Free PDF Page B

face playfully hiding, I still remember
    The afternoon sun, the hot roof, your bare, burning feet
    That sweet summons, you arriving, I still remember.
    The rhyme in this ghazal derives primarily from the qafiya, which in this case comes from the rhyming of ‘
bahaana
’
,
‘
zamaana
’
,
‘
chhupaana
’ and ‘
aana
’. It is here that the creativity of the poet is tested the most. The radif in this ghazal is ‘
yaad hai
’, which is a base on which the ghazal stands. In this case, every second line of every stanza would end with the words ‘
yaad hai
’ (the radif), and that phrase would be preceded by a word that rhymed with ‘
bahaana
’ (the qafiya). Ghazals typically contain between five and twenty couplets, which are not necessarily connected to each other in narrative continuity.
    Two more elements of the ghazal to keep in mind are the
matla
and the
maqta.
The matla is a sher in the ghazal, usually the first couplet, where both lines rhyme. The first sher in the above ghazal is a matla. A ghazal may have more than one matla; for instance, in the Faiz ghazal ‘
Tum aaye ho
’ that I have translated in this volume, the first two shers are both considered matlas. The maqta is that sher of a ghazal which contains the poet’s name as a signature (the signature is known as the
takhallus
). Many of the ghazals in this anthology have maqtas, which are often the place where poets showed their flourish. Often, a poet may have more than one takhallus. Ghalib had two: ‘Ghalib’ and, occasionally, ‘Asad’
.
As he said:
    Main ne Majnun pe ladakpan mein, Asad
    Sang uthaya thha, ke sar yaad aaya
    In my childhood, Asad
    I raised a stone to strike Majnu dead
    But then,
    I remembered my own head.
    Typically, the maqta is the last sher of the ghazal. But poets may choose to tweak the format. For example, in the ghazal ‘
Insha-ji utho
’ translated in this book, the matla and the maqta are the same sher.
Qataa
    A qataa, very simply, is a poem of four lines—a quatrain. It may occur in the middle of a ghazal (where the poet is unable to finish a thought in two lines, and chooses to use four). It may also be a stand-alone verse, un-embedded in any long poem. Here is an example of a stand-alone qataa from Faiz:
    Raat yoon dil mein teri khoi hui yaad aayi
    Jaise veerane mein chupke se bahaar aa jaaye
    Jaise sehraaon mein haule se chale baad-e naseem
    Jaise beemar ko be-vajah qaraar aa jaaye
    Your faded memory visited my heart last night
    As if the spring came to the ruins, real quiet
    As if the zephyr silently cooled the desert
    And the sick, miraculously, gained some respite.
Rubaai
    Like a qataa, a rubaai is a four-liner, but it is always a stand-alone mini-poem in its own right. Its rhyming scheme is fixed, with the first, second and fourth line rhyming, while the third line is free. In this sense, one can say that all rubaais are also qataas but all qataas are not rubaais. Furthermore, an astute observer may ask if there is indeed a subtle difference between a stand-alone qataa that follows this fixed rhyme scheme, and a rubaai. The answer really appears to lie in an additional requirement, that the verses of the rubaai should have twelve syllables, and must be amenable to a certain kind of intonation.
    Rubaais were very popular in Farsi poetry (with Omar Khayyam’s poems crossing the linguistic divide into English). One of the best-regarded exponents of the rubaai was Josh Malihabadi; this is considered one of his best:
    Ghunche, teri be-basi pe dil hilta hai
    Tu ek tabassum ke liye khilta hai
    Ghunche ne kaha ke is chaman mein baba
    Ye ek tabassum bhi kise milta hai
    Dear flower, my heart does shake at your sorry plight
    For one smile from your love does your blossom take flight!
    The flower said, ‘Dear friend, don’t mock this garden’s grace
    One smile I have. That’s more than other creatures might.’
Musaddas
    A musaddas may be simply described as a poem in which each unit consists of six lines.