Khushwant Singh on the great icon of Urdu poetry, Ghalib
Khushwant Singh’s Extraordinary Indians is a compilation of profiles of 50 distinguished Indians, written over the course of many years. The excerpt presented here focuses on Mirza Ghalib’s life.
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If you want to know what the greatest figure in Urdu literature, Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, looked like and how he lived in the Delhi of his times, you will not find it in his poetry, which is often difficult to comprehend. You will, however, find it in the letters he wrote to his friends and admirers. An inveterate letterwriter, he wrote four to five letters a day and even posted them himself. Most of his correspondents were aspiring poets who sent him their compositions to correct; he did so with great care. In his replies, he invariably put in a couplet or two of his own and gave a detailed account of how he was faring.
Asadullah Khan was a handsome man—tall, lightskinned and with an imperious martial bearing. His forefathers, Seljuk Turks, were professional soldiers. Asad was a man of peace and, even as a boy, liked to study Arabic, Persian and Urdu. He was convinced that he was not going to be N TIO FIC N NO a soldier but a poet. He took on the pseudonym Ghalib. He was married off in his teens. His wife bore him seven sons and daughters, all of whom died in their infancy. He moved to Delhi to gain access to Mughal King Bahadur Shah Zafar, a poet of substance, and the nobility which patronised poets. His wife proved to be a poor companion. For companionship and pleasure, Ghalib sought the company of dancing girls and prostitutes. He never earned enough to maintain his household in comfort and was always in debt to moneylenders.
When the Sepoy Mutiny broke out in 1857, Ghalib had no sympathy with the mutineers and stopped calling on King Bahadur Shah Zafar, who had become a puppet in their hands. During the months the fighting lasted, he did not go out of his house. Evidently, families of Muslim hakims, who lived in Ballimaran, which was where Ghalib had his residence, also did not support the mutineers.
Consequently, when the British and their Indian allies re- occupied Delhi, they drove out Muslims whom they suspected of supporting the mutineers but allowed Ballimaran Muslims to stay on. Raja Mohinder Singh of Patiala put his troops at both ends of the bazaar to ensure their safety.
Ghalib mentions his daily routine in many letters to his A Woman’s Place Is at the Top: The Biography of Annie Smith Peck is the first full length work about Annie Smith, a scholar, educator, writer, lecturer, mountain climber, suffragist, and political activist who single-handedly carved her place on the map of mountain climbing and international relations. friends and patrons. He was not an early riser because his nights were disturbed by the malfunctioning of his bladder; he had to get up to urinate every hour. He had a frugal breakfast of peeled almonds and syrups; mutton broth at midday; and four kababs and an ounce of wine mixed with rose water made up his dinner. During the mango season, he consumed u p t o twelve mangoes i n one sitting every afternoon. His bowels were often out of order and boils would erupt all over his body. He was full of remorse: “I am old, idiotic, sinful, sensual, profligate and, withal, a man lost to shame.” He describes himself as “sattra-bahattra.” Before he was seventy, he started losing his memory, vision and hearing.
Ghalib did not take religious injunctions too seriously. He had his own version of Roza during Ramadan. He wrote: “I observe fasts, but keep my fasts well-humoured with occasional sips of water, and a few puffs of the hookah. Now and then I eat a few morsels of bread also.
“People here have a strange sense of things and a strange disposition. I am just whiling away the fast, but they accuse me of non-observance of this holy ritual. They should understand that skipping the fasts is one thing, and whil- ing them away is quite another.”
He never spared himself from self- criticism. “I have learned to enjoy even my griefs and insults. I imagine myself as a different entity, separate from myself. When a fresh misfortune befalls me, I say, “Well served. Ghalib receives another slap in his face. How proud he was.
How he used to brag that he was a great poet and a Persian scholar without peer far and near. Well, deal with the moneylenders now.
“But how can this shameless fellow speak? He borrowed money left and right— wine from the cellar, flowers from the florist, clothes from the draper, mangoes from the fruit seller, and money from the creditors. He should have realised that he had no means to repay the debts.”’
He had occasional outbursts of temper. When his publisher inserted some other poets’ lines in his collection, he exploded: “I do not know the b…..d who has inserted into my diwan the verses that you have sent me. May this scoundrel, his father, his grandfather, and his greatgrandfather, right back to his seven adulterous generations, be damned.’
Ghalib also knew his worth. When somebody asked him for his postal address, he cut him down to size: “Asadullah Ghalib, Delhi, will be enough.” So it was. And is today. Delhi is known as the city where Ghalib lived and died.
An inveterate letter-writer, Ghalib wrote four to five letters a day and even posted them himself. Most of his correspondents were aspiring poets who sent him their compositions to correct; he did so with great care.
Extracted with permission from Extraordinary Indians: A Book of Profiles , by Khushwant Singh, published by Aleph Book Company