In Urdu, he won everlasting fame

In her critical biography of Ghalib, the author analyses and interprets the poet’s Persian and Urdu oeuvre

(Penguin) turns a sharp gaze the poet’s life, work and philosophy, while also breaking new ground. You analyse and interpret his work, including a large corpus of his rejected verses What has been your approach to reading Ghalib?

When I began my study of Ghalib my focus was his “rejected” verses. I was curious why he did not publish half of his Urdu compositions. Ghalib’s Persian Divan is five times the size of his Urdu. Clearly, he did not prune it as drastically as he did his Urdu. I was bothered by Ghalib’s asymmetrical corpus. I was interested to find out more about his approach in editing his poetry so drastically. Did it have something to do with publishing? The transition from manuscript to print culture impacted the circulation of literature. Then there was the decline in Persian learning and the rise of modern languages such as Urdu. My approach to reading Ghalib was to look at his oeuvre as a whole — as a Persian and Urdu poet. I had to dive into the dynamics of the literary culture in Ghalib’s time.

How did Ghalib’s life as an Urdu poet change after his famous Calcutta sojourn? His epic journey to Calcutta was path-changing. Calcutta was metropolitan; print was in evidence in pamphlets and newspapers, its ambience different from Delhi. Ghalib had opportunities to meet Iranians and also people from Central Asia at literary gatherings. The gatherings were not of the courtly type; there was more openness and greater freedom to disagree. When Ghalib presented his Persian poems at a prestigious

some poets criticized his Persian usage! This annoyed Ghalib. He held a grudge against those critics for the rest of his life. Ghalib began writing mostly in Persian perhaps because he realized the wider reach of Persian language and literature. His letters to friends back in Delhi (written in ornate Persian) constitute a valuable archive that shines a light on north Indian literary culture in the first quarter of the 19th century.

What marked Ghalib’s return to writing in Urdu?

In 1850, he was appointed to write a history of the Mughals in Persian. He returned fully to Urdu upon being appointed Bahadur Shah Zafar’s in 1854. He was also the of the heir apparent, Mirza Fakhru. Zafar’s poetry was in Urdu and Ghalib offered or corrections. His attendance at the court also became frequent. Ghalib now produced ghazals tempered by his 20 years of composing in a classical mode in Persian. His mature poetry is more polished in that he seems to be paying greater attention to crafting than ineffable imaginative flights. As he grew older, he preferred writing letters in Urdu instead of Persian. In my opinion, Urdu as a modern language was more in sync with his ideas. Ultimately, it is in Urdu that he won everlasting fame.

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