Shahryar Read online

  SHAHRYAR

  A Life in Poetry

  RAKHSHANDA JALIL

  To Gulzar sahab who paints pictures with his words

  Contents

  Introduction

  SECTION I

  1.From ‘Kunwar sahab’ to ‘Shahryar’

  2.The Call of Unknown Destinations

  3.Shahryar’s Ghazals: Of Dreams, Desire and Despair

  4.Shahryar’s Nazms: Of Time, Topicality and Tautness

  SECTION II

  A Selection of Poems

  Bibliography

  Index

  Acknowledgements

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Bechi hai sehr ke haathon

  Raaton ki siyahi tumne

  Kii hai jo tabahi tumne

  Kisi roz sazaa paoge

  (You have sold the ink of the night

  To the morning

  You will be punished some day

  For the devastation you have wrought)

  SINCE SHAHRYAR’S death on 13 February 2012, obituaries and tributes have tumbled out – in print, on electronic media and by way of seminars and academic discussions – which harp, in one way or the other, on details of his personal life that have virtually nothing to do with his poetry. A lot of people wish to link the angst and despair, the melancholy and dislocation that we see in some of his poetry, with events and experiences and a sense of loneliness in the poet’s own persona and personal life. This seems especially unfortunate since Shahryar was not a particularly lonely man; in fact, he was surrounded by friends and well-wishers and kept in constant touch with his many admirers through his cellphone, which was constantly by his side. Secondly, in seeking this artificial linkage, we are being unfair to Shahryar the poet. A study of his oeuvre in its entirety shows how he evolved a set of symbols, images and metaphors that, while seemingly personal, were crafted precisely so they could transcend the personal and the individual. This evolution mirrors, to some extent, his ambiguous relationship with the two major literary movements that shaped his poetic sensibility – tarraqui pasand tehreek (the Progressive Writers’ Movement [PWM]) and jadeediyat (modernism). Also, excessive dwelling on the circumstances of a creative writer’s personal life detracts from a critical understanding of his or her work.

  In this book I will dwell on his life only insofar as it shapes and affects his work. My concern here is to write a critical biography, one that places Shahryar’s poetry in the continuum of modern Urdu poetry. Therefore, this book is as much a study of a poet’s life and work as it is an attempt to write the literary history of contemporary Urdu poetry.

  Was Shahryar tarraqui pasand or jadeed parast? His critics – and there are many – have maintained that he consistently refused to belong to any one group because he wished to displease neither. I feel this ambiguity is not a sign of weakness but a symbol of his free-spiritedness and refusal to conform. The individualism and romanticism of his early years, as evident in his first collection of poetry, Ism-e Azam (‘The Highest Name’) published in 1965, soon gave way to an acutely felt concern for the world around him in subsequent collections such as Saatwan Dar (‘The Seventh Doorway’, 1969) and Hijr ke Mausam (‘Seasons of Separation’, 1978); in fact, as we will see in this study, even in the early days there are poems that defy easy categorization and the sharp distinction between the demands of the two major schools of thought that dominated Urdu poetry from the time Shahryar began his literary career. While refusing to fully adopt the vocabulary of the inquilabi shair (revolutionary poet) favoured by the progressives, he refused to write merely to satisfy his own creative self or ease the burden of his soul, thus differing sharply from the jadeed parast as well. Shahryar continued to explore meaningful ways of communication and, in the process, gifted Urdu literature with a unique lexicography, a whole new set of images and symbols. His poetry mirrors the evolution of symbols that, while seeming personal, transcend the self and the individual and speak of universal concerns. I think it is this that lifts his poetry leagues above his contemporaries and it is this singular ability to speak for himself while also speaking for the world that defines his entire poetic oeuvre.

  Unlike the modernists, Shahryar never bemoaned the futility of communication, nor did he resort to the use of dense, impenetrable images and idioms. I would like to believe that in the age-old debate on Art for Art’s Sake v. Art for Life’s Sake, Shahryar aligned himself with the latter, despite his avowed refusal to wear a label or a tag.

  In Shahryar’s poetry the image is important. He cloaks it in a magnificent robe of words, words that have a mesmeric spell of their own. As a reader, and especially a critical reader, you have to wrench yourself away from their insistent, inward pull to look again at the image; once out of that tilismic enchantment, you look at the beauty of the image conjured up by the play upon words. It shines through the many layers of meaning in all its crystal clarity, its freshness and poignancy. My experience, both as a reader and translator of Shahryar’s poetry, tells me that that is when, maybe, you have reached the core of Shahryar’s poetry, felt its newness and its allure in a way that is almost tactile. That is also the point when, perhaps, you have felt yourself drawn through an invisible doorway into the portal of wakefulness.

  This book attempts to lay the bare facts of Shahryar’s life before the reader; as I have said before, much prurient interest has been displayed in his personal life. While I have tried to flesh out Shahryar the father, friend, teacher and raconteur par excellence, my interest lies primarily in analysing his work, locating it in the trajectory of contemporary Indian writings and evaluating his extraordinary contribution not merely to modern Urdu poetry but, more significantly, modern Indian poetry. It seems especially unfortunate that we – readers and critics alike – seem to categorize writers according to the language in which they write and to box them in a benign parochialism. Shahryar, then, is seen by many as an Urdu poet and not the poet of an age. In the thoughtless ease with which we label poets and writers, we sometimes do them a disservice. My contention in this book is that while indeed Shahryar wrote in Urdu, his poetry is by no means confined to or of interest only to Urdu readers. In writing in the English language about a poet who wrote in Urdu, I am hoping to pull down at least some of the picket fences we construct around our own literatures.

  Rakhshanda Jalil

  New Delhi

  SECTION I

  1

  From ‘Kunwar sahab’ to ‘Shahryar’

  Jab bhi milti hai mujhe ajnabi lagti kyun hai

  Zindagi roz naye rang badalti kyun hai

  (Why does she seem like a stranger whenever she meets me

  Why does Life change colours every day)

  Birth and Early Years

  THERE IS a mystery about the exact year of Shahryar’s birth. Keen that his son should get a job in the police force at the earliest, his father had his age reduced by a few years, making his official date of birth 16 June 1936. Born in a family of Lalkhani1 Rajput Muslims, he was named Kunwar Akhlaq Muhammad Khan. In later years, he took ‘Shahryar’ as a nom de plume upon the suggestion of Khalilur Rahman Azmi, his friend and mentor in Aligarh. Interestingly, the takhallus soon became the name, one that best defined the poet and his personality, for both ‘Kunwar’ and ‘Shahryar’ are variations of royalty, namely ‘prince’ and ‘king’, respectively.

  Shahryar’s father was Abu Muhammad Khan, and his mother Bismillah Begum. At the time of Shahryar’s birth in Anwla in Bareilly district, his father was a darogha in the police department. Since his father was posted to different cities and towns, young Shahryar also spent some time in Biraura and Chaundhaura in Bulandshahar district. In an interview to Prem Kumar, he recalled thos
e long-ago days:

  I have a hazy memory of Biraura, but no memory of its scents and smells. I remember Chaundhaura quite well, though … That road, the mud that filled its potholes … I remember going there in a tonga. I remember going to the house of my maternal uncle, I remember its gate and how massive it was that an elephant could pass through it along with its howdah. I remember the masjid beside it and the madrasa attached to it … We used to go to the dargah of Banne Sharif at the time of sunset. We would stand beside the dark river and hear the voice about which we had heard so many stories. I remember the urs at the dargah that lasted for several days. My mother and aunt were from Chaundhaura. Both my father and his elder brother had got married in Chaundhaura. We used to have a lot of property there. My father used to visit the place quite often – both from Beniganj and later from here in Aligarh.2

  After his primary education in Hardoi, Shahryar was sent to Aligarh in 1948 to study in the City School. This was Shahryar’s first brush with Urdu as a medium of education. Till then he had studied in English-medium schools. Like thousands of Muslim youth from the provincial hinterland, Aligarh proved to be not merely a turning point in the life of this young Rajput boy from western Uttar Pradesh, but also shaped and to a large extent governed his life and career. Blessed with a naturally athletic built, Shahryar would often be found playing badminton at the Non-Resident Students Club (NRSC) or practising hockey in the university grounds. Many of his friends from those early days remember him as ‘Kunwar sahab’. The poet known to the world as Shahryar was still waiting in the wings.

  Shahryar’s elder sister died at a very young age. His mother never quite recovered from the shock and began to stay unwell. Years later, Shahryar spoke of his mother with great affection but he also recalled that despite her being alive, it was his father who became both father and mother to him. Shahryar recalled his mother as a compassionate woman who never sent away a beggar from her door without giving something, as someone who loved children and someone who made no distinction between rich and poor, master and servant. Evidently, these qualities impressed him, for somewhere they trickled down and came to affect his own temperament. He also admitted to being influenced by his parents, by his father’s decision not to remarry despite his mother’s deteriorating mental health, and credited them and their relationship for making him ‘realistic despite being idealistic’.3

  After his father’s retirement from the police service, Shahryar’s family shifted base to Aligarh and lived in the Masoodabad neighbourhood near the numaish ground from 1948 till 1955. These were carefree years: sneaking off to the numaish ground to watch the bioscope till late in the night, watching movies at Royal Talkies, reading detective novels and pulp fiction. However, with time, the pressure to join the police force began to mount. Shahryar chose to leave the family home in 1955 rather than end up being a thanedar somewhere in the vast hinterland of Uttar Pradesh as was expected of him, since his elder brother had already followed in their father’s footsteps and joined the police. In those years of homelessness, his university expenses were borne by friends and he lived with Khalilur Rahman Azmi who not only provided him with a roof over his head but also spotted his poetic talent and encouraged him to write.

  The Aligarh of the late 1950s was a remarkable place. In 1955, its vice chancellor, Dr Zakir Husain, had announced at the annual convocation: ‘The way Aligarh works, the way Aligarh thinks, the contribution Aligarh makes to Indian life … will largely determine the place Mussalmans will occupy in the pattern of Indian life.’ At pains to establish the secular and nationalist credentials of the university, Dr Husain sought out non-Muslim teachers from universities and colleges across the length and breadth of India and brought them to Aligarh.4 Under his active encouragement, farsighted teachers began preparing a fresh crop of talented young men and women who would join Jawaharlal Nehru’s nation-building project.5

  Having long since shed the ‘taint’ of its association with the Pakistan movement, the process of refashioning and reinventing the university at Aligarh as the cradle of secularism had begun from the late 1940s itself. In his convocation address of 20 February 1949, the venerable Maulana Abul Kalam Azad had expressed his happiness over the ‘new awakening in the atmosphere of the university’ and assured the students with the following words: ‘You can expect in the secular and democratic set-up that all the doors are open for you. With a sense of responsibility, I want to assure you that no door is closed for you. The only condition is that you have to work with dedication and devotion.’6

  By the time Shahryar came to Aligarh as a young man, there was a buoyancy in the air and great expectations from the student community. Colonel Bashir Husain Zaidi had taken over as vice chancellor in 1956 from Dr Zakir Husain who had departed, upon completion of his term, first to take up a position as a member of the Rajya Sabha and then as governor of Bihar, before going on to become the vice-president and eventually the president of India. Zaidi, an able administrator who had supervised the bloodless accession of the princely state of Rampur to the Union of India, proved his mettle as not merely an efficient and diplomatic supervisor of this hallowed institution but also a master builder. Known to posterity as the ‘Shahjahan of Aligarh’, he launched an ambitious building project and added several fine specimens to Aligarh’s sprawling and handsome campus. The sleek modern buildings built during his tenure such as the Kennedy House, the Maulana Azad Library, the University Polytechnic and the Engineering College showed that the university – having stabilized sufficiently during Dr Zakir Husain’s tenure – was now poised for a new phase of growth and expansion. Zaidi and his successors – Badruddin Tyabji and Ali Yavar Jung – brought leading scholars from all over the country to teach at Aligarh.

  By the mid-1950s the university was bustling with some of the finest minds in different fields of the arts, humanities, social studies and natural sciences.7 The scene in the departments of Urdu and Hindi was exceptionally lively. Ale Ahmad Suroor8 had left his teaching job at the University of Lucknow and joined a department that was teeming with some of the finest poets, fiction writers and critics.9 There was, of course, the venerable Rashid Ahmad Siddiqui, humourist, prose stylist and critic par excellence, as well as Qazi Abdul Sattar, the novelist and short-story writer. Khurshidul Islam, the poet and critic who had returned from a teaching stint at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), brought with him a whiff of cosmopolitanism. Ralph Russell, who taught at SOAS, visited Aligarh and spent long hours honing his verbal skills with members of the Urdu department and interacting with staff and students to fully understand the milieu of ‘native’ Urdu speakers.10 The famous Zaidi sisters, Sajida and Zahida, who taught in the departments of education and English respectively, were actively involved in the university’s cultural life. The very air was redolent with cosmopolitanism and liberalism. And yes, socialism and Marxism too! While Aligarh could not be called the stronghold of communism in India, it certainly had its fair share of known and committed communists and a generous number of those who could be called ‘fellow travellers’, that is, those who did not belong to any party or subscribe to any prescribed ideology but were nevertheless inclined towards a democratic, egalitarian and equitable world view.11

  It was in this Aligarh that a young Shahryar found himself; the possibilities it offered were infinitely better, he figured, than the life of a darogha in the vast dusty hinterland of Uttar Pradesh.

  Towards a Poet in the Making

  Sahil se nazara karne walon mein

  Main bhi tha darya se darne walon mein

  Kaghaz ki kashti mein log bahut se thay

  Ek bas main tha paar utarne walon mein

  (Among those who watch from the shore

  I too used to be afraid of the river

  There were many of us in that paper boat

  I was the only one who crossed over)

  Shahryar passed his BA in 1958 and joined MA in psychology thereafter. The first year of MA was enough to convince him th
at he had erred in his choice of subject. He stopped going for his psychology classes altogether by December 1958 and devoted the next few months to reading and writing. He had already begun to write poetry in the final year of his BA.12 The next few months, till he took admission in the Urdu department, were a period of prolific writing. His poetry began to be published in prestigious literary magazines all over the country and he was invited to recite at mushairas both in Aligarh and elsewhere.13 He completed his MA in Urdu in 1961.14

  Shahryar’s contemporary was Rahi Masoom Raza who later went on to earn great name and fame in the film and television industry in Mumbai. Together in BA, Shahryar became a year junior to Rahi on account of losing one year thanks to his aborted tryst with psychology. There was a close competition between the two and when Shahryar’s name came up for the post of secretary of the Urdu Society, he was expected to match Rahi’s triumphs. Much has been made of the legendary rivalry between Shahryar and Rahi, the two bright lights of the department of Urdu at Aligarh. Much has also been made of the twist of fate that got Shahryar the coveted lecturer’s job for which both were contending and which even made Rahi take the university to court.15 With the court ruling in the university’s favour, Rahi chose to turn his face away from the world of academia and go to Bombay (as it was then known) in search of fame and fortune. But we find no trace of rancour and ill will in this description of Shahryar from Rahi’s pen that brims with affection and camaraderie:

  Today I want to introduce you to a new poet. This Kunwar Akhlaq Muhammad is a good-looking and well-dressed young man. With his dusky complexion, large eyes, lithe body, he looks and behaves like a typical Rajput. Having completed his master’s in Urdu from the Aligarh University, he is busy writing his PhD thesis these days. I don’t know how he became ‘Shahryar’. Seven or eight years ago when I met him for the first time, he was fond of getting his photographs taken in a ‘filmi style’. But he had already begun to write poetry and he used to stay with Khalilur Rahman Azmi. I didn’t like his poetry. But no incompetent person had ever been seen with Khalilur Rahman Azmi … And so I thought this shy good-looking young man must certainly be intelligent; and I was proved right.16