Baad-e-Siyaah
2011-02-21 11:07:15 UTC
My first book of Urdu verses was predictably ‘Diwaan e Ghalib’ in
paperback. I bought it from the pavement along with Arthur Hailey’s
plagiarized Money Changers (it had some fifty pages glued upside
down). Just a couple of memories of that book. The first was when we
came to she’r
Koi mere dil se puuche tere tiir e niim-kash ko
Ye khalish kahaaN se hoti jo jigar ke paar hotaa
My guru of that time, Arvind who hailed from Bareilly, explained that
tiir e niim-kash meant arrow stuck halfway through the heart. He said
jigar interchangeably meant heart and both allude to that corner of
our mind which handles emotive turbulence. The image of arrow stuck in
the heart left me with excruciating horror, it still does. The other
one is happier …
tum shahar meN ho to hame kya gham jab utheNge
le aayeNge bazaar se jaa kar dil o jaaN aur aur
He sternly told, in the manner of our prudish Naseer Sahib, don’t get
ideas, dil-o-jaaN did not mean anything you are imagining but a bottle
of scotch.
However going through that ghazal
‘ye nah thi hamaari qismat ke bisaal e yaar hota….. the mood evoked
was always mildly indifferent but when I heard Begum Akhtar rendering
this ghazal, the poignancy she evoked is staggering. Just listen to
her……
paperback. I bought it from the pavement along with Arthur Hailey’s
plagiarized Money Changers (it had some fifty pages glued upside
down). Just a couple of memories of that book. The first was when we
came to she’r
Koi mere dil se puuche tere tiir e niim-kash ko
Ye khalish kahaaN se hoti jo jigar ke paar hotaa
My guru of that time, Arvind who hailed from Bareilly, explained that
tiir e niim-kash meant arrow stuck halfway through the heart. He said
jigar interchangeably meant heart and both allude to that corner of
our mind which handles emotive turbulence. The image of arrow stuck in
the heart left me with excruciating horror, it still does. The other
one is happier …
tum shahar meN ho to hame kya gham jab utheNge
le aayeNge bazaar se jaa kar dil o jaaN aur aur
He sternly told, in the manner of our prudish Naseer Sahib, don’t get
ideas, dil-o-jaaN did not mean anything you are imagining but a bottle
of scotch.
However going through that ghazal
‘ye nah thi hamaari qismat ke bisaal e yaar hota….. the mood evoked
was always mildly indifferent but when I heard Begum Akhtar rendering
this ghazal, the poignancy she evoked is staggering. Just listen to
her……