Mirza Ghalib - the poet

Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan {pen-name Ghalib (1797 - 1869)} was born in Kala Mahal, Agra into a family that descended from Aibak Turks. His paternal grandfather, Mirza Qoqan Baig Khan, was a Saljuq Turk who had immigrated to India from Samarkand during the reign of Ahmad Shah (1748-1754). He worked at Lahore, Delhi and Jaipur, was awarded the sub-district of Pahasu (Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh) and finally settled in Agra. Mirza Abdullah Baig Khan and Mirza Nasrullah Baig Khan were two of his sons. Ghalib's father Mirza Abdullah Baig Khan died in a battle in 1803 in Alwar when Ghalib was over 5 years of age. He was raised first by his uncle Mirza Nasrullah Baig Khan.
Ghalib started composing poetry at the age of 11. His first language was Urdu. When Ghalib was in his early teens, a newly-converted Muslim tourist from Iran named Abdus Samad, originally named Hormuzd, a Zoroastrian, came to Agra. He stayed at Ghalib's home for two years and taught him Persian, Arabic, philosophy, and logic. At the age of thirteen, Ghalib married Umrao Begum, daughter of Nawab Ilahi Bakhsh, brother of the Nawab of Ferozepur Jhirka.
In accordance with upper-class Muslim tradition, he had an arranged marriage. After his marriage he settled in Delhi. In one of his letters he describes his marriage as the second imprisonment after the initial confinement that was life itself. The idea that life is one continuous painful struggle which can end only when life itself ends, is a recurring theme in his poetry. One of his couplets puts it in a nutshell: "The prison of life and the bondage of grief are one and the same/Before the onset of death, how can man expect to be free of grief?"
At the age of thirty he had seven children, none of whom survived. This pain has found its echo in some of Ghalib's ghazals. There are conflicting reports regarding his relationship with his wife. She was considered to be pious, conservative and Allah-fearing. Ghalib was proud of his reputation as a rake. He was once imprisoned for gambling and subsequently relished the affair with pride. In the Mughal court circles, he even acquired a reputation as a "ladies' man". Once, when someone praised the poetry of the pious Sheikh Sahbai in his presence, Ghalib immediately retorted: "How can Sahbai be a poet? He has never tasted wine, nor has he ever gambled; he has not been beaten with slippers by lovers, nor has he ever seen the inside of a jail".
In his poem "Chiragh-i-Dair" (Temple lamps) which was composed during his trip to Benares during the spring of 1827, Ghalib mused about the land of Hindustan and how Qiyamah (Doomsday) has failed to arrive, in spite of the numerous conflicts plaguing it. "Said I one night to a pristine seer (Who knew the secrets of whirling Time)/ 'Sir you well perceive,/ That goodness and faith,/Fidelity and love/ Have all departed from this sorry land./ Father and son are at each other's throat;/ Brother fights brother./Unity and Federation are undermined./ Despite these ominous signs/ Why has not Doomsday come?/ Why does not the Last Trumpet sound?/ Who holds the reins of the Final Catastrophe?"
Being a member of declining Mughal nobility and old landed aristocracy, he never worked for a livelihood, lived on either royal patronage of Mughal Emperors, credit or the generosity of his friends. His fame came to him posthumously. He had himself remarked during his lifetime that he would be recognised by later generations. After the decline of the Mughal Empire and the rise of the British Raj, despite his many attempts, Ghalib could never get the full pension restored. Although Ghalib himself was far prouder of his poetic achievements in Persian, he is today more famous for his Urdu ghazals. Before Ghalib, the ghazal was primarily an expression of anguished love; but Ghalib expressed philosophy, the travails and mysteries of life and wrote ghazals on many other subjects, vastly expanding the scope of the ghazal.
In keeping with the conventions of the classical ghazal, in most of Ghalib's verses, the identity and the gender of the beloved are indeterminate. The critic/poet/writer Shamsur Rahman Faruqui explains that the convention of having the "idea" of a lover or beloved instead of an actual lover/beloved freed the poet-protagonist-lover from the demands of realism. Love poetry in Urdu from the last quarter of the seventeenth century onwards consists mostly of "poems about love" and not "love poems" in the Western sense of the term.
Not only Urdu poetry but the prose is also indebted to Ghalib. Before Ghalib, letter writing in Urdu was highly ornamental. He made his letters "talk" by using words and sentences as if he were conversing with the reader. According to him "Sau kos se ba-zaban-e-qalam baatein kiya karo aur hijr mein visaal ke maze liya karo" (from hundred of miles talk with the tongue of the pen and enjoy the joy of meeting even when you are separated). He was very humorous and wrote very interesting letters. In one letter he wrote "Main koshish karta hoon keh koi aesi baat likhoon jo parhay khoosh ho jaaye" (I want to write lines such that whoever reads them would enjoy them). They have been translated into English by Ralph Russell in The Oxford Ghalib.
Ghalib was capable of writing profoundly religious poetry, yet was skeptical about the literalist interpretation of the Islamic scriptures. On the Islamic view and claims of paradise, he once wrote in a letter to a friend: "In paradise it is true that I shall drink at dawn the pure wine mentioned in the Qu'ran, but where in paradise are the long walks with intoxicated friends in the night, or the drunken crowds shouting merrily? Where shall I find there the intoxication of Monsoon clouds? Where there is no autumn, how can spring exist? If the beautiful houris are always there, where will be the sadness of separation and the joy of union? Where shall we find there a girl who flees away when we would kiss her?"
During the anti-British Rebellion in Delhi on 5 October 1857, three weeks after the British troops had entered through Kashmiri Gate, some soldiers climbed into Ghalib's neighbourhood and hauled him off to Colonel Burn for questioning. He appeared in front of the colonel wearing a Central Asian Turkic style headdress. The colonel, bemused at his appearance, inquired in broken Urdu, "Well? You Muslim?", to which Ghalib replied, "Half?" The colonel asked, "What does that mean?" In response, Ghalib said, "I drink wine, but I don't eat pork". Ghalib was a very liberal mystic who believed that "the search for God within liberated the seeker from the narrowly Orthodox Islam, encouraging the devotee to look beyond the letter of the law to its narrow essence". His Sufi views and mysticism are greatly reflected in his poems and ghazals. As he once stated: "The object of my worship lies beyond perception's reach;/ For men who see, the Ka'aba is a compass, nothing more".
In 1850, Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II bestowed upon Mirza Ghalib the title of "Dabir-ul-Mulk". The Emperor also added to it the additional title of "Najm-ud-Daula". The conferment of these titles was symbolic of Ghalib's incorporation into the nobility of Delhi. He also received the title of "Mirza Nosha" from the Emperor, thus adding Mirza as his first name. As the Emperor was himself a poet, Ghalib was appointed as his poet tutor in 1854. During Ghalib's lifetime the Mughals were eclipsed and displaced by the British and finally deposed following the defeat of the Indian rebellion of 1857.  
Ghalib was a chronicler of a turbulent period. One by one, Ghalib saw the bazaars - Khas Bazaar, Urdu Bazaar, Kharam-ka Bazaar, disappear, whole mohallas (localities) and katras (lanes) vanish. The havelis (mansions) of his friends were razed to the ground. Ghalib wrote that Delhi had become a desert. Water was scarce. Delhi was now "a military camp". It was the end of the feudal elite to which Ghalib had belonged. He wrote: "An ocean of blood churns around me-/ Alas! Were these all!/ The future will show/ What more remains for me to see".
Most notably, he wrote several ghazals during his life, which have since been interpreted and sung in many different ways by different people. Ghalib, the last great poet of the Mughal Era, is considered to be one of the most popular and influential poets of the Urdu language. Today Ghalib remains popular not only in India and Pakistan but also amongst diaspora communities around the world.
Mirza Ghalib died in Delhi on February 15, 1869. The house where he lived in Gali Qasim Jaan, Ballimaran, Chandni Chowk, in Old Delhi known as the Ghalib ki Haveli has now been turned into "Ghalib Memorial" and houses a permanent Ghalib exhibition.
The writer is a retired Professor of Economics, BCS General Education Cadre. Email: [email protected]