CHINAR SHADE : MIR TAQI MIR AND VEDANTA

MIR AND VEDANTA...

Uss ke farogh e husn se jhamke hai sab mein noor,

Shamm e haram ho ya ho diya Somnath ka ... ( Mir )

Vedanta discusses in detail the various questions of the human mind such as who I am, why and where do we originate from, what is the cause of all these creations, what is the reason for this world, where do we go after death, what are the relationship of our mind and inner self with the body, why is there so much sorrow or happiness in our lives, how is it possible to get rid of sorrow forever, etc. Eventually, the essence of Vedanta thinking has come to answer all these questions.

Mir Taqi Mir ( 1723-1810 ) also gives you glimpses and echoes of Vedantic thoughts in his poetry. Through his Ghazals, Mir often delves into the transient nature of human existence and this material world as mirage .Mir is also known as Khuda-e-Sukhan, the God of poetry. Mir writes that his father often told him that love is supreme and it is on the foundations of love that the world functions. Young as he was, Mir imbibed his father's teachings and practiced them lifelong, making love the primary subject of his poetry. Mir talks about love with reverence. If one looks a little deep into his poetry , one finds that love for Mir is divinity in all its forms.

" Parastish ki yaan tak ki ai but tujhe,

Nazar mein sabhon ki khuda kar chale"

(I idol-worshipped you with such strong emotion

and made you God in the world’s perception.)

Both Ghalib and Mir possessed entire divans or collections of poetry in Persian that are variously traced by Bedil’s legacy. And Bedil had studied Upanishads, Yogavashita and the philosophy of Nagarjuna .

Ye tavaahum ka kaarkhaana hai

Yaan vohi hai jo eitebaar kiya

( Mir Taqi Mir)

(In a world of never ending illusions,

the real is what you believe is real.)

Boodh naqsh o nigaar sa hai kuchh

Soorat ikk eitebaar sa hai kuchh

( Mir Taqi Mir )

( Forms and images appear as works of art,

If you trust them, they are there for you .)

"kaha maine kitna hai gul ka sabaat

kali ne ye sun kar tabassum kiya"

(Mir Taqi Mir )

(I asked the rose bud,

“How long is the life of a flower?”

The bud listened and smiled.)

" Bekhudi le gai kahaan humko,

Der se intezaar hai apna"

(Mir Taqi Mir )

(Where has selflessness taken me,

I’ve been waiting for myself for long)

" Le Saans bhi ahista ki nazuk hai bahut kaam,

Afaaq ki Is kargah-e-shishagari ka."

(Mir Taqi Mir )

(Breathe here softly as with fragility here all is fraught

in this workshop of the world where wares of glass are wrought)

"Tujhi Par Kuch Ae Buut Nahi Munhasir

Jisay Hum Ne Pooja Khuda Kar Diya.."

(Mir Taqi Mir )

( O idol, everything isn't dependent on you,

Whatsoever we worshipped , it became almighty .)

"Kahen kya jo puche koi ham se "Mir"

jahan main tum aye the, kya kar chale"

(What should I tell if someone asks me, O Mir!

In this world you come to be, what you did going away.)

"Hasti apni Hubaab ki see hai

ye numa'ish saraab ki see hai"

(Our life (existence) is temporary (fragile) just like a bubble,

This exhibition (of the colorful world) is an illusion like mirage.)

Gopi Chand Narang is perhaps the first Urdu critic to have viewed Mir through the perspective of syncretic linguistic, socio-religious and literary practices and hailed him as Urdu’s first complete poet .This is what Gopi Chand Narang writes about Mir :-

" There were many misconceptions about Mir that I had to raise my voice to correct those fallacies. Mir was a multidimensional poet (“a poet of countless delights”). Critics tried to put him in a box. That was unfair and wrong. The label of simplicity was framed in a way that it degraded Mir’s work. This had to be corrected. Mir had a good mastery of Persian, but he was right in his assessment that a time had come to create a synthesis of Persian and Rekhta. He had the mastery of style and lyricism and he could create magic using his words. In fact, he was the first “ustaad poet” of Urdu, as he claimed in one of his couplets. Furthermore, he is not only a love poet as other love poets are, he is a metaphysical poet par excellence reflecting rainbow like synthesis of the Bhakti and Islamic Sufi thought.Mir’s greatness as a poet does not depend on one or two factors. A serious critical look into Mir’s work must go beyond traditional theses of simplicity and flow and a synthesis of Persian segments with Prakritik Rekhta. There is much more to Mir’s simplicity. A quick assessment does not complete the picture. Mir was the first great Indian poet who used multiple lenses in his work. His deceptive simplicity was in fact his “multiplicity.” There is an impression that simplicity of the syntactic structure equals simplicity of poetic meaning which is not correct."

Mir arrived in Delhi in or around 1733 and made the city his home. It is believed that in Delhi Mir lived at three different addresses — Kucha Chelan, Chandni Mahal and Matia Mahal – all in the heart of the walled city. Eighteenth century remained a troubled period for Delhi .With one invasion after the other – the last being of Ahmad Shah Abdali – Delhi was reduced to ruins. Mir could not bear his beloved city being blatantly ravished and eventually moved to Lucknow ruled by Nawab, Asaf-ud-Daula, was known for his love for Urdu poetry and patronage for Urdu poets.Though he lived in Lucknow till his end, the distance from Delhi always hounded him. For Mir, Delhi’s lanes were no less than an artist’s painting :

"Koochey nahin dilli ke, auraaq-e-musawwir hain

Jo shakl nazar aayi, tasveer nazar aayi"

(These are not Delhi by-lanes, these are artist’s canvas,

Every sight I see looks like a painting)

"Deeda-e-giryaan hamaara neher hai

Dil-e-kharaaba jaise Dilli sheher hai"

(My weeping eyes are like a canal

My ruined heart like the city of Delhi)

About Mir, Ranjit Hoskote writes this:-

"A number of poems of Mir that seem simple but carry deep resonances of mystical insight and visionary experience. Mir conveys his grief at the displacement, disorientation and exilic elsewhereness imposed by a violent history.Mir is very much our contemporary – a wounded sensibility, a self that is fashioned from fracture and trauma. I argue that he is a refugee who must cope with the condition of solastalgia, the pain of experiencing the profound and cataclysmic transformation of one’s own social and natural environment. At the same time, and more positively, Mir is also our contemporary because he is a poet of confluence – he draws on diverse linguistic resources and cultural milieux. A contrarian and a dissenter, he positions himself at the meeting point of religious systems, he ridicules orthodoxy and authority."

On September 21, 1810, Mir died in Lucknow at the age of 88. He was buried in the graveyard of Bheem Ka Akhaara located north of what is today called the City Station.

And Mirza Ghalib once said this about Mir Taqi Mir !!

"Rekhta ke tum hi ustaad nahin ho Ghalib, Kehte hain agle zamaane mein koyi Mir bhi tha."

(You are not the only master of Urdu, Ghalib. They say there used to be a Mir in the past).

( Avtar Mota)