Shakespeare, killed with kindness and Ghālib, murdered mercilessly

 

Ghālib and Shakespeare, arguably two of the greatest poets ever. The number of people who love their poetry is legion and a good majority of them are on the same boat as mine; they love something they are not formally trained to appreciate. Most of them, just as I, labour along to read these poets and struggle to grasp as much as they can, for the fruits of this exercise are very sweet and fulfilling.

 

But what about those from the smug brigade of pure pretenders who have been aided staunchly by the ubiquitous WhatsApp Academy for Advancement of Asinine Puerility (WAAAP)? They kill the essence of these poets, particularly of our chachā Ghālib, with all kinds of trite attributed to them.

 

These two poets have become such a giant in the field of poetry that they are naturally best-suited for wide-ranging misuse, mostly in terms of wrong attribution and misquotes. Price they pay for their, greatness, surely. Yet, while they annihilate Ghālib, the bard is spared such brutal treatment. They, like Petrucio in The Taming of the Shrew, kill the bard, but with kindness, because what they attribute to him may be a misquote but theirs is not such bummers as would have caused him acute embarrassment. On the other hand, the inanities which masquerade as Ghālib’s creations, with even a picture of the poet affixed next to it, would have sent the master in a fit of outrage. Something to do with the inherent gullibility of us ignoramus Indians, perhaps.

 

Many poets are a victim of these perpetrators of disguising vapid cornball. For instance, Gulzār, who resignedly claims that 99% of poetry attributed to him is fake.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2mxStkRkiw

 

Sorry about that, janāb Gulzār, May these boneheads hang in purgatory and some recompense comes your way but I am talking demi-gods here, not mere good poets. So, all this about my uncles, Ghālib and Shakespeare.

 

One pointer about Ghālib for those who are not very conversant with his poetry. Ghālib has become so synonymous with Urdu poetry that misquotes abound, not merely in terms of wrong attribution and but mostly in wide-ranging misuse and abuse. Why is it so difficult for people to appreciate that poetry is about showing, not saying? On being advised about the fake, many of them do not like it. And then there is that inevitable question, “Sher to achchhā hai. Kaise patā lage ki Ghālib kā likhā hai yā nahīñ?” (The sher looked good. How to ascertain if a sher is indeed written by Ghalib?”) My stock reply, tongue in cheek, “Bahut aasan sirjī. Agar aap ki samajh meñ aa gayā hai to samajh jaa.iye  ki Ghalib ka nahīñ hai.”(Very easy, sir. If you are able to understand it, rest assured that it cannot be Ghalib.)

 

Paraphrased from my blog,

http://anindecisiveindian.blogspot.com/2021/04/ghalib-today.html

 

First, the bard, misquoted! As I said, there are some fantastic quotes, certainly not of inane or insipid variety, which, unfortunately, did not emanate from his pen. Many such are also approximations with a distortions of his words.

 

For example, the oft-quoted, neat “Expectation is the root of all heartache.” Let us revert to the famous soliloquy of Hamlet in the so-called "nunnery scene", (as he heartlessly rebukes Ophelia, telling her “Get thee to a nunnery”). What we find in this "To be, or not to be" business, as he contemplates suicide, lamenting the agony, the unfairness of life but debating if the alternative would be worse, “To die, to sleep—No more—and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.” (Sleeping is all dying is, in a sleep that ends all the troubles and disappointments that life on earth gives us, it is something to wish for.) But no expectation’!

 

The these beautiful words, “But for those who love, time is eternal.” Not Shakespeare, unfortunately. An aside here. Talking of time, this conversation between a disguised Rosalind and would be lover Orlando in As You Like It has some very witty analysis of time, which travels at different speeds for different people, strolling, trotting, galloping or stopping cold.

 

Rosalind: “…Time travels in diverse paces with diverse persons…”

Orlando: I prithee, who doth he trot withal?

Rosalind: Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized…

Orlando: Who ambles time withal?

Rosalind: With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath not the gout, for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain…

Orlando: Who doth he gallop withal?

Rosalind: With a thief to the gallows, for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.

Orlando: Who stays it still withal?

Rosalind: With lawyers in the vacation, for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how time moves.

 

‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’, this classic line is quoted as Shakespeare in a facile manner but the bard never wrote it. It is extracted from the poem ‘In Memoriam’ by Alfred Tennyson, reminiscing about close ones who were no more.

 

‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned’ sounds 101% Shakespeare but no sir, it is not. It is a part of ‘The Mourning Bride’ by Irish playwright, William Congreve.

 

‘Lead on, Macduff’, is used to exhort someone to move on and others would follow. But in Macbeth, it is Macbeth prodding Macduff to combat with him, absolutely nothing to do with any leadership and the phrase is: ‘Lay on, Macduff, and damned be him who first cries ‘Hold! Enough…’

 

‘Discretion is the better part of valour’ is our clichéd alibi for inaction, or an apology for a diplomatic action, when foregoing any bold enterprise, thinking that we are quoting the bard but what he had was Falstaff in Henry IV Part 1, who escaped death by feigning to be a corpse, saying, “…The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life.” to redeem and assign value to an otherwise lily-livered act.

 

‘Gilding the lily’ is employed widely today to denounce an act of adding embellishment to something already beautiful, or ludicrous and bombastic exaggeration, but Shakespeare’s lines of Salisbury in King John are, “To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily…Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.”

 

Coming to our chachā, let us first see simple misquotes arising out of his status being the king of Urdu poetry and hence these uninformed but somewhat harmless mistakes. For example, the web is full of this tripe misattributed to Ghālib, “Khudā kī mohabbat ko fanā kaun karegā, sabhī bande nek hoñ to gunāh kaun karegā.” Or, somewhat better, but very ubiquitous, “Ghālib (Zāhid) sharāb piine de masjid meñ baiTh kar, yā vo jagah batā de jahāñ par ḳhudā na ho”. The latter is attributed to ‘unknown’ in rekhta.org.

 

One of the most famous ash.ār wrongly attributed to Ghālib (actually penned by Bazm Akbarabadi), somewhat defined his life in a simplistic manner:

 

Chand tasvīr-e-butāñ chand hasīnoñ ke ḳhutūt

ba.ad marne ke mire ghar se ye sāmāñ niklā

(Chand: a few, some, tasvīr-e-butāñ: images of beauties, ḳhutūt: letters, sāmāñ: good, provisions)

 

Some say that the above is a Ghālibized version and the original is:

 

Ek  taṣvīr  kisī  shoḳh kī aur nāme  chand

ghar se āshiq ke pas-e-marg yahī sāmāñ niklā

Let us look at another apocryphal one detailed at rekhta.org which, does kill but with some respectability.

 

Khudā ke vāste zāhid uThā parda na kaabe kā

kahīñ aisā na ho yaañ bhī vahī kāfir-sanam nikle

(zāhid: preacher, kāfir-sanam: heathen beloved. Oh preacher, for God’s sake,  do not lift the curtain from the Ka.aba. May it not somehow be that here too that we find the same infidel.)

 

Not bad, certainly, but not in Ghālib’s class, who has to carry the burden of this one for nearly two centuries. It was penned by Bahādur Shāh Zafar, his reluctant benefactor. Ghālib would write this thought in a hundred elegant ways; sample the subtility in this one:

 

Go vaañ nahīñ pa vaañ ke nikāle hue to haiñ

ka.abe se in butoñ ko bhī nisbat hai duur kī

(butoñ: idols, nisbat: engagement. Agreed that the idols are not present in the chamber of Ka.aba now, but at a former time they were there before being thrown out and, therefore, they do have a relationship with it. An idol is a pleasing metaphor for a beautiful one as, apart from being worthy of worship, it has beauty, dignity, indifference or aloofness and silence.)

 

These misquotes may not be in WAAAP category but perhaps emerge out of the gullibility promoted by the WILD (Web Institute of Limitless Dingbattery); did I invent a word here?). Catch some celebrities here as they misappropriate Ghālib by borrowing some stuff which may be acceptable as such but certainly not as him, like, This one quoted as Ghālib by Modi ji in parliament. It took Javed Akhtar to set the record straight:

 

Taa-umr Ghālib ye bhuul  kartā rahā,

dhuul chehre pe thī aur aa.ina saaf kartā rahā,

(All my life I went on making this mistake, the dust was on my face but I kept cleaning the mirror.)

 

https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/india-news-ta-umr-ghalib-ye-bhool-karta-raha-pm-narendra-modi-quotes-ghalib-to-attack-congress/333015

 

Now to WAAAP. The master wrote passionately about the sitamgar sanam (tormenting beloved) but little did he know that he would assailed on a daily basis by a more potent troop of these inimical and repugnant abusers.

 

Let us start with the ‘Ghālib sharāb piine de masjid meñ baiTh kar’ rigmarole which does not assassinate the master alone. It dishonours four other great poets too, by almost presenting them as accessories after the fact. I merely reproduce what has been going on in Email//Social media forwards for at least fifteen years and please please, beware of this balderdash:

 

Iqbal replied to this,
Masjid Khuda ka ghar hai, peene ki jagah nahi
Kafir ke dil mein ja waha khuda nahi.

Faiz added to this,
Kafir ke dil se aaya hu main ye dekh kar
Khuda maujood hai waha par use pata nahi.
Then came Wasi,
Khuda to maujood duniya mein har jagah hai
Tu jannat mein ja waha peena mana nahi.

Finally Saqi,
Peeta hu gam-e-duniya bhulane ke liye,
Jannat mein kaunsa gam hai isiliye waha peene me maza nahi.

 

Another absolutely banal claptrap is this series headed by  ‘Khudā kī mohabbat ko fanā kaun karegā…” and I reproduce here so you bung it out the minute you see it:

 

Khuda ki mohabbat ko fanaa kaun karega?

sabhi bande nek ho to gunah kaun karega?

Ai khuda mere dosto ko salaamat rakhna

varna meri salaamati ki duaa kaun karega?

Aur rakhna mere dushmano ko bhi mehfooz

varna meri tere paas aane ki duaa kaun karega?

 

Shashi Tharoor tweeted this as Ghālib. It took Javed Akhtar to chastise them; Tharoor readily retracted, with an excuse though, 'Just as every clever quote is attributed to Winston Churchill even if he never said it, so it seems that whenever people like a shayari, they credit Ghalib for it!', absolving himself and paying a left-handed compliment to Ghālib. We can excuse you as Urdu is nowhere near your mother tongue but it does not wash, sir!

 

https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/javed-akhtar-schools-shashi-tharoor-for-misquoting-mirza-ghalib-on-his-birthday-2240213.html

 

Friends, here is a misquote which even the chachā would perhaps not disown:

 

Ahmaqoñ ki kami nahīñ Ghālib

Ek DhūñDo hazār milte haiñ

(There is no dearth of idiots, look for one and you would find thousands.)