India on the moon: Ghālib ticks off a jealous Shakespeare

 India on the moon

Ghālib ticks off a jealous Shakespeare 

Chandrayaan 3 is successful and India is on the moon That too with a landing on the dark side which no other country has managed so far. As a euphoric nation celebrated, Ghālib too was in the seventh heaven. But the bard appeared and tried to rain on the parade, presumably out of green-eyed English envy with an attempt to chisel away at this masterpiece of success of Indian Space scientists. An animated conversation ensued with Ghālib showing the bard his English place of mediocrity and the latter’s rants hid nothing but an unintended tribute to India’s brilliance. I caught them in time as the bard was getting ticked off, and rightly so. When they talk to each other, it is always a marathon of titanic wits, parried and reposted in a verbal joust but today the bard, perched on his English pedestal was looking for darkness in the sun whereas India had found the darkness of the moon. I proudly reproduce their dialogue verbatim as my Delhi uncle got the better of my wayward English great-uncle:

 

Shakespeare: My dear Gaulib, let us have an objective tête-à-tête today, what is it that you celebrate? That you have reached the moon. Let me transpose for you, what Romeo tells Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, “…I see that you are poor.…Famine is in thy cheeks. Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes. Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back. The world is not thy friend nor the world’s law. The world affords no law to make thee rich. Then be not poor, but break…” yes, break that grip of poverty and then think of the moon and Mars. Have you misunderstood my timeless lines of Jaques in As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players...” in thinking that the whole universe is a stage and trying to violate God’s kingdom beyond? After all, my Timon has clearly declared in Timon of Athens that "…The moon's an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun….". As also Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, the greatest love story ever, busts the myth of the moon as he declares the primacy of the sun, never mind if it is Juliet as the sun, “…Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief…”. What does your country seek, my dear dervish?  Even Juliet telling Romeo, “O, swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circle orb...”

 

Ghālib: Bahut Khoob Billee Bārad Bahut Khoob (Great Billy the bard, great), your own creation, the scheming Iago in Othello has captured your misplaced posturing well in, "Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on." so here you are trying to belittle the achievements of my country, the mother of all civilizations. To let you grasp the significance, I modify one of my ash.ār (plural of sher):

 

Husn-e-mah garche ba-hañgām-e-kamāl achchhā hai

Ba-parcham-e-Hind mah-e-ḳhurshīd-jamāl achchhā hai

(Husn-e-mah: beauty of the moon, garche: although, ba-hañgām-e-kamāl: at the time and tumult of perfection, ba-parcham-e-Hind: with the flag of India, mah-e-ḳhurshīd-jamāl: moon with the sun's beauty. Although the beauty of the moon is good at the time of full moon, its beauty transcends to that of the ever-bright sun when it has the Indian flag on it.)

 

You foolishly try to navigate reality with a compass calibrated to take us down several pegs but in our tapestry of triumph, your watching through a malicious prism seeking to unravel flaws amidst the grandeur of our achievement is so deplorable. You would not understand the importance of moon because:

 

Ghāfil in mah-tal.atoñ ke vāste

chāhne vaalā bhī achchhā chāhiye

Chāhte haiñ ḳhūb-rūyoñ ko Asad

aap kī sūrat to dekhā chāhiye

(Ghāfil: oblivious, unmindful, mah-tal.atoñ: moon-faced ones, ḳhūb-rūyoñ: beautiful faces. Who would be drawn towards an ugly one? O ignorant one, those who desire these moon-faced beauties should also be good-looking or at least good.)

 

You, Bhaiya Bārad (brother bard) are neither.

 

As for the pale fire the moon snatching from the sun, our space scientists have not stopped at the moon alone. Did you not hear of Aditya (India’s space based Indian mission to study the sun) which is, at this time, moving towards the sun?

 

Shakespeare: Tarry a moment, dear Gaulib. Timon also said that, “…I'll give you good examples of thieves. The sun is a thief for robbing water from the vast sea...” and you want to go near this thief too. You will do well to recall that cartoon in NYT which lampooned India’s entry in the elite Mars club when you set a space craft to Mars. They were not wrong, were they?

 

Ghālib: Racist bakwas (nonsense), mere KHabiis  dost (my mean friend) Shakku. What their and your small minds fail to see is that although Mars be distant in the cosmic dance, its fiery spirit doth inspire mankind's advance. Having encircled Mars ten years back, we Indians can tell you that, in Antony and Cleopatra, you made Philo describe Antony to Demetrius in a foolish way as Mars does not shine on its own, “...Those his goodly eyes, That o’er the files and musters of the war Have glowed like plated Mars...”

 

Sun is also beyond you jaahils (uncivilized ones). Although It shines openly without veils for you, you are dazzled and close your eye. Only we Indians decipher its revelation and extremity of manifestation:

 

Jab vo jamāl-e-dil-faroz sūrat-e-mehr-e-nīm-roz

aap hī ho nazāra-soz parde meñ muñh chhupā.e kyuuñ

(jamāl-e-dil-faroz: face whose beauty lights up the heart, sūrat-e-mehr-e-nīm-roz; face like mid-day sun, nazāra-soz: warmly passionate spectacle. She is not in veil but your vision cannot endure the revelation just as eyesight becomes impaired when one looks at the midday sun.)

 

And to quote your own King Henry to Katherine from Henry V, you are one “whose face is not worth sunburning."

 

Shakespeare: Pray, do not jeer at me, Gilboy. I come from the country on whose empire the sun never set. Picking from your pedestrian poetry, na itnā burrish-e-teġh-e-mehr-e-Hind par naaz farmāo (Do not be so arrogant about the sharpness of the sword of the Indian sun). Your own politicians like the Pepoo, the Kedgeree and the Ma’amTa have raised doubts.

 

Ghālib: Janab ShaKHs-e-Peer (Sir, Old man), the story of your erstwhile empire is simply one of deceit and chicanery, hai kis qadar halāk-e-fareb-e-vafā-e-gul (we were all defeated and slain by the faithfulness in your rosy façade which camouflaged your trickery). Do not worry about these three. Our Moody will soon send them to the moon to remove the cobwebs in their minds and he may even decide to leave them there for good.

 

Bhāgiye ab aisī jagah u.D  kar jahāñ koī na ho

ham-suḳhan koī na ho aur ham-zabāñ koī na ho

(ham-suḳhan: conversing or talking together, interlocutor, ham-zabāñ: speaking in the same voice or language. Go fly to a place of complete solitude with no one there to converse with or share your thoughts to.)

 

Vaañ be-dar-o-dīvār ik ghar banāyā chāhiye

koī ham-sāya na ho aur pāsbāñ koī na ho

(Be-dar-o-dīvār: without door and walls, pāsbāñ: watchman, sentinel. Let them build there an open house without any doors or walls, no neighbours nearby or any guard for security.)

 

You, Shakku, have covered their attitude the best through Orsino saying in Twelfth Night, “…for I myself am best, When least in company…”. But refrain from dissing our scientists now and for ever, go get cocooned in your pitiable island. These sons of Bharat (India), may be humble to a fault but it is not in the fault lines that beauty is found but in the resilience that propels them and in the mosaic of ambition that paints the sky with shades of daring. Thanks to them the day is not far off when I will be able to say:

 

Ghālib chhuTī sharāb par ab bhī kabhī kabhī

piitā huuñ aab-e-āftāb ab jaa-e-māhtāb meñ

(aab-e-āftāb: lustre of sun, jaa-e-māhtāb; place on the moon.  I have quit drinking but now I drink the lustre of the sun in a place on the moon.)

...