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The Faiz centenary is now creating a buzz as did the Majaz centennial but with
the era Nahin khel, ai Dagh, yaaron se keh do Ke aati hai Urdu zabaan, aate aate — Dagh (It is not child’s
play, O’ Dagh, tell my friends LOVERS of Urdu got together last year in different cities of the country to celebrate the centenary of Lucknow’s best-loved poet Asrar-ul-Haq Majaz and the admirers of one of the greats of Urdu poetry, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, are busy all over the world celebrating his centenary. It is indeed wonderful to celebrate poets who have enriched the human bondage. Majaz’s poem Awara, sung by Talat Mehmood, Shahar ki raat aur main nashad-o-nakaara phiroon, Jagmagati jaagati sarhkon pe awara phiroon, Ai ghame dil kya karoon`85 still has the power to transport one to a state of ecstatic catharsis and Faiz, of course, was a poets’ poet, who towered over the poetic sensibility of the 20th century in the subcontinent and beyond. He had many improbable people in his enormous fan-list, including top cop K.P.S Gill and politician Manpreet Badal! However, as one cherishes the moments of revisiting their poetry and amazing lives, one cannot but feel the pangs of loss because the great age of Urdu poetry is lost to us, not just in India but the neighbouring Pakistan, too, which has Urdu along with English as its national language. The wane of Urdu poetry coincides with a declining interest in the genre but the politicisation of the Urdu language, too, has taken its toll. Poet Javed Akhtar opines, "Today, Urdu is in a strange situation. The language has been politicised for the past 100 years and sacrificed at the altar of the two-nation theory. In India, it is constantly given step-motherly treatment. On the one hand, there is a growing number of people who appreciate Urdu poetry, on the other hand, the language is also becoming nostalgia." Ironically, Urdu, the darling baby of the Ganga-Jamuni tehzib, the composite culture of the Hindus and Muslims who co-existed in the north Indian plains, was uprooted from its birthplace and thrust upon the unwilling Punjabis, Pathans and others in the ‘promised land’ of Pakistan. Javed speaks of a growing interest in Urdu poetry but it is more of an archival interest rather than the living and throbbing existence that it once enjoyed. As far as the youth of today goes, some couplets, never mind the literary merit, are handy for titillation on the SMS circuit. Language of poets Interestingly, Urdu, which is oft hailed as the language of poets, traces its origins to the Muslim army camps.`A0 The word ‘Urdu’ comes from the Turkish word ‘ordu,’ meaning ‘camp’ or ‘army’.`A0 It was used as a unifying communication tool between the Muslim soldiers of Turkish, Arabic and Persian origins. It began to take its evolved shape in Uttar Pradesh by incorporating the Hindu Braj Bhasha followed by the Khari boli. It was also known as Hindavi and later Hindustani. For all the bad blood between Urdu and Hindi, the two languages remain mutually intelligible although with different scripts, Perso-Arabic for the former and Devnagari for the latter. The splendour of a language is known by the literature it creates and in that respect, Urdu comes out with honours. The poetic tradition took firm aesthetic roots in the new language and it was the ghazal, a form that strings together couplets of the same meter with a refrain, became the preferred medium. It blossomed in the Mughal era, with poets perfecting it to reach great emotive height. There is a long and formidable list of poets who wrote the ghazal, blending emotion and experience with technique but among the all-time greats three names stand above the others. Mir Taqi Mir (1723-1810) was the leading poet of the 18th century, who shaped the Urdu language and his poetry stood for the best of human values, daring to challenge rigid religious beliefs: Mir ke deen-o-mazhab ka, poonchte kya ho unne to kashka khaincha dair mein baitha kab ka tarq Islam kiya (What do you wish to know of Mir’s faith? He sits in the temple with vermilion on his forehead, having abandoned Islam long ago). The Urdu ghazal, which traces its roots to Persian, evolved so well that it influenced many different languages. There have been ghazal writers in Hindi, Punjabi and English, too. Among the prominent Urdu poets who enriched this genre were Ustad Zauq, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Momin, Hali, and the 20th century saw many great poets like Allama Iqal, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Sahir Ludhianvi, Ahmad Faraz, Nasir Kazmi and Parveen Shakir, besides those mentioned earlier. Down the hill The Partition was the time which started seeing a gentle downhill trend. Of course, Urdu poetry was kept alive in the Mumbai cinema by accomplished poets and younger poets like Mahmood Shaam in Pakistan and Bashir Badr in India infused fresh breath into Urdu poetry by using the commonly understood Hindustani as against the Persian-ised Urdu and even incorporating English words. Here is a classic example Badr: Koi phool dhoop ki pattiyon ke hare ribbon se bandha huya; Yeh ghazal ka lehza naya naya, na kaha huya na suna huya (A flower tied in the green ribbon of leaves; Here comes the new ghazal neither said nor heard before). Till the end of the 1980s, Urdu poetry, poets and mushairas (poetical symposia) were still around us. Even the modern city of Chandigarh had mushairas aplenty and one did not have to go far to look for Urdu poets and poetry. The librarian at The Tribune was a poet called Surinder Pandit Soz and the Pinjore Gardens had their own faqir poet, who called himself Krishan Khan. Urdu poets or lovers of poetry could be found in colleges, government offices and the coffee house. One did not have to surf the television channels to look for one channel called Fida, as of now, to pine nostalgically for a poetic way of life gone by. The late Krishan Adeeb, a wonderful Ludhiana-based poet, whose ghazals were sung by Mehdi Hasan and Jagjit Singh, used to say: "Urdu was no mere language. It was culture and a way of life". It was this way of life that passed us by in the din of pop and the razzmatazz of the satellite invasion. Kasmiri Lal Zakir, who heads Haryana’s Urdu Akademi at Panchkula, pins this down to the passing away of the age of poetry by saying: "This age of ours is not the age of poetry. It is the age of the novel. People are drawn to long fiction and poetry needs a literary readership, which is absent today." This could also be because of the decline of language studies, for the emphasis is on communication skills and understanding a poet requires much more.
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