Many an artist has painted Mirza Ghalib and Momin, the two iconic figures in poetry, differently

Sau pusht sey hai pesha-i aabaa sipahgiri

Kuchh shaayari zareea'a-i 'izzat nahin mujhey —Ghalib

(For generations did my forbears live by the sword; /writing poetry, this versification, is no source of great pride for me.)

Main wohi hoon Momin-i mubtalaa, tumhen yaad ho ki naa yaad ho —Momin

(He whom you used to speak of as truly constant , whom you saw once as a close friend/ I am the same stricken one - Momin: do you remember, or don't you, perhaps?)

Portrait of Mirza Ghalib, by an unknown artist. Opaque watercolour on paper; ca 1850. Red Fort Museum, New Delhi

Portrait of the poet Momin, possibly by Jiwan Ram. Black ink and opaque water colour; ca. 1835. Arthur M. Sackler Museum, University of Harvard

Both men — poets of great distinction — were wrong. For, one wonders, if any trace of Asad-ullah Khan would have remained — a century and a half has passed — had he taken to wielding the sword like his forefathers? Or, again, for all his misgivings, has Hakim Momin Khan been forgotten all these long years? Both men belonged to the dwindling Mughal court at Delhi but both continue to remain by our sides through their words. Ghalib — the pen-name is entirely appropriate — still ‘prevails’, as the word suggests, and ‘Momin’— the believer, the physician, still heals. Both because of their poetry.

Irresistible Ghalib

To know them, to know any poet, however, is not easy. "Kavi ki baat baat mein baat", as they say. Ghalib (1797-1869), arguably the greatest poet of the Urdu language who ever lived, speaks in many voices and it is not always possible to disengage them. He can be now supremely self-assured, even full of disdain for the world, now humble beyond belief; grave one moment and full of levity the next; someone who ‘falls upon the thorns of life and bleeds’ at one time, and ventures out to admonish falak itself, the heavenly vault, at another. He could be, without missing a step, obscure or simple, ingratiating or defiant, profound or frivolous, Sufi or sinner. Mocking, philosophical, teasing, supercilious, romantic, rueful, flippant, beseeching: any tone could be his. The prose he uses in his letters — a large number of which have survived and in which he bares his soul sometimes to confidants and pupils — has the flavour of poetry and all those elegant turns of phrase which make for absorbing, elegant reading. But, in the end, he still remains elusive. Who is he: covered with honours and titles — Dabir-ul Mulk, Najm ud-daulah, Mirza Asad-ullah Khan Ghalib — or an indigent pensioner who keeps making appeals to those in power and looking for even minor patronage? Rightly did he put it at one point: "Poochhatey hain woh ki Ghalib kaun hai?"

But — and this is what puts him in a class of his own — he is irresistible; compelling beyond compare. And, at moments that take you by surprise, so uplifting: capable of sending one and one’s thoughts spinning into another orbit. I find myself struggling, sometimes, to get the barest sense of some verses, so dense in meaning and allusions are they, and, on occasions, discovering on my own layers of meaning that I had no idea lay embedded there in simple words.

Momin, the romantic

Momin’s life (1800-1851) is by no means as well known, or documented, as that of Ghalib. Born at Delhi, one knows that he came from a family of hakeems, physicians in other words. One also knows that his father was a disciple of Shah Waliullah Dehlavi and an intellectual himself. As he grew up, Momin, who was interested in many things — astronomy, music, chess — began to practice medicine, following the time-honoured profession of his family. But it is said he never charged a penny from his patients, and never sought any favours. In many ways, he was a hakeem in the real sense of the term — the word means wise, learned, prudent — for his poetry, considered singularly lyrical as it often is, and romantic, bears streaks of remarkable thoughtfulness, at times. He can be deeply moving. A couplet of his, possibly his most famous, — tum merey paas hotey ho goya/jab koyi doosraa nahin hota (You are by my side — I can feel it — when no one else is, no one at all) — has a story attached to it. It is said that when Ghalib heard this couplet, with its artless simplicity, uttered aloud that he would give his entire work away, his Dewan, in exchange for this couplet alone.

Painter's canvas

Personally, I find it of great interest to see how painters saw these two distinguished men. There are exceptions, of course, but painting portraits of men of less than noble rank was not a common activity then. And yet, we have a record of them: not in the hand of the same painter one needs to add, or else it would have been even more fascinating. A superb painted sketch of Momin, possibly in the hand of the painter Jivan Ram, has survived, and there is a fully finished portrait of Ghalib, seen seated smoking a huqqa, in the hand of an unknown artist. Both of these are different from the so-called portraits of the two poets that keep appearing on editions of their works today: Momin wearing a close-fitting white ‘Muslim’ skull cap as if to establish that he was a true believer, and Ghalib wearing an ample robe and a tall fur cap to establish his rank. The portraits I speak of here, however, breathe a different air, and give you something to think about. Momin is rendered by the painter as a man of the world: a remarkably handsome, bearded face with a surround of long flowing locks that fall on his shoulders. The rest of the form is only lightly drawn, the work being evidently unfinished. But there is a clean-edged simplicity — the same kind that marks so much of his poetry? — about the portrait. Ghalib, however, is rendered as a very self-aware man, seated do-zaanu — legs bent at the knees and tucked under — in a chamber of his well-appointed haveli, resting against a large bolster, one end of his huqqa pipe in hand, three bound volumes close by. It is an image of comfortable circumstance but its materiality is at variance with the thoughtful, inwardly turned look that the Mirza wears. Did the painter know the poet, one wonders, or his thoughts?

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