The Buddhist art of Gandhara influenced Indian art and sensibilities and also that of the entire Buddhist world. Full entry here >>

From Rumi: Hidden Music, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001

Translated by Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi

Mahboob Ali, the only woodcut artist of Pakistan has sent me more images of his works.

Full entry here >>

Translation by Nader Khalili
“Rumi, Fountain of Fire”
Cal-Earth Press, 1994

Taking a cue from the recent events in Pakistan, Ammar Qureshi has contributed a beautiful poem by Auden in a newspaper. I love the last lines: View entry here >>

Came across this beautiful translation of Faiz’s touching verse by Vikram Seth.

It is a great translation as it ventures to capture the melody and the mood of the original.

Last night your faded memory came to me
As in the wilderness spring comes quietly,
As, slowly, in the desert, moves the breeze,
As, to a sick man, without cause, comes peace.

 image credit

Full story >>

Saw this newsitem today - “Data Sahib’s 963rd urs concludes: Around 500,000 attend final prayers”. The news item reported that around 0.9 million visited the shrine on Saturday. The saint left this world nine centuries ago.

During my recent visit the Urs preparations were underway. I captured a few images.  First the shrine at the night-

Full story here >>

The Intellectual

The intellectual is always showing off;
the lover is always getting lost.
The intellectual runs away, afraid of drowning;
the whole business of love is to drown in the sea.
Intellectuals plan their repose;
lovers are ashamed to rest.
The lover is always alone, even surrounded with people;
like water and oil, he remains apart.
The man who goes to the trouble
of giving advice to a lover
gets nothing. He’s mocked by passion.
Love is like musk. It attracts attention.
Love is a tree, and lovers are its shade.

Rumi 

– Version by Kabir Helminski

Silence is the sea, and speech is like the river.
The sea is seeking you: don’t seek the river.
Don’t turn your head away from the signs offered by the sea.

Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski

Nirmal has been visiting this blog and requesting for more translations of Parveen Shakir. I have found some on the Internet and here they are. Translations cannot do justice to the original pieces. Nuances are lost and metaphors change their shape. However, some of these are quite creative! 

Read more here >>

Ghalib’s immortal and complex poetry transcends time and sometimes even the boundaries of human thought.

The translation of this ghazal was found in Mirza Ghalib – A Creative Biography by Natalia Prigarina. Cited as an apt self-introduction, this is a timeless composition brings together myriad facets and moods of Ghalib. What a fascinating post-modern ‘unpacking’ of the self (that too in the nineteenth century)!

Read more here >>

Little by little God takes away human beauty… Read poem here >>

Mayank Austen Soofi in Delhi is an interesting character. A good writer and a prolific blogger, he is also fascinated by Pakistan. One of his blogs is called Pakistan Paindabad.

Read article here >>

Temporal read a translation of Parveen Shakir’s poem on this blog and created another translation. In many ways, this is a more modern version, closer to the sensibility in the original poem. However, the irony in the last lines may not be that obvious..

Thank you Temporal. And now the translation… 

The Faustus In Us

in (more than) a sense
we resemble Faustus
some sell their soul
for passion, circumstances
force others, some get away
pawning their eyes
to trade in visions
some offer their minds
as collateral
it’s amusing to see
the purchasing power of money
surveying life’s wall street, we find
self respect is the object d’art
most in demand today

Last month, in the freezing climes of Islamabad, we talked about Parveen Shakir, Pakistan’s popular poet who died at a young age.

One of Parveen’s poems invokes the legend and metaphor of Dr Faustus:

 ”The name ‘Faust’ has become deeply rooted in European mythology as the name of a man who sold his soul to the devil in return for eartly power and riches. The Faust legend has been embellished and retold in many formats …”

Source here

I found this skillful translation of her poem - We Are All Dr Faustus - by another noteworthy poet Alamgir Hashmi on this site.

We Are All Dr Faustus

In a way we are all
Dr Faustus.
One from his craze
and another helpless from blackmail
barters away his soul.
One mortgages his eyes
to trade in dreams
and another offers
his mind as collateral.
All that one may need sense
is the currency of the day.
So a survey of life’s Wall Street says
that among those with the buying power these days
self-respect is very popular.

The Urdu version was found with the translation

This is an appropriate commentary on what constitutes self-respect and the all-pervasiveness of Wall Street culture in our contemporary existence.

I am grateful to Zahid Hussein from Islamabad for introducing me to these lines. The Wahdatul Wajood (Unity of Being)school of thought in Sufism is attributed to the musings of Ibn-e-Arabi…

My heart is open to all winds:
It is a pasture for gazelles
And a home for Christian monks,
A temple for idols
The Black Stone of the
Mecca pilgrim,
The table of the Torah
And the book of the Koran.
Wherever God’s caravans turn,
The religion of love shall be my religion
And my faith.
 
(Muhammad Ibn ‘Arabi Mystic, philosopher, poet, sage Spain, 1165-1240)
A useful link is http://www.ibnarabisociety.org