Posts Tagged Southasian

Someone once said Abida Parveen is not a singer or an artist… she is an experience….. her voice and expression takes you to a different universe… when she collaborated with India’s ace filmmaker, poet, artist, revivalist, musician and activist Muzaffar Ali the result had to be something divine … something out of ordinary, something that transcends all boundaries… it was purest of the pure Raqs-e-Bismil (dance of the injured)… totally unforgettable and soulful … In Abida’s own words Raqs-e-Bismil has the glow of Almighty in it…one can become wali by listening to it…. sufi poetry has a magic that is beyond any explanation, any comprehension … it fascinates me as each time it takes me into a new realm of discovery.

I am sharing my favorite ghazal from the album with translation… although each piece is a priceless gem yet this ghazal has the power to take you beyond yourself. Abida is at her best here.

The English translation is done by Muzaffar Ali himself.

Hairat mara ze har do jahan be niaz kard
Een khab kaare daulat e bedaar meekunad
(Rumi)

Bewilderment has absolved me of both the worlds
This is the consequence of awakening from my dreams

Khuli jab ki chashm e dil e hazeen,
to vo nam raha na teri rahi
Hui hairat aisi kuch aankh par ki asar ki be asari rahi
Pari goshe jaan mein ajab nida ki jigar na bejigari rahi
Khabare tahhayyur e ishq sun na junoon raha na pari rahi
Na to tu raha na to main raha jo rahi bekhabari rahi…
(Khamsa by Nazeer Akbarabadi for Siraj Aurangabadi)

The eyes of an anguished heart open…
No longer moist.. Bereft of tears
The perplexed vision
Remained unmoved.. Devoid of response
The soul heard.. An unusual sound
That took the pluck of life away
As wondrous love revealed itself
The fairy vanished..The ecstasy lost
Nor you remained.. Nor I was found
mere oblivion was all there was…

Mujhe bekhudi ye tune bhali chashni chakhayi
Kisi aarzoo ki dil mein nahi ab rahi samayi

O surrender in love,
You have given me a taste that pales all worldliness
No desire remains
In the heart filled with submission

Na hazar hai na khatar hai, na raja hai ne dua hai
Na khayaal e bandagi hai na tamana e khudai

Neither distance nor fear…
neither hope nor prayer
neither thoughts of subjugation
nor desire of godliness

Na muqqam e guftagu hai na mahhall e justaju hai
Na wahan havaas pahunche na khirad ko hai rasai

No place for exchange of words…
no occasion for further quest
Where neither consciousness reaches
nor thoughts transcend its realm

Na makin hai ne makan hai na zameen hai ne zaman hai
Dil e be nava ne mere jahan chhavni hai chayi

No one resides..Neither habitation exist…
Is where this wandering heart has come to camp

Na visaal hai na hijraan na suroor hai na gham hai
Jise kahiye khwab e ghaflat so woh neend mujh ko aayi

Where there is no union… No separation
no sorrow… no joy
What is said to be an endless oblivion
I enter such a slumber

(Hazrat Shah Niaz)

Another video below (more…)

SG has sent me this old audio recording of Qurratulain Hyder when she visited London in the 1990s and was interviewed by the BBC.

This is a great interview, with Ainee Apa at her best: quick witted, sharp and entertaining. During the interview she makes fun of the light weight journalism and then remarks on how a writer or an artist gets stuck by an image. She talks of an image from the Iraq war – a 15 second long clip – where a woman is questioning as to why is she a victim of a war.

About getting the highest national awards, she is a little reticent to say much, perhaps finding it ‘boring’ in her usual style. In fact she is even a little mocking but then corrects herself immediately.

Another great feature of this recording is that she reads a portion of her (then) latest novel Chandni Begum. (This is one of her later novels and brings forth the evolution of post-colonial India, the confidence of the new generations and the replacement of the old order with the new complex Indian reality. This is also a curious novel, where the protaganist -Chandni – dies at an early stage of the plot and life moves on…Only Ainee could have handled such a story and narrative).

In her reading, Ainee impersonates the characters – street performers or nautankee wallahs- and the passage invokes an entire mood, sociology and politics of how the performing troupe[s] function and finds their stars. There is reference to an artiste who in her greed has renounced her art and has moved to Dubai as an ayah (a domestic helper or a nanny).

The ultimate historical value of this audio-clip is the background to her translation of a 1790 novel authored by a junior official of the East India Company called Hasan Shah.

This novel entitled Nashtar and written in a mix of Hindi and Persian was discovered by Ainee from the Aligarh library. She translated it as “The Dancing Girl” (there is a version called The Nautch Girl as well) and published it in the late 1990s.

The novel, claims Ainee, is the first (South Asian) novel in a modern sense. The author was a contemporary of Jane Austen. Ainee also mentions the book’s contemporary style of writing, fascinating characterisation and the historical value with respect to the narration of the English Officers’ lifestyle and their immersion in local culture and manners. This changed, as Ainee reminds in this clip, during the reign of Lord Cornwallis when the English officials were asked to develop and maintain a distance from the natives.

(Hasan Shah’s novel was translated in 1890, prior to the publication of Umrao Jan, and therefore Ainee strongly maintaned this to be the first novel. Later some critics disagreed but Ainee held to her point of view based on irrefutable evidence she had painstakingly gathered.)

Listening to this voice in its full force was a pleasure. What a little gem – and I cannot thank my friend more for sending this link.

Picture credit

Postscript: Today, Pakistan’s Geo TV also ran a programme on Ainee in its popular talk show ’50 minutes’. Tributes were paid and senior writers (including Abdullah Husain who was accused by Ainee of plagirising her in his novel Udaas Naslain! – the gentleman was quite incoherent) held forth on her ‘stature’. Some of the discussion was good though a few comments were pretty prosaic (Ainee Apa would not have liked that stuff). But then she must be smiling at Abdullah Hussain declaring on national television that she was the greatest of Urdu novelists!