Mir - The Taste of Words: An Introduction to Urdu Poetry

It was she who laid out the idea of this book for me in detail, as a volume that would not only help her dip her toe in the vast ocean that constituted Urdu poetry, but also provide her with an entry point into the language itself, with its occasionally intimidating metaphors and linguistic peculiarities. Like Farah, I know a lot of people whose interest in Urdu poetry vastly exceeds their ability to engage with it, partly because of their unfamiliarity with the script, but also because of its often mystifying and outsider-unfriendly albeit tantalizing metaphorical conventions. Indeed, I am one of them. In school, I formally studied Hindi and Telugu, and despite Urdu being my putative mother tongue, I never engaged with it (except orally) till I was in my teens. It is only my unhealthy obsession with Urdu poetry that finally forced me to teach myself the Urdu script, and resolve the helplessness I felt when the joy of hearing a good poem was rendered ephemeral by my illiteracy. While my ineptitude with regard to Urdu poetry has been happily resolved, it obviously persists in other theatressuch as when I attend a Carnatic music concert, and watch the cognoscenti among the listeners keep beat with their palms and speak of kritis and adi-taalam, while all I can say is That sounded nice! I would also love to read a good book on relatively alien cultural traditions, albeit one that is not too dense and impenetrable, with lines like: One margam of Bharatanatyam consists of allaripu , jatiswaram , sabdam , varnam and tillana .

I hope I will not bamboozle you in this book with unexplained references to radif , qafiya , musaddas or such technicalities. This book seeks to enhance your affective enjoyment of Urdu poetry, with as little interference from me as possible. The intended readership of this book does not necessarily comprise Urdu experts or those who have read a lot of Urdu poetry in the original. Rather, I visualize an intelligent reader who, while interested in poetry as a genre, may not have a working knowledge of the Urdu script, and may not even be familiar with or fluent in Devanagri either. They would have read poetry in English and other languages to varying extents, but their exposure to Urdu might primarily be oral (Indian film songs, CDs of ghazals and poetry, the company of Urdu-literate friends). They do enjoy the spoken cadence of the language, but might have been deprived of the non-trivial pleasure that comes from a reflective reading of the poems.

In this anthology, I have attempted to provide an entry point to Urdu poetry for such interested non-insiders. To these readers, I offer a quasi-formal introduction to the canon and the contemporary landscape of Urdu poetry, with a highly arbitrary and subjective selection of around 150 poems from approximately fifty poets. Many of these poems have been abridged due to space considerations. I begin with a brief historical essay on Urdu and Urdu poetry (which is quirky, idiosyncratic, contingent and incomplete, but hopefully interesting) before laying out my selection of poems. I am also happy to offer a brief Internet roadmap of websites where one can read more about the poets and find more translated work. I have also identified websites in the public domain where these poems can be heard and viewed as performance.

I have included biographical notes on the poets, which are not meant to be exhaustive, but just an attempt to render them human enough. The poets are ordered chronologically; and while I have chosen the list with care, there will obviously be omissions, of poems and poets, that some readers will consider unforgivable. If reviewers of this book express anger over the fact that I overlooked certain poets, poems or verses (or was foolish enough to include some lightweight in this august company), I will be delighted. For in my wilder dreams, I envisage a series of sequel anthologies, like a good B-grade Hollywood horror film franchise, which people will disparage, but will be drawn to, as if to unhealthy street food. So do drum up the outrage. I briefly considered ignoring Ghalib in my selection to ensure such a backlash, but there is a line between quirkiness and insanity that even I am aware of! I would also like to eschew any claims of genre-originality.