11
Faiz meets Meer
In my second semester of BS, a teacher recited a ‘misra’ of Faiz. In regular Urdu poetry, a poem consists of couplets, and each line of a couplet is called ‘misra’. The misra in question was “Hum aa gaye to garmi-e-bazaar dekhna”. The situation that led the teacher in question, Mr. Alvi, to recite poetry impromptu is very interesting. A group of students in our class never took Mr. Alvi’s class, much to his infuriation. One lucky day, the abovementioned group entered the class when Mr. Alvi was halfway through his lecture. A sarcastic smile played on his lips when he noticed the ‘notorious’ students joining his class. He just read the above misra and continued his lecture. Literally translated, it means “The bazaar lights up the moment I enter”.
The lecture had been and gone, but I couldn’t get the misra out of my head. The next day, I asked Mr. Alvi to share the other misra with me. To my utter disappointment, he neither remembered the poet of the poem, nor the other misra. When I went home, I googled it up but to no avail. On a whim, I sifted through the contents of “Kuliyaat-e-Faiz” (Complete works of Faiz) from my personal library. After an hour or so, I found it. Sheer joy!
Fast forward 6 years. Today I was reading Meer Taqi Meer’s poetry and I came across a poem that instantly reminded me of Faiz’s “garmi-e-bazaar” poem. This time, I was fortunate enough to find the poem online. There is a very interesting link between these two poems. I can’t believe it’s a coincidence that the poems match in ‘bahr’, ‘qafia’ and ‘radeef’ (different aspects of poetic metre). Clearly, Faiz got his inspiration from Meer. I can imagine how it feels breaking the Da Vinci code. Granted, we can scale it down a bit in my case 
. Here are the poems I’ve been talking about.
14 Comments to “Faiz meets Meer”
Leave a comment
What’s Cooking?
Chatter Box
- Usman on Ali Khayam
- abc on Ali Khayam
- Sheharbano on Self Appraisal and Intellectual Arrogance
- Usman on Self Appraisal and Intellectual Arrogance
- Sheharbano on Ali Khayam
Excellent research and both poems are beautiful in depth of meaning and display of linguistic mastery. Thank you
My pleasure, Sir
Interesting findings
.
This was an absolute gem of a post. Great discovery!
Personally, I prefer Mir’s version. But that might be bcause of having a strong bias towards anything written by him
.
Thanks. I didn’t know you have Urdu poetry bug in you
TuKeesstiZKujaiKAsmaanEKabood.HazaarChashmBaRaahETuAzSitaraKashood
~ Iqbal
The second one probably means: “A thousand eyes, like stars, open to behold you”
What does the first misra mean?
“Who are you and from where that the dark blue (black) sky”
Beautiful!
Wonderful Shehrbano. You are a “multi-faceted” person (just like your taxonomy
but kudos and your best (non-tech) blog post ever!
Thank you
I am getting totally hooked on your blog–not a good sign for the company with work piling up all over the place
I am not too deep into urdu poetry, but Faiz is just too stunning to ignore. It must have taken him months to write each poem to such perfection. Brilliant!
I am flattered to have you and Dr Affan in the list of my audience
. I don’t think it took Faiz months to write a poem. It comes naturally to some people. There is a thought process working in the background and at some stage when it’s mature enough, it just translates into words. What’s really amazing about Faiz is that he spent quite some time in prison. Instead of getting depressed and losing his calm, he produced gems of poems, such as this one:
Zindan ki ek shaam
Shaam ke pecho-kham sitaron se
Zeena-zeena utar rahi hai raat
Yoon saba paas se guzarti hai
Jaise keh di kisi ne pyaar ki baat.
Sahne-zinda ke be-vatan ashjar
Sarnigun mahav hain banane mein
Damne-aasman pe nakshe-nigaar.
Shaane-baam par damakta hai
Meherban chandi ka dast-e-jameel
Khaak mein dhul gayi hai aabe-najoom
Noor mein dhul gaya hai ashr ka neel.
Sabz goshon mein neelgoon saaye
Lahlahate hain jis tarah dil mein
Mauj-e-dard-e-phirak-e-yaar aaye.
Dil se paiham khayal kahta hai
Itni shireen hai zindagi is pal
Zulm ka zahar gholnewale
Kamran ho sakenge aaj na kal
Jalvagahe-visaal ki shamayein
Vo bujha bhi chuke agar to kya
Chand ko gul karen, to hum jane.
Amazing!