Ghalib, once more!

Why does one feel a sense of creeping unease, incompleteness, fragility and await while conversing with the much- revered poet of the sub continent – Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797-1869)? Can certitudes be more strange and unfathomable than we believe? Can poetry become an act of subversion? These pertinent questions are aptly answered by eminent critic, theorist and scholar Professor Gopi Chand Narang in his exhaustively researched and brilliantly written book “Ghalib: Innovative Meanings and the Ingenious Mind.” There is no dearth of the run-of-the mill books on the much -admired poet and the Oxford India did well to publish a book on him that meticulously maps out new terrain of Ghalib’s creative dexterity deeply rooted in Indian aesthetic and his thematic engagement with a state of being rooted and being rootless simultaneously .

Despite being astonished by the genius of Ghalib’s Persian and Urdu poetry, Narang tries to acquaint the readers with the sharpened quirkiness of Ghalib and his incisive portrayal of the lived reality with a marked sense of critical acuity. Narang analyses several popular ghazals of Ghalib with a view to turning attention to the “other” lurking behind the common place experience. The book promises to take reader on a fascinating reading of Ghalib in the backdrop of poetic conviction, semantic plurality and egalitarian ethos of the India which was yet to be colonised. For the author, “Ghalib’s poetry can be compared to a proverbial bowl of the legendary king Jamshed that reflected a whole universe when gazed at intently. His couplets hide an astonishing world of layer upon layer of complex meanings. The biggest question about Ghalib’s poetry is to discover the mysterious element that flares up like a flame and continues to lighten up vistas of meaning so that an ordinary reader is left breathless.”

Dividing into twelve equally well-argued chapters and competently translated into English by Surinder Deol, the book seeks to place Ghalib’s oeuvre into the perspectives of ancient Indian theories and aesthetic as propounded in the Vedas and shooniyta, the Buddhist concept of Nothingness. Narang analyses several couplets of Ghalib that suggest a crossroad where temporal and metaphysical world meet without a sense of conflict. Ghalib’s poetry creates some new avenues of semantic space where one feels to have been lied to and the poet does not necessarily provide one with tangible explanation. It is a dazzling technique of using evocative language that recreates spaces interspersed with personal narratives.

Evaluating the bard

Ghalib’s multi-sensory poetic disposition, deeply embedded import, and his innovative dialectical meaning have come in for a focused critical evaluation with remarkable ease. Narang takes pain in sharing how Ghalib encapsulates ancient Indian thoughts enumerated in the ancient texts and how Ghalib’s sensitivity endorses post modern thoughts and how Saussure, Barth, Lacan and Derrida became central in initiating a new discourse on Ghalib.

Ghalib’s multi-sensory poetic disposition, deeply embedded import, and his innovative dialectical meaning have come in for a focused critical evaluation with remarkable ease. Narang takes pain in sharing how Ghalib encapsulates ancient Indian thoughts enumerated in the ancient texts and how Ghalib’s sensitivity endorses post modern thoughts and how Saussure, Barth, Lacan and Derrida became central in initiating a new discourse on Ghalib.

Explaining how Ghalib subverts but creatively uses literary and cultural tropes with equal insistence, Narang delineates the basic concepts of Brahma, Nirvana, Mukti Bhav, Abhar and Padarth and initiates an illuminating debate on the negative dialectics of Shooniyta. A candid difference is made between Shooniyta and Maya, and in this connection, Narang alludes to a well-known Indian poet Bedil whose Persian poetry left a lasting influence on Ghalib. Bedil was an avid reader of “Yoga Vasistha”.

The book sets out untravelled territory of Ghalib’s poetry and the author brilliantly collates the heterogeneous poetic tradition in which Ghalib’s poetry is firmly located. The author analyses a plethora of couplets that betray a state of no mind that Shoonitya harps on.

For Narang, Shooniyta is neither a religious nor metaphysical concept nor it is a form of meditation. It is a way of thinking that strikes at root of every concept, ideology, belief and social practice. It goes beyond the surface facts to show the otherness.

The book offers a new refreshing perspective on Ghalib and the readers feel grateful to Narang for enabling them to realise the need for multiple ways of seeing and engaging with the fragmented and culturally torn world around us.

The Article First Appeared In The Hindu 

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