Z is for Zeal...and Zilch...and Zafar

Zafar, Bahadur Shah (1775-1862)

Bahadur Shah II, (Zafar was his pen name) was the last emperor of Mughal India, who was deposed by the British in 1857, after being reluctantly dragged into supporting an armed uprising against them (the Indians call it a War of Independence, the British call it a Mutiny, insert here the bit about history being written by victors, and also the bit about a rose by other names etc).  (You can, if you prefer, scroll down to the actual poem from here)

Anyways, by the time Zafar came to power, the authority of the Mughals over their once vast Empire had crumbled away, and Zafar’s domain was limited to Delhi and its immediate surroundings.  A puppet Emperor, Zafar did his humiliating job with a certain aloof dignity.  He was a fastidious and retiring man, a Sufi and a poet, recoiling from the exigencies of the Machiavellian politics of the time.  Zafar was a terrible king, you could say he had zilch talent for statecraft, but he was a fine poet.  His zeal was wholly for spiritual introspection and art, and he entertained and patronised poets and singers in his court, hosting ‘mushairas’ where many notables presented their work, Ghalib and Dagh being among the stars of his court, and sometimes the emperor himself would join in.  

That lifestyle came to an abrupt end after 1857, the British stripped him of his remaining powers and exiled him to Burma, where he continued to write.  There is controversy surrounding who wrote the ghazal lamenting his fate – ‘not even two yards were given in his beloved’s neighbourhood’ – but I have grown up on the history that attributed it to Zafar, the controversy has come much later.  This poignant ghazal is my prompt for the last letter.  The ghazal and a rough translation are given after my response.

Settled and burning

Who knew that hearts could settle in every landscape?

arid or lush, made of an ancient dried-up ocean;

find stillness in the dance of deltas, the shimmy shake

of waves and sunlight, even when the rivers were foreign;

and even in places without a single river.

My ashes scattered in them made of them a stream

flowing somewhere beneath the ground, its quicksilver

a sharp-edged mountain brook in a ragged ravine.

Perhaps it would have been pleasanter if the pyre

had been lit in some quiet spot, well trodden woods

or a known bank in a childhood town, familiar

logs kindling, but it was fine - this unknown neighbourhood,

where no rivers flowed, no mountains rose, no palms shivered in the rain.

But hidden within my lashes were the turns of my beloved’s lane.

~~~

Lagta nahi hai dil mera ujaDe dayaar mein

Kis ki bani hai alaam-e-naa-payedaar mein

Kah do in hasraton se kahin aur ja basein

Itani jagah kahan hai dil-e-daagdaar mein

Ek shaakh-e-gul pe baith ke bulbul hai shaadmaN

KaaNtein biccha diye hai dil-e-laalaazaar mein

Umr-e-daraaz maang kar laye the chaar din

Do arzoo mein kat gaye do intezaar mein

Kitna badnaseeb hai Zafar dafn ke liye

Do gaz zamin bhi na mili ku-e-yaar mein

My heart can’t settle in a plundered land

Who has made it, in a world of transience?

Tell these wishes to go elsewhere and reside

where is the space for them in a sore heart?

The nightingale exults sitting on a flowering branch

and thorns are sown in the garden of my heart

I begged a great life and got just four days

Two were spent in yearning and two in waiting

How ill-fated is Zafar that for his grave

not even two yards were granted in his beloved’s neighbourhood

So that completes my A-Z on response poems.  I hope you have enjoyed the month as much as I have, reading and writing and going all over the blogosphere, highways and alleys where I have never gone before!  Thank you for coming along with me on this trip!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2015.