Chemistry of Gazals

Every style of literature as much as every period of literature has an intrinsic culture; Ghazal is a zenith. Ghazal exemplifies the respect for the beloved. On the pretext of that feeling ghazal creates many subjects & many metaphors that journey deeper & deeper into the pains & sufferings of love in all phases. Romance is an intrinsic part of growing up and romance never dies. But love is the next thing in romance. It is an absolute commitment to creation. All those who are in some way or the other related to this act are in love. It is a single point epitome of spirituality & humanity in the purest possible sense. It is a transition of body into the spirit & beginning of an experience beyond physics. In that sense romantic poetry will confine itself more to the ishq-husn politic whereas love poetry would tend to transcend itself to anything & everything under & over the sun, including the sun because love has expansive radiations & it is capable of filling up everything. It is an experience of metaphysics where the space may not be given, it could be created, beauty may not be given it could be created. Love is the final hope of the universe. In tragic times it thrives on remembrances, in good times it creates a weightlessness of the matter making it a free-floating experience; you could journey from anywhere to anywhere.

Poetry is universally an experience of the spectrum of light. Depending on where you are standing a different color ray would hot your perspective. Poetry is subject to varied interpretations by different people in the same space as much its varied interpretations by the same person in different space.

Poetry is not collection of words or idioms.

Jod kar dekhe labz-e-bayan ke bahane

Gar rubahi ban bhi jaye to kaha hai maene

Poetry is essentially born out of a deeper need to communicate.

Ghazala tum to waaqif ho kaho Majnun ke marne ki
Agar deewana na raha to veerane pe kya guzregi

Suprisingly Ghalib the king of expressions also wrote;

Magar likhvaaye koi usko khat, to hum se likhvaaye
Hui subaha, aur ghar se kaan par rakh kar qalam nikle

This shows all big names rea free-flowing int their expressions.

There are poets who communicate more to others.

Koi naam pata gar puche to ae qasid bata dena

Takallus daag hai aur ashoko ke dilme rehte hai (Daag)

There are poetries that communicate more to oneself;

Aap to aate rahe khayalon mein bana diye zidko kafeer 

Din-o-majhab aur kya hai baat sabko samzhayi nahin jati

Thus a piece of poetry could become either a connection of one world with another or simple autobiographic expression.

Considering the numbers that are there already in the Ghazali literature, they follow apublic opinion. That is when you refer to a populist literature.

…Ae muhobbat tere anjaam pe rona aaya

…Jaane kyun aaj tere naam pe rona aaya ( Shakeel)

However, every poet is different. He has a different psyche, he has a different motivation & he has a different perspective. Although within the quantum of literature that is produced one come across some contradictions. Hence it is ideal for the reader to look at poetry as independent of the poet.

The following lines of Momin are not in the same spirit;

Kyun sune arz muztarab Momin, Sanam aakhir khuda nahi hota

Hae sanam! hae sanam lab pe kyun,Khair hai Momin? Tumhe kya ho gaya?,

It need not be, it won’t be, it should not be. Art is sport played better with unpredictability.On top of it all he may be in most unusual time & space condition in which the poetry is written. It is a given thing that a literary writes for the posterity but he himself lives for the moment. That moment when his thoughts are converted into literature is the moment of reckoning & not when the poetry is read. This is a paradox that no one has been able to resolve. When you write a non-fiction you express stream of thought or may be extend it. But you have lived with it for a sustained period. Poetry being more of fiction is very impulsive. To help resolve this crisis, I feel it is best to use an emotionally intelligent model & say that poet may be very different from the poetry in the time & space you read the poetry. Hence it is better to like or dislike the poetry rather than like or dislike the poet. One simply may not know that persona.

In the spirit of true respect for the beloved there are possibly very few other comparable languages that make a direct comparison & sometimes a direct substitution of God with the beloved. So ‘dair’ & ‘dar’ are brought within the visual distance of human intellect. Hence it could be said that Urdu language especially within the folds of ghazal is an elaborate experience of either describing the pain or lauding the beauty, detailing the journeys including the passage of lonely nights & the upcoming & soft end of bazm or mehfil, upsurge of human ego or its downfall, rejections & dejections, bitter & sweet descriptions, tours & detours & the poetry winds itself generously through the expressions & the experiences of saba, shaam, baam, shab, taqdeer, kismet, naustar, sheesha, sumandar, leher, taj, isnaan, aadmi, tasavvur, khwab, haqeekat, zakhm, dard & what have you!

Ghazal is a layered communication. It is a synthesis & its complexities are manifold considering the interlocutor’s mind set which itself may have many more layers of interception and understanding. It has four major constituents to support the manufacture or the culturing of the thoughts. So here is the phase analysis of the ghazal that would be followed by or that would be in tandem with the horizontal analysis of the poetry. Poetry especially a ghazal follows a grammar or rather a linguistic exuberance that could also be seen from analytical perspective.