Celebrating the myriad facets of Urdu in English

Poet-translator Anisur Rahman translates the works of Urdu poets in his new book Hazaar Rang Shaairi: The Wonderful World of the Urdu Nazm, which took four years to complete, and opens like a rose

It has been a long brutalizing winter. Now weary with time, it’s almost desperate to cast off its burden and fade away, unloved, perhaps even forlorn. Much like famous poet Kaifi Azmi said in his equally famous nazm, ‘ Main ye soch kar us ke dar se uthha thha ke rok legi, mana legi mujhko’. The beloved never stopped her lover there.

Here, the nazm about love makes a comeback to public memory as ‘Repentance’ in poet-translator Anisur Rahman’s book Hazaar Rang Shaairi: The Wonderful World of the Urdu Nazm, a book so beautiful that it took four years to be ready, a work so profound that its inspiration lay in Rahman’s previous Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi.

Says Rahman who has shared his love for poetry with generations of students in his capacity as an academic at Jamia Millia Islamia, “I have always been interested in comparative literature. There came a time when I thought I must go back to my roots, my own language. While teaching English, if I quoted Ghalib or Mir, the students would happily admit to understanding the larger English literary traditions through their works.”

Unsurprisingly, Rahman who is an adviser to Rekhta (online portal for promoting Urdu literature), is using his command over the language to take the works of Urdu poets to a larger readership. If his Hazaaron Khahishein Aisi was a celebration of the ghazal, this one is all about the nazm. “One can call it a sequel in a way,” admits Rahman about this celebration of Urdu poets in English. “There is Urdu poetry in the book but not in Urdu. If we had used the Persian script in the book, only those who can read and write Urdu could have understood or read it. My aim was to take the message forward. If we had used the Urdu text simultaneously, the book would have become unwieldy. If we had just done it all in Urdu, the book’s reach would have been limited. We must remember some of the best works on Ghalib have come from Columbia University.”