Tuesday, March 18, 2008

How to read Ghalib

Attended a talk today by the Columbia Professor Frances Pritchett The talk was titled 'How to read Ghalib'. Her claim to fame is that she has commented on each of the 1459 (if I remember correctly) shers that Ghalib wrote in his entire life and that shes now going for a second round. She tried explaining why the West is more smitten by Ghalib than any other Urdu Ustaad. The talk was more about how the language researchers should go about understanding Ghalib. She also explained a few of Ghalib's sher in this regard. I could hardly understand a few (until she translated them to English) due to my Urdu Illiteracy :).

जो खुदी को देखूं तो एक भीड़ नज़र आए
लोगों मे मैं नहीं मुझमे लोग नज़र आए

कहते हैं दुनिया मैं होना नहीं काफ़ी
वो होकर तो दिखाएं जो रहे कुछ बाकी

'अमन' ज़िंदगी से एक सवाल पूछे
तेरी मुझसे रंजिशी क्या है

6 comments:

arvind batra said...

yeh ghalib ka kalaam hai ki aman shayar ka?

aman said...

aman shayar ka :)

Gursharan Singh said...

arz kiya hai,

khude se bewafayi, auron se wafa,
itna to masoom ka khayaal keeje,

naaraazgi khud se, aur sazaa auron ko,
auron ki naraazgi pe khushi to na keeje,

banizar aadam ko, pathhar mein ghadkar aur,
khuda keh kar be-aabhroo to mat keeje,

khud mein, aur unmein, agar farak nahin samajhte,
to wafa aur bewafai ko to ijaazat deeje

:)

aman said...

waah waah subhaan allah..
kamaal ka kalaam hai janaab :)

Anonymous said...

@aman: was the event filmed?

aman said...

@Zakir, I am not sure. I guess it was. Check out this http://www.hindiurduflagship.org/
The event was hosted by this program at UT Austin. You can find the concerned people through this website. hope it helps.