Mirza Ghalib – A biographical Scenario by Gulzar

I happened to chance upon this beautiful book last evening while i was spending time at a bookshop. Absolutely captivating so much so I was just unable to drop the book for a moment. almost spent a couple of hours at the store reading it and another hour at the hair dresser....still reading it!!! A collectors item in my opinion.

Here is a small write-up by Anuradha Goyal where she describes the synopsis of the read. This was written in 2007.

This is not a typical biography that traces the life and time of Ghalib, but a more poetic anthology, a few defining scenes of his life that give a jest of what Ghalib was. It has 17 chapters or 17 scenes. Book describes a bit of his childhood and his marriage to Umrao Jaan, who remained his only wife all his life, His relationship with her and the faith that she had put in him. They never agreed on their views on many things, most prominent being religion and its rituals, but they still had all the love and faith for each other.


It traces the situations in his that lead him to say most of his famous couplets. Without describing him, it etches out the character of Ghalib very well, who was a drunkard and a gambler all his life and never felt apologetic about it. He lived most of his life in debt. He knew he is a poet and he would not do anything else. He knew he deserved to be the poet laureate of Delhi, and he would not take any other position but that in the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar. He is eccentric, knows this fact, he not only accepts this fact but also enjoys it.

It talks about the courtesan who falls in love with him. She is the only one who predicts that one day he would be Dilli’s poet laureate. When people say he is in debt, she says’ what about the debt that the whole Dilli owes him?’ Ghalib also promises to gift her a shawl if that happened and a series of events take him to her grave, where he presents her the promised shawl.

The whole book is interspersed with poetry in Urdu and translated in English. There is context setting, followed by the couplets and if you understand Urdu a bit, you can simply get lost in the romanticism of the poetry and in his way with the words (andaz-e-bayan), in his ability to question everyone and everything. For example, he would not say that ‘my heart is crying’, but he would say ‘why should my heart not cry?’

Gulzar calls himself the third servant of Ghalib, two others are mentioned across the book and formed an important part of the portrayal of the poet. An easy to read small book, a good reading for anyone who admires or appreciates Urdu poetry.

Read the review @mouthshut

This is where you can buy the book:
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The Solitary Reaper- William Wordsworth

Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound; Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt; More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?-- Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more

About the poem:
"The Solitary Reaper" is a ballad by English Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and one of his best-known works in English literature. In it, Wordsworth describes in the first person, present tense, how he is amazed and moved by a Scottish Highlands girl who sings as she reaps grain in a solitary field. Composed in 1805, the poem was first published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807). Each of its four stanzas is eight lines long and written in iambic tetrameter, with a rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b-c-c-d-d, though in the first and last stanzas the "A" rhyme is off.
'"The Solitary Reaper" is one of Wordsworth's most famous post-Lyrical Ballads lyrics. The words of the reaper's song are incomprehensible to the speaker, so his attention is free to focus on the tone, expressive beauty, and the blissful mood it creates in him. The poem functions to 'praise the beauty of music and its fluid expressive beauty, the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling" that Wordsworth identified at the heart of poetry


Structure & Synopsis:
"The Solitary Reaper" begins with the speaker instructing us to look upon "Yon solitary Highland Lass" who is "Reaping and singing by herself". Thrilled by her song, the speaker compares the girl to a nightingale whose "melancholy strain" welcomes "weary bands / Of travellers" to "some shady haunt, / Among Arabian sands". Yet he does not understand the words of her song (presumably they are in the Scottish Gaelic language), and impatiently cries, "Will no one tell me what she sings?" He wonders if the subject is of "battles long ago" or of commonplace and universal things ("familiar matters of to-day"), perhaps "some natural sorrow, loss, or pain."

Then he dismisses his own musings -- "Whate'ver the theme," he says, "the Maiden sang / As if her song could have no ending" -and refocuses his attention on the song. He listens, "motionless and still", before finally mounting the hill and leaving the solitary reaper, still singing, behind. Though his ears cannot hear the song anymore, the sound of the Highland Lass's music will forever be a fresh and evocative memory in his heart.
Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy, and his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge had visited the Scottish Highlands in 1803. According to Dorothy's diary, solitary reapers were not an uncommon sight. And in a note to the 1807 edition, Wordsworth acknowledged his indebtedness to his friend Thomas Wilkinson's manuscript from a tour of Scotland.

Some other popular poems of William Wordsworth:

1. Daffodils
2. The Sonnet

Chadariyaa- Kabir

• kabīrā jab ham paidā hue jaga hańse ham roye aisī karanī kara calo ham hańse jaga roye chadariyā jhinī re jhinī he rāma nāma rasa bhinī
• aṣṭa kamalā ka carkhā banāyā pañca tattva kī pūnī nava dasa māsa bunana ko lāge mūrakha mailī kinhī
• jaba morī chādara bana ghara āyā rańga reja ko dinhī aisā rańga rańgā rańgare ne lālo lāla kar dinhī
• cādara oḍha śańka mat kariyo yeh do dina tumko dinhī mūrakha loga bheda nahi jāne din din mailī kinhī
• dhruva prahlāda sudāmā ne oḍhi śukadeva ne nirmala kinhī dāsa kabīra ne aisī odhī jyoń kī tyoń dhara dinhī

1. Poet Kabir says, “When I was born, the world smiled and cried. However, I will do such deeds that when I leave, I will be the one smiling and the world will be the one crying.” This life is like a very thin transparent shawl which should be drenched in the holy name of Lord Rama, the Reservoir of Pleasure.
2. The eight lotuses is the spinning wheel using the five earthly elements to make the chadar (the body). In nine of ten days, the chadar is completed; however, the fools will destroy it.
3. When the chadar is completed, it is sent to the dyer (the spiritual master) to color it. The dyer (the spiritual master) colored it as such that it is all red (the color of self-realization).
4. Do not have doubts or fears while wearing this chadar. It is only given to you for two days and it is temporary too. The foolish people do not understand the temporariness of this chadar, and they day by day destroy it.
5. Great devotees such as Dhroo Maharaja, Bhagat Prahlad, Sudama, and Brahmarshi Sukdev have worn this chadar as well as purified their chadars as well other chadars (souls). The servant, Kabir Dasa, is attempting to wear this chadar as given to him originally by his guru.