READING GHALIB IN PUNJABI by: Dr Afzal Mirza
I know of only two writers who have done this before. Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabbasum the great teacher and poet had earlier translated Ghalib into Punjabi. One must remember that singer Ghulam Ali’s rendering of one of Sufi Sahib’s translation has attained universal popularity which goes as:
Mere shoq da nain aitabaar tenun Ghalib’s Urdu poetry undoubtedly is difficult to understand and that’s the reason that so many men of letters have tried to write interpretations (Tashreehat) of his only Urdu Deewan. But Ghalib’s own favorite is his Persian poetry for which he wrote:
Farsi been ta babeeni naqsh ha- e rang rang The special thing about Sufi sahib who was indeed a scholar of Persian language is that he translated some of the Persian ghazals of Ghalib into easy and simple Punjabi. Sufi sahib was a popular Punjabi poet too. Another poet who has tried to translate Ghalib is Aseer Abid. And the latest addition is that of Afzal Shahid’s Chobh Sui Di (The Prick of a Needle). Dr Shahid himself realizes that he had undertaken a stupendous task. He writes,” Ghalib is that literary stalwart whom his own contemporaries and friends could not understand. The reason is that he used Persian diction with philosophical connotations and he was justly proud of it. He had written:
Na samjhe nein na samjhan ge oh mere sheir te ghazlan
(Ya rab woh na samjhe haein na samjhen ge meri baat Even then I have undertaken this task because my purpose is that Punjabi speaking public could understand the intricacies of Ghalib’s poetry.” For Chobh Sui Di Dr Shahid has selected about fifty ghazals of Ghalib and most of these are his famous ghazals. Here are a few examples:
Sheeshe’ch vekh aap nun oh ho gaya pachi
(Aeena dekh apna sa munh le ke rah gaya
Balan de khidone jehi dunya ae mere lai
(Bazeecha’e’atfal hae dunya mere aage
Suk gaye ne roan de paron samandar akh de
(Darya-e-muaasi tanuk taabi se hua khushk About Shahid’s Punjabi poetry in general Sibtul Hasan Zaigham has commented ,”In spite of being an original poet Shahid has delved deep into the Punjabi classics. His poetry has its melody derived from Ragas and one can also find his poetry’s connection with classical poets. He draws inspiration from Sufi school of thought on one hand and on the other is fully conscious of the problems of common man on the mundane level”. While living in America for many decades now Shahid has not forgotten his roots and says:
Punjan panian nasha kamal da ae In the same vein he remembers river Ravi of his birthplace and writes:
Ravi kare zaaran Shahid still longs for his native Punjab but laments the changes brought by time and environmental depredation.
Kikar rahe nan bohrr nishaan |
Dr Afzal Shahid is a physicist by profession but a prolific writer of Urdu and Punjabi poetry. He has written more than half a dozen books of verses and all that by sitting in Atlanta (Georgia). After a PhD in physics and a short teaching stint at Govt. College of Science in Lahore he migrated to America and worked in the famous Bell Laboratories from where he got recently an early retirement. At present he teaches in a College and devotes his whole extra time in following his favorite pursuit of reading and writing poetry. Hailing from Shahkot (Sheikhupura)—the district that boasts of being the home district of Waris Shah –Afzal Shahid has drawn lot of inspiration from that great Punjabi poet. That is why his latest project is translating Heer into English in the same rhyme scheme that Waris Shah uses in his Heer. After going through some of his translations of Heer when once I asked him to send me translations of those famous Heer Waris Shah stanzas like Doli charrh dean mariyan Heer Cheekan Shahid surprised me by writing back that those stanzas are not of Waris Shah but are wrongly attributed to him. Anyway translating Heer is an incredibly difficult proposition but he intends to complete it as he did with the poetry of Ghalib that he translated into Punjabi.
