Bulbul. Gurgaon. 2012. Aug 9.
End should have been yellow.
O bulbul, strange bird!
Your loud call was so very sudden
That my sad heart gave one wild leap,
For in a flash my world was quite transformed
Full of roses, bulbuls and spring verdure
I had been reading a Greek play
My mind absorbed, my fancy feeding
On a king’s story, so true to life,
Where new strife treads on the heels of the old.
Though silver lay on the tree and around,
When you struck your harp, blossoms came
And my winged fancy soared to heaven –
Spring often does bewitch one’s eyes.
The sun shone bright in an azure sky;
A snow-white cloud sailed, not very far.
We stood, enraptured, gazing at the lake,
My love and I, in an island bower.
Suddenly some one knocked at the door,
Fled was the dream and I was awake.
A cold gust rushed in like a raider,
And back I was where I had been.
I have fastened doors and windows;
Icicles on all sides sparkle like glass;
A black cloud blanket wraps up the sky;
A chill wind pierces the marrow of my bones.
The last chinar leaf on the branch
Hangs withered and lifeless like a corpse.
Drunk with power, midwinter has his day,
Even the fire pot we cling to is cold.
You are a strange bird, o bulbul!
How can I forget that in dreary midwinter
You made me roam in flowering meadows?
~ Ghulam Nabi Firaq. Translated by Trilokinath Raina. From ‘mahjoor and after: Modern Kashmiri Poetry’.
-0-
Update:
Bilbitchur. Bulbul.
Jammu. 2012. Sept 8.
The yellow bottomed one.
Jayalal Kaul’s pioneering book ‘Kashmiri Lyrics’ published in 1945 was probably the first proper attempt to document rare poetic works of Kashmiri language in roman script with corresponding English translations. Here’s the digital copy of the first edition. Read and share.
Fish prepared with oil and salt,
ginger, pepper, pomegranate peel,
with walnuts garnished, touched with saffron,
and served on a bed of cool, white rice:
the doer of this act of merit
is bound to go to paradise.
~ Ratnabhuti, only name of this Sanskrit poet is known
In this chilly winter time,
may your cooking pots be full
with paste of lotus stem and root,
bright and smooth as elephant tusk,
with fritters rich in pepper,
and pieces of the shakuni fowl.
~ Bhatta Vriddhi, again only name
Came across these in ‘Subhashitavali: An Anthology of Comic, Erotic and Other Verse’, translated from the Sanskrit Subhashitavali of Vallabhadeva (fifteenth-century CE, Kashmir ) by A. N. D. Haksar.
For me the interesting part in this film isn’t hearing the famous Kashmiri ‘poet of silence’ actually speak but it is the way his voice comes across as a person, when he talks about his life and then as a poet, when he talks about the thoughts that invade his mind. It is the way his poetry interacts with a listener and then how people interact with him in person, question him. ‘Why silent?’ isn’t the only question. The question could also be why words written decades ago, concerns that first etched them, why those words still offer quasi-resonance.
-0- First section of a Ranjit Hoskote essay titled ‘Winter Thoughts about Spring’ (link) starts with a conversation with Rahman Rahi and ends with part were Bollywood eats up culture.
Right, Rahman Rahi with Lata Mangeshkar.
In this film, perhaps the most ironic part is when one sees a young Kashmiri girl in middle of a discussion about future of Kashmiri Language, trying to make a strong point and then struggling to find a Kashmiri word for her point. Or perhaps most ironic part is watching the poet quote Koshur poet Mahjoor and Dilli poet Mir with just as much ease. Or perhaps it is hearing him worry about losing his memories: ASI protected Sun temple ruins of military campaigner Lalitaditya and Muslim Auqaf Trust run Charari Sharief of soul campaigner Alamdar-e-Kashmir Hazrat Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Wali/Nund Reshi.
Budshah (Sultan Zain-ul-Abdin, 1420-1470) was a poet too. Under the pen name ‘Qatai’ he wrote in both Persian and Kashmiri. A sample of his work in Kashmiri:
Zaavyul Kamar aavyul badan shokas chaman zokas chhu ban Yaaduk sezar raaduk thazar fasrshas chhu kan arshas chhu thum
-0-
Came across it in A History of Kashmiri Literature by Trilokinath Raina.
-0-
All I can think about right now is hearing the talk of these old aunts about some woman named Badshah Bai.
-0-
The beloved listens or not
I address him for it gives me relief
in proximity of saffron land
I own a vegetable shop
Hoping that a customer may
Flavour my vegetable with saffron
~ Zinda Kaul
From biography of the poet by A.N.Raina for ‘Makers of Indian Literature’ series.
On the Dal lake
Can I confine the limitless with limits,
Does at all mercury offer its lap,
For a while of restful lull,
To easy loving pleasure-hunters,
For their luxurious enjoyment,
In houseboats and shikaras.
Does the fire of vanity and valour
Contain the fatigue of cowardice.
~ select lines from ‘The River’ by Abdul Ahad Azad.
Translation from biography of the poet by G.N. Gauhar for ‘Makers of Indian Literature’ series.
You are my flower, and I would fain adore you
With love and golden gifts for all my days;
Burn scented oil in silver lamps before you,
Pour perfume on your feet with prayer and praise
For we are one – round me your graces fling
Their chains, my heart to you for aye I gave –
One in the perfect sense our poets sing,
“Gold and the bracelet, water and the wave.”
From ‘Afoot Through the Kashmir Valleys’ (1901) by Marion Doughty. [Photographs from the book here]
In 1952 Dina Nath Nadim on a visit to Peking gets to see Chinese classical opera, White Haired Girl. He is impressed with the format and believes that it could very well work for a Kashmiri story with Kashmiri folk music. 1953, only a year later, drawing inspiration from a popular Kashmiri legend about change of seasons, he comes up with Bombur ta Yambarzal (The Narcissus and the Bumble Bee). That year this opera is staged for the first time at famous Nedou’s Hotel. Acclaimed to be first of its kind in the entire country, it proves to be a roaring success among the public who can’t keep themselves from singing the songs from this original production. Quasi propagandist context mixed with genuine folk music, a popular story that everyone knows, earnest socialist fervor triggered by promise of a new political change, another new beginning – this creation of Nadim, not yet disillusioned, offers it all. It is a significant achievement.
An achievement significant enough to draw a special audience. In 1955 the show, that has already had a few re-runs, is again put up at Nedou’s Hotel for special guest – military leader and Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai Bulganin who is accompanied by First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev. At the end of the show, the two political giants offer Nadim a hug each. The story was believed to be allegory on American Capitalism and Soviet Socialism.
That was the story of ‘Bombur ta Yambarzal’ this far.
Nadim was joyous that day.
Dina Nath Nadim, the artist, between the two colossus Khrushchev and Bulganin. 1955. Found this rare photograph (by Anatoliy Garanin) at RIA Novosti website. Dina Nath Nadim stood unidentified, unmarked, with his crew.
[Came across this photograph thanks to Autar Mota ji]
This great interest of Russians in a Kashmiri story wasn’t sudden. It was cultivated. In 1955, on a diplomatic goodwill mission for USSR to Kashmir, Uzbek communist leader Sharaf Rashidov, a name that in later years would be called ‘a communist despot’ and a few years later would be called ‘a true Uzbek hero’, came across Dina Nath Nadim’s modern re-telling of an inspiring old Kashmiri story. By the end of 1956 Rashidov was already out with his interpretation of the story in a novella titled ‘Kashmir Qoshighi’ ( also known as Song of Kashmir/Kashmir Song/Kashmirskaya song) acknowledging Nadim’s work.
-0-
Much dwelling, much seeing, much tasted from pleasure and burning the teacher has asked the schoolboys,whose young eyes were alert, and mind just spriad it’s wings for a long-distance flight:
– Where the wisdom of people originates?
– In experience, – one has answered.
– In thought, – another has answered.
– In connection of experience and thought, – third has answered.
And again, having thought, the teacher told:
– The experience of the man dies together with the man, the mind of the man dies together with the man. For the tam of ours is short! The wisdom of the people originates in memory of the people. It is – ocean, from which the mining flows and springs becoming on the way the rivers are born. Memory is the consequent of wisdom and it is the reason of it. But where the memory lives and what gives it force to pass, enriched, from century to century, from past times to times of future?
It is a figure on a wall and a picture on a canvas.
It is a line on an stone and book.
It is a fairy tale, tradition and legend.
It is a song and music.
In them memory of people, which widening the beaches, flows from breed to breed, in them is wisdom of people, which as all the inflaming plume, is transmitted from breed to breed
-0-
By the start of 1960, the dream was already over for Nadim and many of his friends. The poets were coming to term with new realities, promises broken and perhaps their own role in the events of past. Making a departure from his earlier ‘progressive’ style, in his 1959 poem Gassa Tul (Blade of Grass) Nadim wrote*:
This blade of grass Like me Soft silk when sap was there Bowed to the sun and waved with the wind. In winter nights its roots were lost. Robbed of its sap, it stood erect, Dried up, stiffened with false pride, Changed in kind, having outlived its day. Blow on it, it crumbles; Step on it, it is dust; Show it a flame and Ashes is all.
-0-
1965 was the year of second Kashmir war between India and Pakistan. It was also the year when USSR’s famous Soyuzmultfilm studio produced an animated film called Наргис. Soyuzmultfilm excelled at producing animated fairy tales and other popular stories targeted at children, but for Наргис the story came from Rashidov’s Song of Kashmir. Interesting the film retained the original Kashmiri names of all the characters sketched originally by Dina Nath Nadim, all the names except Yambarzal who is given the popular name Nargis, the name of this film.
This film tells the story of flower Nargis awaiting the arrival of Bombur who is no where to be found even as winter is over. Nargis roams around and calls out for him. An evil witch (Wav or storm in Kashmiri version) transforms her master Harud (Autumn) into Bombur but Nargis sees through the ploy, in his rage Harud kills Nargis. Nature God intervenes and chases away Harud who is finally revived by tears of wailing Bombur.A happy ending like the one in Nadim’s version and unlike the original Kashmiri story in which Bombur turns blind and spend his life looking for Yambarzal moving from flower to flower.
With the birth of Doordarshan, by mid-1970s, animated films from Russia made appearance on Indian television science, they would keep up such appearances for decades to come even after the fall of USSR and Soyuzmultfilm getting devoured in capitalist market.
In his early 1970s poem Hisaab Fahmee (Know the Science of Number) about a man whose account balance has gone haywire, Nadim laments*:
It never became four, At last I saw only a cypher, One round zero, Now shrinking, now swelling again, Like breathing in and out.
First section of a Ranjit Hoskote essay titled ‘Winter Thoughts about Spring’ (
