Meeraji’s poetry features prominently in my debut novel “Blasphear”. As part of my research for this novel, I studied his poetry and read, among others, Nasir Abbas Nayyar’s book Uss ko ik shaks samajhna tau munasib hi nahi. The following is the second and concluding part of my essay that summarizes my research into the theme of void in Meeraji’s poetry.
Bodily pleasure, sexual desire, and associated emotions constitute an important aspect of Meeraji’s poetry, one that has overshadowed, for many readers, his greater poetry resulting in infamy for him. Meeraji’s poetry seeks to declare sex as the essence or base of human being. Thus, for him the basis of love is sexual. According to Jalibi[4], spirit and body fuse into one in Meeraji’s poetry; this happened under the influence of Whitman and D. H. Lawrence and led him towards Hindi poetic tradition. For example, in Ghana, garam jadoo (A dense, warm magic), the love between Radha and Krishna is erotic; the lovers descend from a godly perch to more earthly domains – another example of how Meeraji assigns new meanings to old metaphors.
Ghana garam jadoo kisi raat ka
Mere dil ki rag rag mein sari hua
Tau perahan jism se hat gaya
Tu Radha bani mein Bihari bana.
A dense, warm magic of a certain night
Travelled through every vein of my body
Then the clothing fell off
You turned into Radha,
I became Krishna.
Sexuality in Meeraji’s poetry not only serves as a tool to accept the corporeal world but, more importantly, establishes a narrative parallel to the grand nationalistic narratives which were propagated in the 1930s and 40s. A very pertinent example quoted by Nayyar[1] is Saadat Hasan Manto’s well-known short story Suraaj ke liye (For the sake of independence), wherein the lead characters, Ghulam Ali and his wife, vow not to consummate their marriage until India has won independence; the nationalistic and liberation fervor needlessly pushes the sexual and bodily needs to the sidelines.
According to Kazmi[6], search for the woman was one more reason Meeraji turned towards classical Hindu literature, in which woman has evolved into a goddess. In Talib-e-ilm (Student), Meeraji reminds us of the forgotten worth of woman, which can be deemed as a symbol of fertility and therefore of sex.
Chalte chalte mujhe tezi se khayal aaya hai
Tera yeh joora jau khul jaye, bikhar jaye tau phir kaya hoga
Meri tareekh ke teri tareekh
Phel kar aaj pe (aur kal pe bhi) chha jayegi
Sochnay walay ko ek pal mein bata jayegi
Auratein peeche agar hon tau agay hi raha karti hain.
As I am walking, I suddenly think
If your bun of hair comes undone, what will happen.
My history or probably your history
Will haunt our today (and tomorrow)
And will tell anyone who can think
That women are in fact in front even if they appear to be behind us.
In Adakar (Actor), the theme is ostensibly erotic but interwoven within it we notice social themes too.
Meri zuban chhipkali ki manand phool se chhoo rahi hai goya
Gudaz patti ke ras ko ik pal mein choos le gi
Magar isay yeh khabar nahi hai har ik phool aik … aik bhanware ke dhayan
Mein kho ke jhoomta hai
Khile huay phool ko jo dekhe
Yahi samajhta hai iss ki nikhat mere fasurda masham-e-jan ke liye bani hai
Magar khila phool kis ka saathi?
My tongue touches the flower like a lizard, as if
It wants to suck the nectar of the soft petal.
But little does it know that every moth thinks
And indulges in this way about every flower.
Whoever sees a blooming flower
Thinks that its fragrance is only to please his sense of smell.
But a bloomed flower belongs to no one.
The flower in the poem obviously stands for a woman who is approached by a lizard-like man. The fact that every approaching man considers the woman his possession is ironic since the woman/ flower belongs to no one. The world which has led the flower to skip from one bed to the next laments the flower’s infidelity. The following lines emphasize the irony:
Khila hua phool kis ka saathi
Isay chaman se nahi hai nisbat, wo iss jahan mein
Har ik ke hathon se hotai hotai, kabhi kisi sej par, kabhi kisi sej se chita tak
Puhanchta rehta hai, aur zamana
Pukarta hai, khila hua phool kis ka saathi.
A bloomed flower belongs to no one.
It has no association with a garden even, in this world it
Travels from one pair of hands to another, from one bed to another
Till it reaches its deathbed, and then the world
Screams that a bloomed flower belongs to no one.
Another theme for which Meeraji employs myths is a sense of estrangement, separation, or displacement. In Tu Paarbati, mein Shiv-shankar, (You are Paarbati, I am Shiv-Shankar), we find that the love between Paarbati and Shiv-Shankar is disappearing. Meeraji writes:
Tu parbati, mein shiv Shankar
Lekin yeh pehle janam ki hain baaten sari.
You are Paarbati, I am Shiv-Shankar
But these are stories of a bygone era.
Meeraji follows it with:
Ab tujh mein roop nahi pehla, ab mujh mein prem nahi pehla.
Wo roop kahani thi, beeti, wo prem fasana tha, bhoola.
Now your beauty is no more, and my love no more
That tale of beauty has ended and that saga of love has been forgotten.
In other words, that mythical world is no more. In such and some more of Meeraji’s poems, the speaker appears to wander off from a center and goes astray into a world of subjective thoughts and imagination. This separation is reminiscent of Adam’s eviction from the Eden or more recently of the native of the colonized country who experiences estrangement and displacement inside his own culture coupled with an uncertainty about the future. In the same context, it is pertinent to discuss Meeraji’s poem khamiaza (Reparation) which seems to respond to Allama Iqbal’s poem Rooh-e-arzi adam ka istaqbal karti hai (The earth welcomes Adam). A few lines from Meeraji’s poem read:
Tum ne tehreek mujhe di thi ke jayo dekho
Chand taron se paray aur duniyain hain
Tum ne hi mujh se kaha tha keh khabar le aao
Mere dil mein waheen jane ki tamannayen hain.
You motivated me to go and see
Those worlds that exist beyond the moon and stars.
You told me to go and find out.
That’s where I want to go.
We see that the speaker in Meeraji’s poem, motivated by Allama Iqbal’s message, embarks upon a journey far away from the earth into the celestial world. But he returns empty-handed with nothing but a love lost, separation, loneliness, and disillusionment, as we see in the following lines of the same poem:
Meri kismet keh judai tumhe manzoor hui
Meri kismet keh pasand aayin na meri baatein
Ab nahi jalwa gah-e-khalwat shab, afsanay
Ab tau bas teera-o-tareek hain apni raatein.
It’s my misfortune that separation was what you chose
And that you didn’t like what I said.
There is no beauty in the solitude of the night, nor myths.
My nights are just dark and lonely.
While Iqbal’s man might be super-human who is full of hope, vision, and power, that of Meeraji is an ordinary mortal who, evicted from the metaphysical, godly world, sees hopelessness, darkness, and estrangement. But probably here lies his salvation: to accept this bitter truth of his existence, as we see in the following section.
Let us return to the poem Silsala-e-roz-o-shab. We note that when modern man discovers the void, he seeks to light his own flame. An important question is: does man borrow fire from god’s flame or does he light his own? In other words, how does the modern man attempt to fill the void left by the departure from the past? In modern literature, we find instances of both these approaches. In the first approach, modern man attempts to return to the past or revive it. Such an approach is found in colonized societies, for example among the Indian Muslims who under the yoke of British empire dreamt of a renaissance of the glorious Islamic past. The second approach lights its own proverbial flame. It challenges established traditions and questions the systems which are based on power and sanctity. Such an approach can ring alarm bells for socio-political order. However, since this approach usually employs symbolism, it remains shrouded.
Meeraji adopts the latter approach and targets the British imperialism of his time. Hence, his poetry is political, probably more so than that of many of his compatriots. Moreover, as compared to the political poetry of his age, Meeraji’s poetry focuses on the social, psychological, and subconscious impacts of imperialism. He saw and felt the big, gaping void – an emptiness or a spiritual wound – in his persona created by the imperialistic experience.
Thus, a natural outcome of the realization of void – obviously a painful process which needs both courage and gumption that not everyone possesses – is a desire to fill that void. One way of doing that is to revisit the myths and find new meanings or create new myths, re-imagine old tales, and build new narratives. For example, a modern look at the creationist myth of Adam and Eve might lead one to come up with an evolutionist narrative. This can be interpreted as the void leading to creation, or nothing engendering something, or dark leading to light. This notion is akin to that of duality found in numerous ancient myths such as the Janus or sphinx which embodies both a man and a beast as well as the modern ones such as Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf or Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A biography. Meeraji’s poem Abu Al Hol (Sphinx) is relevant too. According to Nayyar[1], it may be interpreted as how Egyptian or Eastern mythical gods were markedly different from humans, while Greek gods were manifestation of human attributes. Meeraji echoes similar concept of coexistence of opposite entities within man in his poem Yagagant (Oneness) and extends that concept to multiplicity in Uljhan ki kahani (The story of a riddle). In the context of filling the void, Meeraji’s poem Irtiqa (Evolution), which presents another mythical scenario, is significant.
Qadam qadam par janazay rakhay huay hain, un ko uthao jao
Yeh dekhte kaya ho? kam mera nahi, tumhara yeh kam hai aaj aur kal ka
Tum aaj mein me mehav ho keh shaid yeh sochtay ho
Na beeta kal aur na aanay wala kal tumhara hai
Magar yunhi soch mein doobey tau kuch na hoga.
At every step there are dead bodies waiting to be buried, pick them up
Dont look at them, it’s not my job; this is your job, today and tomorrow
You’re so engrossed in today that probably you think
That neither the yesterday nor tomorrow is yours
But if you keep thinking like this then you won’t achieve anything
Here we notice another void, left by something that should have followed death but was not undertaken i.e. burial. It is apparent that this void results from a denial to accept death or probably owing to the wait for a savior, someone who can tell the people what to do. Seen in the context of the colonized Indian sub-continent, this death is of the old, outdated system.
Agar yeh murday lahad ke andar gaye tau shayad
Tumhari murda hayat bhi aaj jag uthay.
If these dead bodies are sent to the graves then perhaps
Your dying lives might begin to live again.
The speaker of the poem is ostensibly the modern man who tries to tell the people to accept the death and move on. Thus, the realization of the void begets its remedy; void is in fact a womb that gives birth – a sort of duality within man.
Conclusion This essay attempted to explore some of the important themes in Meeraji’s poetry. Summarizing key chapters of Nayyar’s[1] book, we began with the theme of spiritual void and its sources. We noted that the colonial subjugation prompted Meeraji to look for examples of intellectual wealth in Indian history and mythology. We looked at several examples from Meeraji’s poetry where he resorted to myths of Indian origin, subverting some of them and using them as fresh symbols. We noted that as against godly or superhuman ideals, Meeraji underscored more earthly and worldly themes and focused on bodily pleasure instead of spiritual ones. The ultimate motivation for him was to address the void created by the colonial experience. For him, acceptance is the only way forward: acceptance of the void, of the realities, and of the earthly aspirations as against the godly ideals.
Works Cited
- Nayyar, Nasir Abbas, Uss ko ik shaks samajhna tau munasib hi nahi, Oxford University Press, 2017. (https://a.co/d/elRqFqT).
- Jung, Carl, Modern Man in Search of a Soul. (Translated by W. S. Dell and Cary F. Baynes), A Harvest Book. Harcourt Inc., New York, 1933. (https://www.amazon.com/Modern-man-search-soul-Jung/dp/B00087SQBK)
- Hussain, Abdullah, “Udaas Naslain”, Sang-e-Meel Publications, 1963. (https://www.amazon.com/Udaas-Naslain-Urdu-Abdullah-Hussain/dp/9693500733)
- Jalibi, Dr. Jameel, “Meeraji ko samajhne ke liye”, Meeraji: Aik Mutalya, Ed. Dr Jameel Jalibi, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2009. (https://sangemeel.shop/products/meera-ji-aik-mutalia)
- Rizvi, Dr. Sajjad Baqir, “Meeraji ke geet”, Meeraji: Aik Mutalya, Ed. Dr Jameel Jalibi, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2009. (https://sangemeel.shop/products/meera-ji-aik-mutalia)
6. Kazmi, Nasir, “Shaks aur Aks”, Meeraji: Aik Mutalya, Ed. Dr Jameel Jalibi, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2009. (https://sangemeel.shop/products/meera-ji-aik-mutalia)