Remembering Mirza Ghalib as he turns 220: ‘The world is the body, Delhi its soul’.
Ghalib (the conqueror) was born as Asadullah Baig Khan on December 27, 1797 in Kala Mahal, Agra into a family descending from Aibak Turks who moved to Samarkand (modern-day Uzbekistan) after downfall of Seljuk kings. He came to Delhi when he was 13.
Ghalib ki Haveli was the residence of the 19th century Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib and is now a heritage site located in the Gali Qasim Jan, Ballimaran, Old Delhi and reflects the period when the Mughal era was on the decline in India. While staying at this Haveli, Ghalib wrote his Urdu and Persian diwans. (NurPhoto via Getty Images).
Sanjay Singh doesn’t know Urdu. But whenever his friends are in town, he makes sure they visit Mirza Ghalib’s haveli that stands down Gali Qasim Jaan in Chandni Chowk’s rundown neighbourhood of Ballimaran.
This Sunday too, Singh, 28, a graphic-designing student, accompanied his friend Dolan to the mansion, walking past old Delhi’s overcrowded streets along rows of optical shops. To their delight, the haveli was being decked up ahead of the poet’s 220th birth anniversary celebrations on Wednesday.
“All I know is Ghalib was a famous Urdu poet and this is the place where he lived,” says Singh, from Jodhpur and in Delhi for studies. For many like him, the mansion is like any other monument in the city.
Delhi’s poet
Now a heritage site, Ghalib ki Haveli is the place where the poet spent the last six years of his life till he died on February 15, 1869. Born in Agra on December 27, 1797, as Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan, who later used pen name ‘Ghalib’ (the conqueror), he migrated to Delhi where he lived for the rest of his life. It was during his stay in many rented houses, including the haveli, when Delhi was witness to the most turbulent times during the 1857 revolt, that he penned down couplets and anecdotes still populating the cultural landscape of the National Capital and beyond. Ghalib, it is said, wrote the Diwan-e-Ghalib (the collection of poems) at this haveli
For heritage lover Girish Srivastava, 60, a talk on Delhi is not possible without Ghalib. As he enters the haveli once again, Srivastava belts out a famous couplet by Ghalib on his love for Delhi
“Ik roz apni rooh se poocha, ki dilli kya hai, to yun jawab main keh gaye, yeh duniya mano jism hai aur dilli uski jaan (I asked my soul, ‘What is Delhi?’ It replied: ‘The world is the body, Delhi its soul”).
Nestled in a quiet corner on the left side of the crowded narrow alleys leading to the shrine of Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, southward of Old Delhi, lies the desolate tomb of Ghalib decked in white marble.
As groups of children play cricket and football in a nearby concrete lawn, a couple of admirers come and pay obeisance with flowers on the grave.
“I was passing by. I saw the board of this grave outside. So I thought I should see this too,” said Jai Kishan, a businessman from Mayur Vihar, who says he doesn’t know anything about the poet or the place.
A few metres from the grave, a plaque mentions Ghalib as “among the greatest poets of South Asia”.
Language no barrier
For those who don’t know Urdu , like Singh and his friend Dolan, Ghalib’s poetry in translation cannot but evoke a heady mix of love, beauty, intoxication and despair.
“His work becomes most relevant in this day and age because his non-conformity pushes us to question hierarchical structures of society,” says Dolan, 25, a history student at Jawaharlal University.
Others with deep knowledge of Urdu get swayed by his invincible grip on the language, which sets him apart.
“Ghalib touches a chord in everyone’s heart. There could be hardly anyone who, after reading Ghalib’s immortal verses, says his emotions were not touched,” says historian Rana Safvi, explaining how the poet called out the established orthodoxy.
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