Ma Wara – That What Is Beyond

Nah thā kuch to Khudā thā, kuch nah hotā to Khudā hotā
Duboyā mujh ko honey ney, nah hotā maeyn to kyā hotā

Hūā jab gham sey yūn beyhis to gham kyā sar key katney kā
Nah hotā gar judā tan sey to zānū par dharā hotā

Hūī’ muddat kih Ghālib mar gayā, par yād ātā haey
Voh har ik bāt par kehnā kih yūn hotā to kyā hotā

It was called the Poetry of Dissent. I always used to judge some courses for having such overly provocative titles. And I also do not like to overly laud people who seem to have done much, but have either been acknowledged a bit too much, or a bit too less, or for the wrong reasons. There is an approach in literary criticism, called “Intentionalism”. Alexander Pope in his Essay on Criticism summarizes it thus, “In every work regard the writer’s end, / Since none can compass more than they intend”. But I don’t agree, really. I spent about four years – and maybe more I think – in trying to figure out that words are not supposed to assert, but only to intend or merely suggest. Scripture does that. And words cannot take on that role. That’s why metaphors can only be – and should be – limited to this world alone. And this has to be understood by looking at the world as a metaphor, a point of immediate comparison between The Word and how any word tends to approximate Its Meaning. Never become. Never be.

A few days ago in class we were discussing this letter sent by this random kid to some random editor describing his vision of the perfect world. I asked the kids if they had studied ‘limits’ in add-math. They said no. I asked them if they had studied graphs. They said yes. Then I explained to them the working of an asymptote. Mathematics is a fascinating subject, all of it, algebra, geometry, arithmetic. All of it. Simply fascinatingly metaphorical. An asymptote is the metaphor, that painfully frustrating attempt to fuse with the axes, but it will NEVER happen. Why? Should that happen, the gradient will become stagnant. And that’s not the point of any movement. We’re all clinging onto the graphs, plotting our own plans and plots, tending, intending or extending ourselves towards perfection. But it’ll never happen in the end. Perfection is an unattainable ideal so said I.A. Richards. Cool guy. Pretty cool. I think the human mind has spent a bit too much of its resources in trying to figure out what the whole fuss is about. And these questions have been coming up again and again. And the biggest interrogation is the WHY? Second last of the alphabet prefacing the end. And that’s the real question. Phoebe Buffet from FRIENDS was having this argument with Ross Geller. He was trying to convince her of Darwinism being the only explanation towards everything. And he demonstrates that by putting up toy-figures in a series showing evolution – that asymptotic journey – towards the state of (hmmm) perfection, which is man. And Phoebe looks at him very smugly and says, “Well, now the REAL question is, WHO put them there, and WHY?”

And that’s the real question. And the only question.

Today’s is Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib’s death anniversary. Don’t worry – I added the disclaimer that I’m not going to laud him unnecessarily as he’s just a person who just used metaphors. He died in 1769 and here I am, some 240 years later, talking about him yet again. The ghazal I have used epigraphically was the one that I think that we studied towards the end of the course. We talked about Infinitude and Nothingness, ‘adam (not Adam, as that’s alif, daal, and meem, Adam that started it all, and who was not a chimp) and imkaan (a bit like makaan, although the etymology is the same, a word that we have misused sufficiently yet not too efficiently. People live on the streets you know. Possible survival of the fittest of them all). This is the ghazal that I have quoted a bit too much, beaten it to death really, and have used a bit too much in my academic writing. When I was recalling it in my head today (and this is the only ghazal I know by heart, the rest I only pretend to know to look cool), I thought it was so damn ironic that it actually mentions his possibility and inevitability of dying. And how probably 240 years someone would dig him up and try to figure out what is was really about.

What I am crazy about with regard to this ghazal is its frustrating simplicity. It was this ghazal that made me respect him for his poetic genius and his philosophical AND religious leanings. No no, I am not saying that we should emulate him and follow his ways. Not at all. But what I am saying is this: that the man had a question, and he came up with an answer, which we all know. We have answered it Before. But why bother asking a question whose answer is known and too simple anyway. We’re all about problematizing. And who does it the best is the winner. That’s where the real fun lies. And in the process of dissembling and deconstructing which we misunderstood as deciphering or discussing, we ended up disintegrating and degenerating, and now only the cipher is left, and we’re sitting back, cussing.

As I have been told that I am not so good with words and I have atrophied my brain sufficiently by teaching allegedly brainless kids, I will just reproduce my analysis of the ghazal that I used in my swansong:

The final ghazal combines human stoicism along with the metaphysical questions about Divine Transcendence and Immanence. Composed of merely three sha‘irs, this ghazal perfectly exemplifies the aesthetical sense and sensibility of the genre, and in doing so, it demonstrates the potential of the form to transcend its structural constraints and offer semantic equivocality. The language is straightforward. But the configuration of the words according to the requirements of the form evokes multivalence of interpretation. The Sartreian existentialist temper is one oft-quoted suggestion (Pritchett). The states of ‘being’, ‘becoming’ and the parenthetical reality of ‘nothingness’ are questioned with deceptively simple statements. There is a deliberate elusiveness to the verse. The opening question(s) further into an argument that postures to be indeterminate. But polysemy should not be mistaken for the verse’s (apparent) weakness. The interrogative words harmonized with negative qualifiers heighten the complexity of meaning as the matlā‘ masterfully demonstrates. The consonance of the interrogative with the negative creates musicality. Thematically, the notions of nothingness and God’s Immanence within this state are expressed. Then the paradox of nothingness is brought forth with the mention of finite ‘being.’ The elusive, “kyā” sockets these ideas of being and nothingness together which leads to the Hamletian-overwhelming question. Had there been no being, then what would have been but the Immanent Being? And would human nothingness have mattered. The second sha‘ir is an approximate answer. “Gham” is repeated which enhances the pun. In the maqtā‘, the equivocality of the matlā‘ returns. The last line of the ghazal immaculately sums up the argument by generating multiple resolutions: “If it were so, then so what?”, “If it were so, then what [a state it] would be!”, “If it were so, then what would be/happen?” Again, this semantic multiplicity is evoked through the word, “kyā”. Through this ghazal, not only is Ghālib’s erudite contemplation about human purpose revealed, but concurrently, the function of the genre to communicate meaning to its maximum potential despite its structural considerations, and its ability to use the content to synchronize with the form to create richness of meaning is also evoked.

So what’s this crap about? What I was approximating to say was this: this ghazal rocks, the genre of the ghazal rocks, Ghalib rocks, and God Rocks. Basically, that. I mentioned two controversial figures, Sartre and Hamlet. Both were terribly confused. One harped on and on about existential angst and the other dangled between to be or not to be and he thought that that was the real question. And Ghalib says that towards the end, “Dude, Voh har ik bāt par kehnā kih yūn hotā to kyā hotā…?” In other words, big deal. Here’s the deal. He is saying that listen, when no one, nothing was there, God always was, and if nothing would have been there, God would have been. The (obsession) of ‘being’ drowned me (in the Urdu we use this idiom quite nicely, dhoob ke mar jao), if I would not have been, so what would have been (read, it would not have been a big deal, really). Then he says, when it got all desensitized (quite a word for beyhiss, which means without hissiyat, which comes from the word ehsas or feeling) so why get all sensitive about the head getting chopped off (cool play on the word gham); if it hadn’t been parted from the rest of the body, it would’ve been rooted to my thighs (which means that he would be in sorrow all the time banging his head. Which could mean simple manic depression, or our constant craving to make sense of everything and getting frustrated in the process. It might mean a simple headache too. You’re free to choose). This shair encompasses one of the hadd punishments for messing big things up too. It also might mean how the human head, or rationality, has to make sense (and feel) things so that the body does not rebel against thought. You know the whole reason and revelation making sense together so that laws can be understood in letter and spirit. That stuff. And the last one is what the head does not think or feel about. He says, so Ghalib died a long while back (24 decades ago, and we all have our dusty lives so neatly sorted out in 24 hours never wondering if this might be the last one of those many days) but he’s still remembered (well, smart rascal got that one right). Remembered for what? For saying, “If it were so, then so what?”, “If it were so, then what [a state it] would be!”, “If it were so, then what would be/happen…”

And that’s the problem. John Mayer said that he wonders sometimes about the outcome about this still, verdictless life, and if he’s living it right? Well, the outcome would be known after the clock stops ticking. But everything is so still, so motionless, that we’ve come to the point to believe that it’s really okay. Everything is really okay at the end of the day. And at the end of 24 hours, or 24 decades, or even longer, much longer, it’s still okay. And now here’s where the Game really kicks in. God is very Witty. He Says, that listen, do you know who would be the really “LUSER” at the End of All Things, who would be thinking throughout his or her many 24 hours that I did everything right and I’m all set. But then we get to the Scores, and you’re down by negatives. And you cry and grovel and whine and ask Him that please, let me go back and I’ll do it all right, I swear. That whole dilemma about if (only) I had done this. But then there’s no going back. You came, you saw, you messed it up.

So then what’s the problem? The human mind has become so accustomed to this mode of thinking. We can’t function unless we’re given a problem. And when given a problem, we won’t function. So then what’s the solution? Should we cut a black cake to celebrate his death? Should we start watching FRIENDS? Or should we listen to John Mayer? Or read Ghalib’s poetry? Or get a new watch?

These are only people. And they work only with metaphors. A metaphor only seeks and approximates, tends towards perfection. And Perfection Works the other way around. It’s not an accident that it Begins with Praise and Ends with us – something I learnt in my Urdu courses. And It has Ended with us. The freakiest thing about Death is its finality. That it has no tomorrow. Fear in a handful of dust that can be mopped later on and no one would ever know. It would not matter. The One Who has to Remain, shall. And everything will perish except His Face. And even if nothing would have been, He would have still been there. The question is that now, we’re here. And we’re not here to stay. Intend and End. That’s all what it’s really about.