Before he was Sahir Ludhianvi, he was Abdul Hai, born in a family of Punjabi landowners a hundred years ago this month in Ludhiana. He passed away in Mumbai in 1980. He was the only son of a rich landowner who had divorced Sahir’s mother. According to the great Urdu poet Ehsan Danish, Sahir declared his decision before the court to go with his impoverished mother rather than the rich father. From this very place, the rights of women became the foundation for human values for Sahir, so much so that the social exploitation of his mother left a deep impact on him, even affecting his romantic life. He remained a bachelor all his life.
His anger at his class position led to his expulsion from college. However, even before he turned 25, he had published Talkhiyan (Bitterness), a bestseller till date. Sahir, of course, is known in the public imagination for his incredible career as a film lyricist. A partial collection of his film lyrics titled Gaata Jaaye Banjara (And the Gypsy Sings On) outsells most poetry books in serious bookstores. He has been credited with recasting class-rebellion in a romantic tone in film songs to shoehorn his politics into the filmi idiom. But his popularity was not only through film songs. The poems which had found fame through his collection Talkhiyan, reached the non-Urdu-speaking classes years later through the film Pyaasa. However, he was strangely ignored by the intelligentsia. For example, in his analysis of Urdu literature, Mohammed Sadiq, after a chapter each on Ghalib, Iqbal, and even Akbar Allahabadi, dismisses Sahir in one paragraph, beginning with “Though deficient in imagination, Sahir has a strong intellectual approach.” But the poet lives on in public imagination.
Sahir’s fame was worthy of envy of even the most popular Urdu poets, but it was different to the fame attained in mushairas. His poetry is not bombastic, it possesses neither joy nor colour. They attained the wings of music but the structure of words by itself does not possess musicality. Even in romantic themes, Sahir’s poetry had the bitterness of reality rather than the tumult of love, which affected the heart of everyone high and low; in his poetry, words are extremely simple but meanings are not. Actually his forte was ‘sympathy’ as the real interpreter of human deprivation.
Sahir stepped into the field of poetry at the time when Faiz’s poem Mujh se pehli si mohabbat, meri mehboob na maang (My love, do not ask me for that old love again) was echoing in the air. So this couplet has been entered as a letterhead in his poetic collection Talkhiyan: Abhi na chhed mohabbat ke geet ae mutrib/Abhi hayat ka mahol khushgavar nahi (Do not touch the song of love O’ minstrel/The theme of love is not so congenial).
One finds traces of a raw mind in his early poems, and in the terminology of Kalimuddin Ahmad, are the illustration of the feelings of such a man who has not yet passed BA. Quite so, as the last couplet of the poem Yaksui (Single-Mindedness) is this: Tum mein himmat ho toh duniya se baghavat kar do/Varna maan-baap jahan kehte hain shadi kar lo (Rebel against the world if you have any courage/Otherwise do as your parents say and get married). And yet elements of poetic spontaneity and versification are found in Sahir’s temperament since the very beginning. Some of his verses are among the better ones of that period: Phir na kijiye meri gustakh nigah ka gila/Dekhiye aap ne phir pyar se dekha mujh ko (Do not complain about my irreverent glance/See, you have cast a loving look at me again).
This poetic spirit has created a bloom and elegance in the tone of Sahir, and like Majaz Lakhnawi, his poems too—while not bearing very profound experiences and consciousness—carry an universal appeal and this is the secret of their popularity. Sahir’s poetic collections have probably been the most read among progressive poets. The reason for this is that Sahir is neither the poet of the intelligent class like Faiz nor the poet of the assembly of workers like many others. His appeal is among the ordinary educated youth of the middle class. His style neither has modern innuendo and the illustration of imaginary conditions or the roughness. It has a purity, spontaneity and sweetness which directly speaks to the ordinary youth. His most popular poem is Taj Mahal, which is a successful example of its individualistic reaction and there is no dispute about its impact. Sahir made his place among Urdu progressive poets with Taj Mahal, where for the first time the past was presented as deprivation rather than prosperity; and people’s alienation rather than colonial repression is the focus. Taj Mahal was sung beautifully by Mohammad Rafi in the 1964 film Ghazal: Taj tere liye ik mazhar-e-ulfat hi sahi/Tujh ko is vaadi-e-rangeen se aqeedat hi sahi/Meri mehboob kahin aur mila kar mujh se (The Taj may be a symbol of love for you/And you may place faith in that verdant valley/But my love, please meet me elsewhere.)
The quality of Sahir’s most successful and popular poems is his symmetrical style which is not impeded by waywardness and artificiality. Thus, there is a skill in presenting those moments which he has been able to experience. After entering the film world, he almost renounced poetry, but even in film songs, he has given space to progressive inclinations with great excellence. His film songs are full of melody and rhythm on one hand, on the other, there is a feeling of new conditions and new issues within them. In this period, he wrote a long poem on peace called Parchhaiyan, which is the best poem on this theme yet. And the unforgettable Main Pal Do Pal Ka Shayar Hoon for the 1976 film Kabhi Kabhie.
Sahir Ludhianvi’s verses, apart from the happenings in the world, also have an autobiographical touch. It can often be a companion of a few moments, through which the reader can have a perception of the human problems confronting our times, and also meet himself from time to time. Vese toh tumhi ne mujhe barbaad kiya hai/Ilzaam kisi aur ke sar jaaye toh achha ((Though you are the cause of my ruination/All is well if somebody else shoulders the accusation).
(Views expressed are personal. Translations by writer)
The author is a Lahore-based social scientist, book critic and award-winning translator and dramatic reader. He is working on a book, Sahir Ludhianvi’s Lahore, Lahore’s Sahir Ludhianvi
