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For two yards of land
By Subhamay Ray | April 12, 2008
Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775-1862), the last of the Mughal emperors, was a weak king but a remarkable poet. His reign was characterized by chaos, unrest and the domination of the British. His rule also witnessed the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 after which the Badshah was exiled to Rangoon where he spent the last years of his life pining and yearning to return to his homeland. But he was not destined to return and his utterance on the “two yards of land” was prophetic. The following is an English translation of his Ghazal that begins with…
Lagtaa nahin hai ji mera ujre deyar mein
Kis ki bani hai alam-e-napaidaar mein.
This is neither a literal translation nor an attempt at a creative translation whereby a translator could have tried to retain the various nuances that the images of the original poem promise to hold. Rather my endeavour has been to not deviate from the source too much and at the same time to try and transfer as much of the subtle and sublime poetic fairy-dust of the original as possible. The readers must bear in mind that the Urdu original lives and indeed thrives at different levels and it happily holds more than one layer of meaning.
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My heart is restive amidst these ruins;
Who has ever consummated his life in this transient world?
The nightingale has no complaints against the watchman or the hunter,
Wasn’t its imprisonment scripted by fate?
Oh, ask these emotions to leave, let them dwell elsewhere,
Where is there so much space in this scarred heart?
The nightingale is happy to sit on a flowery branch
Yet the heart’s bower of tulip is overspread with thorns.
I begged for a life as long as four days,
Two passed by in pining and two were spent in waiting.
The days of life passed with the approaching dusk,
And now I’ll spread my legs in the burial garden’s comfort.
How unfortunate is Zafar! For even two yards of land
Couldn’t be found for his burial in his beloved soil!
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Topics: Translations, Translations from Urdu |