An Emperor's Agony : Naa Kissiki Aankhka Noor Hu.n -an Urdu ghazal by Bahadurshah Zafar, translated and transcreated by Max Babi

© Max Babi

Transcreation :

I've never amounted to anything,

Never been close to anyone's heart

Nor a salve for a wounded soul –

I am merely a handful of dust.

Having  lost my true beloved

My looks have been ruined

I seem now like the spring's crop

Of a garden that wilted in bloom.

No place to call home

Where can I push in my roots

For this planet I'm just a burden

For the sky, I'm a mere dust storm

Why will anyone waste prayer on me

Why will anyone place flowers on me

In this forlorn tomb of destitution

Why come and light a candle?

© Max Babi

Notes : Bahardurshah Zafar, the last Moghul emperor of India was manipulated by the British East India Co.,  into losing his crown. They  took over his empire by stealth and cunning, and exiled him to Burma [Myanmar], executing all his surviving sons. He  pined away under house-arrest in the alien land,  for his beloved country.  'losing my true beloved'  here means losing his nation, not a human lover.

There are so-called scholars disputing whether Zafar really wrote this ghazal, and some more, equally poignant ones. But then that is similar  to the obviously silly attempts by many others who tried to prove Shakespeare never wrote his plays, or it was a woman who wrote his plays,  yakety yak blah blah blah…ad nauseam.

Biographical Notes :  The last Mughal emperor of Delhi who presided over a small but extraordinary kingdom, Seerajuddin Muhammad,  alias Bahadurshah Zafar, who succeeded to the throne,  after the death of his father in 1837, was one of the most talented, tolerant and likable of the remarkable Mughal dynasty. In his lifetime he was witness to his dynasty reduced to humiliating insignificance and the British transforming themselves from simple traders into the most powerful military force India had ever seen.

'Zafar' [takhallus or pen-name meaning 'victory']  came to power  when it was already too late to reverse the political decline of the once-might Mughals.   However, he succeeded in creating around him a court culture of unparalleled brilliance. Through his discerning patronage,   one of the greatest literary renaissances in Indian history came about at Delhi.

Zafar was a mystic [sufi], poet and calligrapher of great charm and accomplishment. He nourished  the talents of India's greatest love poet ever, Mirza Ghalib,  and his rival,  Zauq.  As  the military and economic realities of British power and territorial ambition closed in, the court was lost in a last idyll of pleasure gardens, courtesans and poetic symposia.

In the siege of Delhi during the four hottest months of the Indian summer, the beautiful Mughal capital was bombarded by British artillery. There were unimaginable causalities,  with both Indians and British starving, the city left without water and the combatants on both sides driven to extremes of physical and mental endurance. Finally, on September 14, 1857, the British took the city, sacking, massacring and looting as they went. Anyone who survived the subsequent genocide was driven out into the countryside. Delhi was left an empty ruin.

Though the royal family had surrendered peacefully, three  Emperor's surviving sons were shot in cold blood, by Col. Hudson who brought their heads on a platter to the emperor. The Emperor himself was put on show trial in the ruins of his old palace and sentenced to transportation. Zafar left his beloved Delhi on a peasants' bullock cart. Separated from everyone and everything he loved, broken-hearted, the last of the great Mughals spent the last four years of his life in exile, in Rangoon, Burma [now called Myanmar] and there he composed a large 'divan' of Urdu verse, replete with rhetorical conceits, difficult rhyme-schemes and unusual metres. These are twenty five books in all.

Bahadur Shah Zafar himself wrote, just before he died in exile, in Rangoon, on Friday, November 7, 1862.

Delhi was once a paradise,
Where Love held sway and reigned;
But its charm lies ravished now                                                          

And only ruins remain.  
 

A lot of information on Bahadurshah Zafar is available on the internet, main websites, many of which I have visited to compile this brief biographical note, are listed very well at one single website http://www.kapadia.com/websites.html  -it is worth a visit.