Kya mehfil thi voh -
tum toh jaan thi us anjuman k,
jab hansi aur kilkilahat
beh rare thé, nayee barishke
jharnonse, havaa mein jadoo tha,
nigahon mein gehraee.
Tumhare husnko phika kar rahé thé
tumharé unché khayalat
tez raftaar nazook khayali mein
koi sapna namumkeen na tha,
koi tasavvur ghai-dunyavi na tha.
Méré kuchéko jaan baksh di tumné
mujhé galé lagaakar .
Jee uthtaa hun yeh soch ke hee
yeh haseen silsila marné nahin diya aaj tak.
(c) Max Babi
What a gathering it was
you were the life of the party
when tinkles of laughter
were flowing on like
thin streams formed by new rain,
there was sheer magic in the air
and depth in our eyes.
Your dazzling beauty for once,
paled in the brilliance of your words,
in the high speed give-and-take
of 'delicate thoughts'*no dream was impossible,
no piece of imagination -other worldly.
You breathed life into my street
by hugging me tight that night.
I came alive now thinking
that till today, we both have not allowed
that lovely tradition to die.
(c) Max Babi
Notes :
a] this being a 'transcreation' kindly do not search for 'word for word' translation here, at all.
b] *nazook khayali = is a peculiar phrase in Urdu challenging translation; it encompasses the tete-a-tete of delicate thoughts, or ideas involving finesse and intuition, it goes beyond language : it is what happens when thinkers get together.
cheerz!
Max Babi
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Comments: 20
I am not surprised that the word 'traidtion' foxed you as it should have foxed any other poet or writer with sufficient sensitivity. The problem is the Urdu word 'silsila' has no clear-cut equivalent in English. The meaning or shade / hue of meaning changes, and hence one could think of :
sequence, chain of events, custom, tradition, rite, ritual, many more....
Thus 'tradition' with its hint of inevitability, license from the community and general acceptance sounded somewhat more suitable to me though I doubt if it is the meaning I wanted to convey.
I wanted to say : 'embracing/hugging me -we set a tradition that we have continued'.
Hope that clears the fog a bit.
Cheerz!
Max
I have come to treat you like the female avatar of John F. Walter, whose scholarly critiques force me to read each one again and again -throwing up new interpretations. It's an esoteric art, being able to critique like this. Weighty and yet fluffy, to put it with a daub of oxymoron.
The fragile human in me would love to tell you about another kiss...the wily poet me in me would rather leave you guessing !
Cheerz!
You write English so well for your age, why don't you just read the English transcreation and then comment on it as a 'stand-alone' poem?
Hope Dipawali is great for you this year...
Cheerz!
As I read I wonder how i stayed in the darkness when your light was there all the time.
As you know, I'm a follower of the works of Kabir, Mirabs and Rumi. And so Urdu is not so foreign to me as it was.
You write beautifully in this wonderful style, It's so easy to feel the excitement of loving this exuberant woman and the fulfilling the desire of both in a way that's really a gift from God.
Another amazing transcreation, Max. It is exhilarating to find so many of your new poems all at once on Gather, posted while I was travelling last month in LA. Please forgive my coming so tardily to so many of them. Better late than never, right?
Time does not matter, it does not enter the picture here.
I write, you read, you comment, I reply.
Inbetween let there be comfortable spaces, right?
Cheerz!