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August 11, 2002
REVIEW: The music of rain
THE rainy season in our part of the world is what the spring is to the traditional Western poet, the season heralding change, rejuvenation, growth and the springing forth of plants and vegetation. Sawan is associated in folklore with songs and music. And when music is there, can love be far behind?
In the scholarly and readable introduction to his Urdu and English translations from Shah Lateef’s Sur sarang, Agha Saleem makes the point that “in this part of the world rain is always taken as God’s mercy. It is a season of fertility, prosperity and the union of lovers”.
He quotes Professor Annemarie Schimmel who says the coming of a prophet or a great religious leader and the message he brought to earth heralded the advent of the rainy season. So in a classical Buddhist text, the coming of the Buddha was described as the “blissful rainy season” just as a medieval German song asks Jesus Christ “to tear open the skies and come down like merciful water from the skies”. Religious symbolism may have helped develop the rainy season as a literary convention. The introduction refers to Kalidasa’s Sanskrit classic Megha doot, composed about twenty centuries before Shah Lateef was born.
Sur sarang is thus related to a time honoured lineage but has a uniqueness of its own. As Agha Saleem remarks, “Shah Lateef’s “Sarang” is the longest poem ever written about rain and the rainy season in relation to the human situation.”
“Sarang” is a part of Shah Lateef’s Risalo, the work which is the crowning glory of classical Sindhi literature. Agha Saleem has penned a readable introduction to the life and work of this poet who was born around 1689 and died in 1752. This brief introduction describes the poet’s life, social milieu, intellectual scenario and mystic music of the time. This could well serve as a good introduction to the non-specialist reader who would like to have the basic facts and background information in English.
Agha Saleem presents Shah Lateef as a unique poet and while he writes with reverence, his style is free from the parochialism which mars much of the material on such subjects, full of cloying insistence which takes a shared linguistic identity as the sure sign of poetic greatness.
The background of “Sarang” is explained in a separate piece which relates Shah Lateef’s description of natural beauty to human emotions. Shah Lateef is a spiritualist who loves the essential humanity of people. Agha Saleem has compressed all the basic information about the poem and its relationship with the ragas in his introduction without being long-winded or pedantic.
Not a scholar but a creative artist, Agha Saleem was well-suited for this task. He is well-known as a fiction-writer in Sindhi, with two novels which make the history of Sindh come alive as tales of timeless conflict.
He has also translated Shah Lateef’s Risalo in Urdu in its entirety, and in a manner which encapsulates the musical spirit of the original.
The bulk of this book consists of the Sindhi text with translations into English and Urdu on the same page.This enables the reader to capture the true essence of the poem in which ever language one prefers. This style of presentation makes the poem accessible to many more readers.
While it is not possible for me to comment on the accuracy of Agha Saleem’s translated versions, I can still appreciate the success of his efforts. However, I cannot help saying that I prefer the Urdu version to the English which has phrases like the “cooing” of the cuckoo, “lightning flashers” and “saffron-coloured radiance”. This may well be the result of the difficulty of “carrying across” cultural constructs. So a line such as “I’ll dye my dress crimson” may not mean much to the reader of English poetry but will be full of rich associations to those well-versed in Sindhi or Urdu.
As the poem opens, the earth is parched and yearning for rain. Clouds come swirling to make a beautiful image. They shower the earth, drenching the beloved and filling the grazing animals with joy. As the poem moves to its conclusion, one comes across Shah Lateef’s oft-quoted lines: “O Lord! Bestow prosperity on Sindh forever, O my sweet friend, shower your blessings on all the world.” The power of Shah Lateef’s simple and eloquent prayer cannot fail to move.
Melody of clouds
By Shah Abdul Lateef Bhittai
Translated into Urdu and English by Agha Saleem
Rotary Club of Karachi Clifton
120pp. Rs300
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