IN the past, Indian classical music relied very much on the family system. Great maestros treated their musical knowledge as family property. They bequeathed this property to their sons. These sons had their own sons ready to inherit this legacy. As a result, we have a tradition of Gharana in our world of music. Urdu poetry knows no Gharana system. But Debjani Chattarjee, who has translated ghazals of two Urdu poets, has discovered such a Gharana in Urdu poetry. In fact, the two poets she has translated happen to be a father and his son. She has brought out the collection of these translated versions with the assistance of The Arts Council of England under the title Generation of ghazals.
The two poets are Nasir Kazmi and his son Basir Sultan Kazmi. The latter made his debut on the scene of Urdu poetry with his collection Mauj-i-Khyal in 1997.
Basir went to England in 1990 with a British Council scholarship to study for an MED degree at the University of Manchester. After obtaining his degree he chose to stay there along with his two passions, poetry and drama. In 1987, he wrote a long play Bisaat, which was published in a book form. Now he has translated it into English. Pennine Pens has published it under the title The Chess Board.
In the meantime, Basir wrote a few more plays, which were staged at various UK theatres. In 1992, he won a North West Playwrights Workshop Award and as writer-in-residence for the Oldham Leisure Services ran drama workshops and wrote several plays. In 1997, a selection from his ghazals were translated into English and were included in a collection of poetry entitled A Little Bridge. And now he has found a place in a father-son collection of poetry, a unique volume conceived and compiled by Debjani Chatterjee.
Debjani Chatterjee has seen more than a simple blood relationship between Nasir and Basir. She sees their relationship transformed into a poetic one and says: “While many younger writers in Pakistan have admired and emulated Nasir Kazmi, his mantle as a poet and as a playwright rests confidently on the shoulders of his son Basir.”
Of course, she has reached to this conclusion after studying the two poets. But Basir, too, has supported her view by saying: “He was my father but I also approached him as my Ustad — my teacher in the way that our poets, musicians and other artists have always approached their Ustads.”
Nasir appears to be playing the role of an Ustad to his son bearing the promise of a poet. Basir tells us: “He often deleted my couplets that fell short of his expectations and I would find my ghazals ruthlessly reduced. But it was a good training and I learnt to value the remaining couplets all the more.”
Encouraged by this external evidence provided by Basir, Debjani has discovered a profound influence of Nasir on Basir’s ghazals. In support of this view she has cited a ghazal by Basir captioned by her as Among the Flowers and has compared it with a ghazal by Nasir, whose Radif is darakhton main. She asserts: “In this example it seems that Basir’s polished ghazals surpass even beautiful pieces written by his mentor-father.”
But Basir insists that for fineness, if there is any, in this ghazal he owes much to the chiselling done by his father. “I brought it to him as a rough diamond and being a master-jeweller he showed me how to cut the precious stone so that it could sparkle.”
With this kind of comparative study of the two poets, Debjani introduces them to English readers. She has translated Nasir’s ghazals into English single-handedly, while in the case of Basir she has been assisted by the poet himself.
The genre of ghazal with its deep roots in an oriental culture appears seemingly untranslatable. In many translations we feel that they have lost much of their charm that they had in their original language. But Debjani has succeeded to a great extent in translating the untranslatable. Here are just a few lines from her translations of Nasir Kazmi’s ghazal:
Your memory comes in solitude it is like the sweetest melody
It is like the cool light of the moon it is like the whisper of its rays
It is like the dancing of mermaids, it is like the tinkling of anklets
Debjani, while doing her job, has perhaps discovered a unity of thought in each ghazal. Probably that is what prompted her to give a caption to each of them.
IN the past, Indian classical music relied very much on the family system. Great maestros treated their musical knowledge as family property. They bequeathed this property to their sons. These sons had their own sons ready to inherit this legacy. As a result, we have a tradition of Gharana in our world of music. Urdu poetry knows no Gharana system. But Debjani Chattarjee, who has translated ghazals of two Urdu poets, has discovered such a Gharana in Urdu poetry. In fact, the two poets she has translated happen to be a father and his son. She has brought out the collection of these translated versions with the assistance of The Arts Council of England under the title Generation of ghazals.
