1.shāʿir ho mat chupke raho ab chup meñ jāneñ jātī haiñbāt karo abyāt paṛho kuchh baiteñ ham ko batāte rahoYou’re a poet, don’t be silent, lives are lost under cover of silence.Speak up, read a couple of lines, read us verses, keep talking to us.(Divān-e Panjum: V.1706.5)2.ho ḳharābī aur ābādī kī ʿāqil ko tamīzham divāne haiñ hameñ vīrān kyā maʿmūr kyāLet intellectuals tell ruins and peopled places apart.I’m crazy—to me, what’s desolate, what’s teeming?(Divān-e Duvvum: II.694.3)3.dhūp meñ jaltī haiñ ġhurbat-vat̤anoñ kī lāsheñtere kūche meñ magar sāyah-e dīvār nah thāThe sun burns up the corpses of those driven from their homeland.Your lane did not offer them even the shadow of a wall.(Divān-e Avval: I.109.3)4.kar ḳhauf kalak-ḳhasp kī jo surḳh haiñ āñkheñjalte haiñ tar-o-ḳhhushk bhī miskīñ ke ġhaẓab meñFear those who huddle around fires, their eyes red.Both wet and dry will burn in the rage of the oppressed.(Divān-e Panjum: V.1688.4)5.ham bhī is shahr meñ un logoñ se haiñ ḳhānah-ḳharābmīr ghar-bār jinhoñ ke rāh-e sailāb meñ haiñI, too, am one of those people in this city whose homeshave been trashed, Mir, whose everything lies in the flood’s path.(Divān-e Suvvum III.1174.7)6.ek jagah par jaise bhañvar haiñ lekin chakkar rahtā haiyaʿnī vat̤an daryā hai us meñ chār t̤araf haiñ safar meñ abLike the whirlpool, still centre of a giddy circling,the homeland’s an ocean that scatters us in all directions.(Divān-e Panjum: V.1579.4)7.mīr ko vāqiʿah kyā jāniye kyā thā dar-peshkih t̤araf dasht ke jūñ sail chalā jātā thāWho knows what portent would manifest itself to Mirthat he used to surge towards the desert like a flood?(Divān-e Chahārum: IV.1327.5)8.haiñ musht-e ḳhāk lekin jo kuchh haiñ mīr ham haiñmaqdūr se ziyādah maqdūr hai hamārāWe’re a handful of dust, but whatever we are, Mir, we are.Greater than the power fate granted us is our power.(Divān-e Avval: I.69.7)9.‘ajab hote haiñ shāʿir bhī maiñ is firqe kā ʿāshiq hūñkih be-dhaṛke bharī majlis meñ yih asrār kahte haiñPoets, they’re amazing—I just love that lot.Unfazed, they’ll broadcast secrets to an assembly.(Divān-e Avval: I.344.8)
The Homeland’s an Ocean (excerpt)
Feature Date
- January 6, 2025
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English Copyright © 2024 by Ranjit Hoskote.
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Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Mir Muhammad Taqi, known to posterity simply by his takhallus or pen name, “Mir,” is regarded as one of the greatest poets in the canon of Urdu literature. Mir was born in Akbarabad, now Agra, in northern India, in 1723, and spent the greater portion of his life—with extended periods in exile—in Shahjahanabad, as the capital of the Mughal Empire, Delhi, was then known. Mir lived through a period of extraordinary turbulence, with the Mughal Empire collapsing under pressure from a variety of forces including Iranian and Afghan invaders, emerging powers such as the Marathas, the Jats and the Rohillas, and the British East India Company. Much as he loved Delhi, he was forced to leave it and seek the protection and patronage of the ruler of the newly emergent nawabate of Lucknow. A reluctant exile, regarded as eccentric in temperament and old-fashioned in style by the younger poets of his adopted city, Mir died in Lucknow in 1810, having lived a life that was unusually long for that period of endemic warfare and strife. Mir left behind six volumes of his collected poetry in Urdu, ranging across diverse forms such as the ghazal, the qasida and the masnavi, as well as a smaller poetic oeuvre in Persian and three prose works composed in Persian, including a biographical anthology of Delhi poets whose work he admired, a guide to Sufi mystical practice, and a fragmentary memoir.
Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist, translator and curator. His collections of poetry include Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985-2005 (Penguin, 2006), Central Time (Penguin, 2014), Jonahwhale (Penguin, 2018, published in the UK by Arc as The Atlas of Lost Beliefs, 2020), Hunchprose (Penguin, 2021), and Icelight (Wesleyan University Press in the USA and Penguin in India, 2023).
Hoskote’s translation of a celebrated 14th-century Kashmiri woman mystic’s poetry has appeared as I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (Penguin Classics, 2011). More recently, his translation of the poems of the great 18th-century Urdu poet, Mir Taqi Mir, has been published as The Homeland’s an Ocean (Penguin Classics, 2024). Hoskote is the editor of Dom Moraes: Selected Poems (Penguin Modern Classics, 2012). His book of essays on the poet and painter Gieve Patel has appeared as To Break and To Branch: Gieve Patel (Seagull, 2024).
Hoskote has been honoured with such prestigious awards as the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award, the Sahitya Akademi Translation Award, the Sanskriti Award for Literature, the S H Raza Award for Literature, and the 7th JLF-Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry. He has been a fellow of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, and has held writing residencies at Villa Waldberta, Munich, and the Polish Institute, Berlin. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Murty Classical Library of India, published by Harvard University Press.
Gurgaon, Delhi, India
Mir, one of the greatest Urdu poets, lived through extraordinarily turbulent times in a Delhi besieged by marauders, and in exile elsewhere in North India. By the time he died, aged eighty-seven, he had witnessed a long era of violence and chaos. Yet, through it all, he crafted the most exquisite poetry, shaping the Urdu language from the resources of Khari Boli, Persian and Brajbhasha. A thoughtful selection of 150 of his asha’ar or couplets by Ranjit Hoskote, The Homeland’s an Ocean reveals a far more political Mir than we know, a many-sided poet of melancholia, irreverent humour, love and audacious social vision. Hoskote’s fresh, contemporary translation brings Mir’s poetry back to a world that needs such a passionately urgent voice. Framed by the translator’s substantial introduction to Mir’s life and his literary, linguistic and political contexts, this book invites readers to look through a unique eighteenth-century lens at our current crises of homeland, identity and belonging.
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