Dr. Frances Pritchett is among the greatest Ghalib scholars extant. She is<\/p>\n
from Columbia University, N.Y.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Recently I had an exchange of correspondence with her on Ghalib. Her<\/p>\n
reply to my letter indicated at the top was lost. Read bottom up. I hope you will<\/p>\n
enjoy reading it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dear Fran Pritchett,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I feel enormously uplifted by your response to my letter, and that too so<\/p>\n
fast. When you ask for a moon and are instead given a star, your faith in<\/p>\n
ethereality of life is reinforced.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Thank you for providing the two links that are supposed to indicate Ghalib’s<\/p>\n
happy personality. The first one I was already familiar with, the second one<\/p>\n
I have no access to at this point. But I am with you on the idea that Ghalib<\/p>\n
was a life-loving personality, who could indulge in humor, wine, and flirt<\/p>\n
with women and participate in other joy-inducing activities. But that was only<\/p>\n
one side of his personality, there was another side to him also, without which he would<\/p>\n
not have been the superlative poet that we know him to be.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
All poets who write on human condition, are inherently sad. Thoughtful<\/p>\n
people can not but see the suffering as one of the realities of human<\/p>\n
existence. But it does not necessarily mean that they live a life of melancholy.<\/p>\n
Artists and other thinkers compartmentalize their lives: one part lives in the<\/p>\n
world, the other in their soul. Ghalib did exactly that. On one side he was<\/p>\n
intensely oriented to achieving worldly success, but on the other he was resigned<\/p>\n
to accept the builtin tragedy of human life. He wrote intense verses on the<\/p>\n
suffering of life. To think that they were merely his cerebral exercises would be a<\/p>\n
vast misjudgement\u00a0 of the architecture of his soul. My strength in this<\/p>\n
perspective on artists does not only come from my understanding of human<\/p>\n
life in general, but also on the basis that I am a poet also. So, Ghalib, in my<\/p>\n
view, was not only a cerebral poet but also a wounded-soul one. It is in the<\/p>\n
latter aspect of him that has gained him a high status in the realm of poetry.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Why this upliftment of Ghalib in modern times? It is because with the decline<\/p>\n
of the old culture of conservatism in philosophy and culture of life, people<\/p>\n
saw in Ghalib’s poetry the unglossed and un-rationalized depiction of human suffering.<\/p>\n
In his superbly sensitive love poetry they saw was one of the anodynes available<\/p>\n
to their suffering. His love for wine and less than idolatry relationship with<\/p>\n
God, further drew them towards him. His dialog-like unpretentious letters<\/p>\n
even more enhanced their respect for his realism in all walks of life. It is just<\/p>\n
about seventy-five verses of Ghalib that have made lay people adore him. They<\/p>\n
do not care for his cerebral verses. In this selected genre of realism-verses,<\/p>\n
people find a vision of first the latent acknowledgement of the inherent suffering<\/p>\n
of life, then a liberation from it in form of the ridiculousness of life, its ironies.<\/p>\n
In them lay-people find that the real hero of human life is a human being, and<\/p>\n
not God.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I an sending you a short essay What Is Poetry? in the attachment below, which may<\/p>\n
or may not be relevant to what I have written above.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I had not intended to interview you in my request to meet you. I just wanted to meet<\/p>\n
you, to discuss not only Ghalib, but also your experiences in India, of its civilization<\/p>\n
and ethos. Also, in case you had been to Kashmir, I wanted to know your experiences<\/p>\n
there. I was born a Kashmiri Pandit and lived my early years in the juxtaposition of<\/p>\n
Hindu and Islamic cultures. I write a lot on Kashmir Problem.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But I believe now that my request to meet was a nouveau-fan-crush on you. How would<\/p>\n
you spend time with a person unknown to you, who is neither in your field, nor a celebrity,<\/p>\n
nor a journalist seeking an interview. To punish my juvenile audacity, I have decided to<\/p>\n
go without food for one day.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I live in Suffern, N.Y., thirty-five miles north of midtown Manhattan.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With a handshake in thought, I remain your fan,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Maharaj Kaul<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What Is Poetry? | Kaul’s Corner<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n