When the history of Urdu will be read by future generations, the name of Sanjiv Saraf will stand out among the 21st century greats.
A profound love of Urdu poetry led this exquisitely sensitive man to take a step which, with a one-click efficiency, satisfied the hunger of Urdu aficionados the world over. He created Rekhta.org, a non-profit organisation recognised as the largest web portal in the world for the preservation of Urdu literature, making roughly 100,000 books of poetry, prose and biographies of poets available online. It is an extraordinary achievement.
Through Rekhta, Sanjiv digitised 19 million pages and revitalised the great classics of Urdu poetry by introducing the body of work to generations of new readers. As if this was not enough, Sanjiv keeps on giving from his inexhaustible fountain of love.
Introducing Rekhta as an Urdu Virtual Library in 2013, he subsequently established hugely popular and sought-after initiatives, such as ‘Jashn e Rekhta’, ‘Aamozish‘, ‘Sufinama‘ and ‘Sham e Sher‘, as well as ‘Nawa e Sarosh’, his first attempt at translating in verse the greatest ghazals of our erstwhile grandmasters.
Sanjiv’s latest gift to the cognoscente is Love Longing Loss. This time, he was going to rely on shers he had collected over decades.
Sitting on the terrace of my Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan, when Sanjiv first told me about this ongoing project three years ago, I expressed mild skepticism; although, knowing this man, who is a true force of nature, I should have known better.
How could anyone rely on a personal collection of shers to traverse the entire journey of love, longing and loss while trans-creating each sher in rhyme, all the while remaining true to meaning; preserving the essence of each sher?
He smiled his signature benevolent, charming smile and shyly said something to the effect of, “Apa, I have experienced each of these emotions. And many more. In fact, my romantic temperament is the reason why I was smitten by poetry at an early age. I have to try and convey my great joy in finding an expression of my feelings through the words of our great Ustads.”
Sanjiv Saraf
Love Longing Loss
Rekhta (January, 2021
Sure enough, last year, he brought me an early draft of the book. Now it was my turn to be smitten.
After a first deep dive, I wrote a fan letter to Sanjiv. Since then, the book has become my go-to reference whenever I am searching for an appropriate sher for a particular occasion. Love Longing Loss never fails to satisfy. It is a unique book indeed; the first of its kind. No one could have assembled this tome without decades of devotion to the haunting beauty of Urdu poetry and to its startling depiction of entropy through gorgeous rhythmic harmonies.
Particularly refreshing is the bold set of instructions provided by Sanjiv in the introduction on how to read this book: Immerse yourself in the persona of the lover. Keep your intellect aside and breathe in the air the poet breathes – feel him. Your mind should be used only to appreciate the nuances and the wordplay. Your heart has to absorb and resonate with the yearning, the desire, the hopes, the aspirations, the joys and sorrows, the highs and lows, the exuberance and the pathos of the poet.
Sanjiv combed through his diaries and journals, seeking and selecting the best shers he has collected over decades. He proceeded to bring method to madness by segregating them under specific headings and subheadings. This ingenious arrangement provides a brilliant and hitherto unparalleled narrative cohesion in the otherwise disjointed journey of ‘ISHQ’.
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Throughout the book, he serves as our khizr (guide), much like Virgil in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Gently, and with utmost care and tenderness, he chaperons us on a journey that advances methodically through various stages, revealing the oceanic infinitudes of desire, the anguish of separation and the rare moments of gratification and unions.
He teaches without appearing didactic; he asks probing questions; he suggests an array of varied interpretations. He opens unexpected doors by marking them with prominent subheadings. You can choose the doors through which you wish to enter.
Here is one example of this clever novelty. The first subject tackled is ‘Ishq’, with a stunningly naïve and innocent question: What is love? This is followed by a series of subheadings, the very first sher in this list of lovely examples happens to be one of my favourites:
‘Love is versatile and all-encompassing’:
ik lafz-e-mohabbat kā adnā ye fasānā hai
simte to dil-e-āshiq phaile to zamānā hai
(About the word called Love/this simple story stands
If shrinks, a lover’s heart, the world if it expands)
Followed by the subheading: It is multi-faceted:
mohabbat chiikh bhii khaamoshii bhii nagma bhii na.ara bhii
ye ik mazmuun hai kitne hii unvaanon se vaabasta
(A shout love is, and silence too / and slogan, song as well
It is a single subject where / desires many dwell)
It is all-consuming:
puuchhe hai kyaa vajuud o adam ahl-e-shauq kaa
aap apnii aag ke khas-o-khaashaak ho gae
Of lovers’ being nothingness, what do you enquire?
Brushwood, kindling they’ve become, for their own desire
Mir says Love is a religion followed by heretics:
sakht kaafir thaa jin ne pahle ‘miir’
maz.hab-e-ishq ikhtiyaar kiyaa
‘Mir’, he was an infidel severe
Who to Love / as faith did first adhere
Love is imaginary:
bulbul ke kaarobaar pe hain khanda-haa-e-gul
kahte hain jis ko ishq khalal hai dimaag kaa
The flower laughs out loud at the bulbul’s enterprise
What is known as Love, is mind’s / imperfect premise
Urdu’s greatest poet says that love enables “seeing”:
Mohabbat ne zulmat se khadha hai nuur
Na hoti mohabbat na hota zuhur
From the depths of darkness, love has exacted light
If love did not exist, there would have been no sight
And that love is self-contained:
ishq ma.ashuuq ishq aashiq hai
yaanii apnaa hii mubtalaa hai ishq
Love is the beloved, Love’s the paramour
Love is thus enmeshed / in its own allure
That Love is the end Objective:
kaun maqsad ko ishq bin pahunchaa
aarzuu ishq mudda.aa hai ishq
Who has attained his goal if Love is not present?
Love is the desire and love is the intent
But it develops into a Fire:
shaayad isii kaa naam mohabbat hai ‘sheftaa’
ik aag sii hai siine ke andar lagii hu.ii
Maybe it’s the thing, as Love which we attest
Something fire-like / that’s burning in my breast
It is not in man’s power:
ishq par zor nahii.n hai ye vo aatish ‘Gaalib’
ki lagaa.e na lage aur bujhaa.e na bane
One has no power over Love, it is that flame, to wit
Which neither can e set alight, nor extinguished once lit
It leaves no time for oneself:
ishq vo kaar-e-musalsal hai ki ham apne liye
ek lamha bhii pas-andaaz nahii.n kar sakte
Love is that constant enterprise, where I
E’en for myself, a moment can’t supply
It is the “true” faith:
mujh se kahaa jibriil-e-junuu.n ne ye bhii vahi-e-ilaahii hai
maz.hab to bas mazhab-e-dil hai baaqii sab gumraahii hai
Archangel of frenzy said: “Thus did God ordain:
Just the heart’s religion’s true, the rest is all in vain”
Mankind’s necessity:
tum na maano magar haqiiqat hai
ishq insaan kii zaruurat hai
It is true, though you may not agree
For humankind, Love’s a necessity
This staggering collection of shers depicting a panoply; a parade of possible way-stations on the journey of Ishq, is then followed by additional major headings like ‘Beauty and Love’, and ‘Love cannot be concealed’, ‘Love is not easy…’ and so on.
For an uninitiated, unschooled but serious lover of Urdu poetry like me, this book unravelled previously unappreciated subtleties within subtleties addressed in our grand poetic tradition. I found the selection of shers to be tasteful, most but not all coming from the classic poets and including practically all the well-known ones on each topic. My only suggestion is that in the next edition, the shers should also appear in Nastaleeq.
Sanjiv explains his strategy for translation: Justice can almost never be done to the original. I have tried to give a rough approximation of what I think the poet says; i.e. my interpretation of the sher, and by doing so, give a sense of it to non-Urdu speakers.It is therefore termed ‘trans-creation’ as it mostly is not a verbatim translation of the sher.
I could not agree more since my co-author – the late Sara Suleri Goodyear – and I followed, more or less, the same approach in our translation of Ghalib’s poetry, Ghalib: Epistemologies of Elegance. What we brought to his magnificent body of work was not just our untrammelled admiration, but also a reader’s appreciation for the language and the intricate culture that produced it.
Let me end by categorically stating that this remarkable man had one brilliant insight that has resulted in Rekhta and related endeavours, as well as his two noteworthy, outstanding books.
As Romantic poet William Wordsworth had said, “What I love, others will love, and I will teach them how”.
I declare this book to be a resounding success. Sanjiv Zindabad.
Azra Raza is professor of medicine and oncology at Columbia University, author of The First Cell and co-author, along with Sara Suleri Goodyear, of Ghalib: Epistemologies of Elegance.