Fathers, Nazms and Lullabies: A Lost Spiritual World
Last night I lay in bed thinking of my father.
How he would sing his favourite song to me as a lullaby, a song about a father and a daughter.
Papa jaldi aa jaana, saat samandar paar se.
(Father, come back soon, from across the seven seas.)
How we would lie in the darkened room at night just before we nodded off, and he would teach me rubais, qaseedas, nazms and stories with moral lessons.
Rubai and qaseeda are both classical forms of Persian and Arabic poetry. The rubai has a four-line structure, a quatrain. Qaseedas are praise-poems, much longer and with a single end-rhyme scheme. Nazms are Urdu poems.
One of these teachings was the nazm 'Lab pe aati hai dua', which he taught me when I was six.
Most societies consider this the job of the mother – instilling cultural and spiritual values, singing lullabies, teaching nazms and telling stories. But my father was the kind of man who always lived beyond artificial gender divisions, beyond forced gender boundaries.
An officer in the Provincial Civil Services (Uttar Pradesh), and a six-foot-tall strapping specimen of conventional ‘masculinity’ who had a reputation for curbing and preventing riots in any city he was posted, he had no insecurities about his ‘maleness’.
In today’s environment of masculinity being defined as aggression and dominance, he would have been an example of what healthy masculinity looks like – or, in fact, what being a human looks like.
Strength, where strength is required; and gentleness, where gentleness is required.
Even as a man, he embodied the dual values of gentleness and strength, and he taught me, too, to embody both at the same time, even as a girl.
His philosophy was always reflected in what he taught – including this nazm that he made me learn and memorise. It is important to distinguish, here, between learning and memorisation. Memorisation simply refers to remembering the words of a text. Learning, however, is a deeper engagement with the meanings of those words, and an embodiment of those meanings within one’s own life.
I wonder, often, if this gentle nazm is still being taught to little ones:
Lab pe aati hai dua ban ke tamanna meri
Zindagi shamma ki surat ho khudaya meri
(My heart’s longing reaches my lips in prayer
Khuda, grant me a life luminous as a candle)
Door duniya ka mere dam se andhera ho jaye
Har jagah mere chamakne se ujala ho jaye
(May my life light up the darkness of this world
May it illuminate every corner with its flame)
Ho mere dam se yunhi mere watan ki zeenat
Jis tarah phool se hoti hai chaman ki zeenat
(Make my existence an embellishment for my homeland
As the flower is the embellishment of the garden)
Zindagi ho meri parvane ki surat ya rabb
Ilm ki shamma se ho mujhko mohabbat ya rabb
(God, make me an embodiment of the moth
Consumed by love of the knowledge flame)
Ho mera kaam ghareebon ki himayat karna
Dardmandon se zaeefon se mohabbat karna
(May my life’s work be the care of the downtrodden
The suffering, and the old, and infirm may I ever love)
Mere Allah burayi se bachana mujhko
Nek jo raah ho us rah pe chalana mujhko
(God, save me from a life of evil and arrogance
Make my path the path of goodness and grace.)
Such simplicity, such depth.
A prayer for a compassionate life full of caring for the downtrodden, the suffering, the elderly and the infirm. A prayer for a luminous life that becomes a source of pride for the entire Homeland, the entire community.
A life spent in the pursuit of knowledge. A life full of both strength and gentleness.
And yet: no gender-based divisions. No prayers of ‘gentleness for women’ and ‘strength for men’, but both attributes for both people. Quite the way of life embodied by my father, the man who taught me the nazm.
A simple, tender message of striving towards the realisation of becoming Insan e Kamil – the perfect human, for insan encompasses both men and women, and not just men. A nazm that is a reminder of that graceful spirituality which does not seek to discriminate or demean, which does not seek to demarcate men and women into positions of authority and subordination.
May such spiritual growth reach all of us. May we remember that all the power we have – be it money or physical strength or intellectual ability – is an amaanat (given in trust, for safekeeping) to be used not just for ourselves but for the betterment of our fellow human beings who are never inferior to us, no matter our fortunes and our strength.
May we be set free from the desire to prove ourselves superior to anyone else. May we ever remember that the purpose of our lives – both women and men – is not to rule and control, but to illuminate.
Zindagi shamma ki surat ho khudaya meri.
Zehra Naqvi is an independent journalist and author of The Reluctant Mother: A Story No One Wants to Tell.
This article went live on June fourteenth, two thousand twenty six, at forty-five minutes past three in the afternoon.The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
