An ode to the ghazal!!!

This and that – an ode to the ghazal!!!

“Kal chaudhavi ki raat thi Shabbar raha charcha tera……”….  I was listening to the heavenly voice of Jagjit Singh last evening. The ghazal reminded me of an evening drowned in a heady mix of these – nazarse pilaye jaaam, soulful ghazals bringing out the joy of love amidst pain of loss and rogan josh with basmati rice (boiled). A strange combination you may say. But stranger are the ways of an errant life. These moments are not planned. They just occur and then you wish for them to recur. And with each recurrence it is reliving the initial moment. The initial moment was in December 1982, of all places in MHOW. My Yezdi was with me and we were in a restaurant strangely named “The Stork”.

What followed when we left the restaurant was macabre. We were two couple both on YEZDIs. Somewhere on the road along the way we were accosted by two goons who seemed to be in some sort of trouble until one of them pulled out a knife and pronto we were the ones in trouble! All of a sudden all the alcohol oozed out of each pore in the body as sweat in that wintry cold. That was of course cold sweat. But all the rum that had gone into the brain became active. The message from the top was clear – fight or perish. That is what we did with only an inch long ¼ inch deep cut in my right forearm. The scar remains. But more enduring is “Nashili raat mein jab tumne zulphon ko sawara hein….” in the mellifluous voice of Jagjit Singh.

Sounds like fiction? That is exactly how life is, like a political discourse where it is difficult to discern where truth ends and fiction begins. Why, even the recent (should it be ‘ongoing’?) saga of Chief’s DOB also runs in the same vein….we are yet not sure what is the truth and what is not!!! But we know a ghazal is fiction but we look for truth in there always and every time. We derive pleasure from pain leading to the belief that there can’t be pleasure without pain!!!!!  

Then it is “Tum itna jo muskura rahe ho! Kya gam he jisko chupa raheho…..”  ….akin to the ‘laughing Buddha!”