While lovers gave roses, chocolates, hugs and promises around Valentine’s Day, Mirza Ghalib — the prophet of love, was conveniently forgotten. While everyone in town palpitated about Bryan Adams’ cancelled concert, the greatest Urdu poet, Mirza Ghalib’s death anniversary lay forgotten in Ballimaran even on his death anniversary.
Yash, a filmmaker, who incidentally spent a major part of his day at Ghalib’s shrine, says that the poet is this country’s best-kept secret.
“Everyone knows about Ghalib, but there are very few, who have read more than 10 of his nazms. Perhaps because he wasn’t your everyday poet, but an intellectual, who wrote about religion, geography and science, that too mostly in Persian over Urdu, which at that time was the language of the masses,” he says.
Kamna Prasad, who has written several books on Ghalib and organises Jashn-e-Bahaar Mushaira of leading Indian and Pakistani poets in the capital every year, says that to keep his flame alive it needs to be passed from one generation to the next. “We can’t rely on the government and say that our kids will learn his poetry only when it is taught in schools. It is a complete culture and set of values that we need to pass on, only then can we expect the coming generations to respect him and his work,” she tells us. Whereas, Ghazala Amin, associate professor of History at Delhi University is rather surprised that no one even mentioned his death anniversary.
“Perhaps we concentrate on issues that mostly have a peg or a hook. Like Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s centenary is being celebrated all over the city, right at the time when the Indo-Pak relations are on the verge of becoming softer. Ghalib’s anniversary was not in-your-face and thus didn’t get attention so maybe we must look for things which are not merely sensational,” she quips.