‘Love’ in Ghalib’s ghazals

Although Ghalib wrote on diverse themes, the theme of love was dominant, which he brought out in the form of his ghazals. In fact the term ghazal itself originally meant something like ‘conversations between lovers’. In a ghazal, the poet lover expresses his passionate love for his beloved. In the couplets of Ghalib, this aspect occurs with astonishing regularity. He writes of being overwhelmed by love, of powerlessness in the face of love, of the joy of loving even if one’s love is not returned, the even greater joy if it is returned. He also speaks of compulsions to love, even if the beloved spurns him or even if it violates all the social and religious commands of the community in which the beloved lives. One of the characteristic features of Ghalib, where he seems to have broken from the traditional ghazal poets is that, while treating the experience of love in his poems (including his own), he could express it as a detached non-participant observer.

Another important distinguishing feature of Ghalib’s poetry is the unorthodox manner in which he portrays love and its characters. The love which his ghazals portray is an illicit love. The poet’s beloved may be someonelse’s fiancee or wife or a courtesan or a handsome boy. Such type of love and lovers were frowned upon in the medieval Indian society (of which ghazal itself was a product) and such lovers invariably entailed suffering and distress. Another dimension of love, depicted in these ghazals is that, the beloved (she or he) may not be a human beloved at all. The poet may express love for God or for any ideal in life to which he may commit or surrender completely. Thus in a ghazal (including those of Ghalib), love had both the dimensions-Physical and Mystic. The poet uses a language and symbolism which enables him to speak on different meanings of love at the same time.

The depiction of earthly love in the Urdu ghazals of Ghalib and other contemporary poets has to be seen in the context of its legitimacy in the medieval Indian society. In that age, marriage was an alliance between families to maintain social status, and had nothing to do with passionate, romantic love. But marriage did not always prove to be a safeguard against such a love outside of it. But this love was a severe test for both the lover and the beloved and since permanent union of lovers was non-existent, love ultimately proved to be a tragedy for all concerned. It was this stressful love that provided the dominant theme of ghazal. In a society where segregation of sexes was strictly followed, another outlet of love was homosexuality. In a cultured society of Ghalib’s day, such love, though strongly condemned in orthodox Islam, was a common place and in practice evoked no hostile reaction. Any such emotional experience of the poet, found its expression in his poetry and so, one of the ‘beloveds’ of the Urdu ghazal could be a handsome boy. Another consequence of the segregation of sexes, along with low educational and cultural level of respectable medieval Indian women, was the institutionalization of the salon of the courtesan. In a highly conservative society, the kothah of the courtesan, alone provided the most easily accessible forum for men to mix socially, and without inhibition, with women. This also provided the setting for much of the symbolism and imagery of the poetic renaissance of the times. Thus, in the Urdu ghazals, quite often, image of the beloved became the image of a courtesan.

Another important dimension of ‘love’ depicted in the Urdu ghazals, including that of Ghalib, is the mystic love, which is often blended with the earthly love. The passionate, illicit love between two human beings is used as symbols of the similar love of the mystic lover for his God, his divine beloved. The whole structure of mystic love is built upon the deep emotional relationship of the lover with God. In this situation, the seeker of God relies on love of God for guidance without the intervention of the learned or self-proclaimed true guardians of religion. Such radical methods of the mystic lover are therefore considered by the orthodox as subversive doctrine or in an extreme form, as blasphemy. Thus the mystic lover shares same dangerous prospects as the earthly lover of a human beloved at the hands of the society. Moreover, in the ghazal tradition, the beloved is portrayed as extremely cruel to the lover but the lover accepts, without hesitation, all the misfortunes, including death. In many of Ghalib’s ghazals, the expressions of earthly and mystic love are interwoven. Thus, some of his couplets can be taken in earthly sense and others in divine sense but many of them could be taken in both senses at the same time. In this way, the standard metaphor, used for human beloved proves to be appropriate metaphor for the divine beloved too. One such example of Ghalib’s verse based on the above convention is:

       “Though I have passed my life in pledge to all the age’s cruelties

Yet never was the thought of you once absent from my mind”

By the ‘you’ in this couplet, Ghalib may mean a woman or God or any ideal, to which he was passionately committed or all of these things.