THE 145th death anniversary of Ghalib, the master magician, was observed earlier in the year. This flickered through my fading memory, which is nothing unusual for someone whose life is ebbing away. But later I felt some regret and remorse as I had conceived a quatrain, called qitah in Urdu, to pay my tribute to the unrivalled genius of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib.
I reckon that writing on Ghalib’s ethereal poetry does not have to be bounded by mundane customs. His poetry is an allegory of a spiritual journey. It carries you through the maze of a celestial world in a state of ecstasy and tranquillity.
A screenshot of the event. White Star
KARACHI: Habib University on Thursday evening held as part of its ongoing web series an online talk on ‘The critical edge of tradition: understanding Ghalib as Wali in contemporary Delhi’. Anand Vivek Taneja, an assistant professor of Religious Studies, Islamic Traditions of South Asia, College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University was the main speaker.
Prof Taneja in his opening remarks said his presentation was based on work he’d been doing for some time, a broad-based project on Indian Muslim ethics in the age of Hindu nationalism. He said on the evening of March 12, 2018 there was a programme on the famous 19th century Urdu poet Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib in a packed to capacity auditorium in South Delhi. Ustad Iqbal Ahmed Khan, a famous musician belonging to the Delhi gharana who passed away last year, was staging a narrative of Ghalib’s life punctuated by his poetry set to music. One of them performed at the beginning was
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