Ghalib: Life

Najm-ud-Daula Dabir-ul-Mulk Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

Mirza Sahib's real passion was for Persian verse and prose, and it was in that accomplishment that he took pride; but since his works have been printed in Urdu as well, and since, just as among the nobles and gentry of Akbarabad (Agra) he is a well-known *mirza-zada* (son of a noble house) by the eminence of his family, so he is a master of the refined Urdu, it was necessary that he should certainly be spoken of in this *tazkira* (memoir of poets). His name was Asadullah. At first he used the pen name Asad. In Jhajjar some low sort of fellow used the pen name Asad; one day someone recited this opening couplet of his:

Asad, you have made this *ghazal* (lyric poem) well;
Hey there, you lion, God's mercy be upon you!

The moment he heard it he grew sick of that pen name, because it was also one of his rules[1] that he thought it most distasteful to share any condition with the common people. So in 1245 AH, 1828 AD, playing on the title *Asadullah al-Ghalib* ("the Lion of God, the Victorious"), he took the pen name Ghalib; but the *ghazals* that had the pen name Asad he left as they were.

The line of his family goes back to Afrasiyab, king of Turan. When the lamp of the Turanians was blown out by the wind of the Kayanians' fortune, the poor, ruined people went off into the forests and mountains; but the pull of their true metal did not let the sword go from their hands. Soldiering, through their courage, began to earn them their bread. After hundreds of years fortune leaned their way again and the sword won them a crown: the Seljuq dynasty was founded among them. But fortune's leaning is a gust of wind. After some generations it turned its face again, and in Samarqand, like other gentlefolk, it set the Seljuq princes too down in their homes.

Mirza Sahib's grandfather left home and came out; it was the time of Shah Alam when he came to Delhi. Here too nothing was left of the empire, yet with only fifty horses and a kettledrum and banner he won honour at the royal court, and by his ability and his family's name he obtained a *pargana* (district), Pahasu, as his personal allowance and the pay of his troop of horse. After Shah Alam the turmoil of anarchy grew hot, and that too was lost. His father, Abdullah Beg Khan, went to Lucknow and reached the court of the late Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula. Some time later he went to Hyderabad and served in the government of Nawab Nizam Ali Khan Bahadur with a body of three hundred horse. Some years later, in the tangle of a civil war, this position too went wrong. From there he came home and took service in Alwar with Raja Bakhtawar Singh. There he was killed in some battle. At that time the Mirza was five years old.

His own uncle, Nasrullah Beg Khan, was governor of Akbarabad for the Marathas. He took the orphan pearl into his lap. In 1806, when General Lake's rule came, the governorship became a commissionership. His uncle was ordered to raise horsemen and became the officer of four hundred horse; seventeen hundred rupees a month were fixed as his personal pay, and a *jagir* (land grant) of a lakh or a lakh and a half of rupees a year on the *pargana* of Sonk Sonsa for his lifetime.

The Mirza was being brought up under his uncle's shadow, but it so happened that the uncle died a sudden death. The troop was disbanded and the *jagir* confiscated. His forefathers had left property worth lakhs of rupees, but whose strength can prevail against fate? That young noble who had come into the world with a kingly heart and mind had to content himself with the rule of the kingdom of poetry and the wealth of ideas, and to pass his life in poor circumstances. Many plans and many intermediaries came between, but all of them were made and unmade like a game. So at the end[2] some friend wrote to him that he should compose a *qasida* (ode of praise) for the Nizam of the Deccan and send it through such-and-such a channel. In reply he writes: "I was five years old when my father died, and nine when my uncle died. In exchange for his *jagir*, ten thousand rupees a year were fixed for me and my true co-sharers, as part of the *jagir* of Nawab Ahmad Bakhsh Khan. He would not give more than three thousand rupees a year, and of that my own share was seven hundred and fifty rupees a year. I brought the embezzlement to the notice of the English government. Mr Colebrooke Sahib Bahadur, the Resident at Delhi, and Mr Stirling Sahib Bahadur, Secretary to the Government at Calcutta, agreed to get me my right; the Resident was dismissed, and the Secretary to the Government died a sudden death. After a time the King of Delhi fixed fifty rupees a month for me; his heir apparent died two years after this appointment. From the government of Wajid Ali Shah of Oudh five hundred rupees a year were fixed as a reward for my praises; he too did not live more than two years, that is, although he is still alive, his kingdom was lost, and the ruin of the kingdom came within just two years. The Delhi kingdom had a somewhat tougher life: it fell after giving me bread for seven years. Where are such patron-killing and benefactor-burning stars born? Now if I turn to the ruler of the Deccan, mark my words, the go-between will either die or be dismissed; and if neither of these things happens, his efforts will be wasted, the ruler of the city will give me nothing; and if by chance he does treat me kindly, the state will be ruined and donkeys will plough the land."

In short, aggrieved at Nawab Ahmad Bakhsh Khan Bahadur's division, the late Mirza went to Calcutta in 1830 and sought to meet the Governor General. There the records were examined, and from them it appeared that he should be received with the honours of his family, and a robe of honour of seven pieces, with a cash gift, a *jigha* (plume), a *sarpech* (turban ornament) and a string of pearls, was fixed [illegible] in consideration of his rank.

So the Mirza came back from Calcutta disappointed, and before his days of youth were over he had spent his forefathers' wealth and come to Delhi. Here, although he lived in a noble style and kept noble company with nobles, his high spirit and lofty views kept him in straits. Yet he had been given so cheerful a nature that he took no notice of these troubles and always drowned his sorrow in laughter and play. How well he has said:

Who, the black-faced wretch, wants wine for pleasure?
Some kind of self-forgetting I need, day and night.

When Delhi was ruined, the greater misfortune fell. On one side the pay from the Fort was lost, on the other the pension was stopped, and he had to go to Rampur. He had known the Nawab Sahib for twenty or twenty-five years; that is, in 1855 the Nawab had become his pupil and taken the pen name Nazim. The Nawab used to send him a *ghazal* now and then, and sometimes money came too. At that time the pay from the Fort was still running and the government pension was open, so the Nawab's kindness was counted a windfall from the unseen. When Delhi's state was ruined, his life came to depend on it. From 1859 the Nawab made it a hundred rupees a month and called him with great insistence. When he went, the Nawab received him with the honour due to his family and embraced him as a friend and a pupil, and as long as he kept him there he kept him with the greatest honour, and even added another hundred rupees a month for his entertainment. But where could the Mirza find peace without Delhi? After a few days he took his leave and came back here again. Since the government pension had also been restored, he passed a few years. [TN: "The Fort" is the Mughal court in the Red Fort of Delhi; the Nawab is Yusuf Ali Khan of Rampur.]

At the end of his life old age made him very helpless. He could not hear, and lay like a picture on the wall. If anyone had something to say to him, they wrote it down and put it before him, and he read it and answered. For two or three years his food had come down to this: in the morning the milk of five or seven almonds, at twelve o'clock meat broth, in the evening three fried *kababs*. At last, at the age of seventy-three, in 1869, 1285 AH, he passed from this transient world, and this sinful servant wrote the chronogram *Ah, Ghalib bimurd* ("Alas, Ghalib died"). A few days before his death he made this couplet, and he would often keep reciting it: [TN: "This sinful servant" is Azad himself.]

The last breath is on the point of leaving;
Now, my dear ones, there is only God, only God.

Notes

[1] In his Persian *diwan* he has written a piece of twenty or twenty-five couplets. Some people say that it is a wink at Zauq. In any case, this is one couplet from it: "I speak the truth, and one cannot turn one's head from the truth: / whatever is your pride in speech is my shame."

[2] The true state of affairs is that when the Mirza presented his claim in Calcutta, the government entrusted the decision to Sir John Malcolm Sahib, Governor of Bombay, because when the deeds of the *jagirs* were written he was secretary to Lord Lake Sahib, Commander-in-Chief of India, and the deeds had been issued over his signature. When this case and its papers reached him, he wrote that the claimant was wrong: Nawab Ahmad Bakhsh Khan had been an old friend of his and a very upright man, and this charge had been brought against him out of spite. Further, he had written five thousand rupees a year, of which three thousand were for the claimant and his dependants and two thousand were in the name of Khwaja Haji and his heirs. Then the Mirza appealed in England; there too nothing came of it. But the truth Nawab Zia-ud-Din Khan Bahadur [TN: the note breaks off here in the print]