Urdu Poets and Dilli: Love, Longing and Loathing

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Mir Taqi Mir (1723-1810) born in Agra but raised at Delhi. When Delhi was savaged by Ahmad Shah Abdali of Persia, Meer left for Lucknow. There he took the patronage of Asafuddowla of Lucknow.
A poem that he recited as areply to the bantering of the elites of Lucknow mocking his battered condition:

'Kiya bood u baash poocho ho poorab kai saakino
hum ko gareeb jaan kai huns huns pukaar kai
Dilli jo aik shahar tha aalam mai intikhaab
rahtay thay hee jahaan muntakhib roozgaar kay
us ko falak nai loot kay weeraan kar diya
hum rahnay waalay hain usee ujray dayaar kai'.

Ye the residents of the east what are you mocking at to know about my where abouts and my origin/ finding me poor addressing me mockingly/ once there was a city of Delhi a select place of the world/where only the chosen professionals lived/ the heavens have looted it to make it a desolate place/I am the resident of that devastated land.

Some other lines of Mir about Dilli

Dilli mein bahut sakhat ki ab ke guzraan―dil ko kar sung,
Ghairat na rahi aaqbat kaar ne shaan―Khencha yeh nung;
Yaaron mein na tha koi murawat jo kare, ―ujre the ghar,
Taa hadd-e-nazar saaf pare the maidaan―arsa tha tung.

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A hard time I spent in Delhi―stiffening my heart to stone,
No honour, no grace, no glory―ignominy untoned;
I did not have a friend to counsel or console ―desolate every home;
Barren wastes stared in the face, I felt benumbed―weary and forlorn.

Kuch mauj-e-hawa pechaan, ai Mir nazar aai,
Shaaid ke bahaar aai, zanjeer nazar aai,
Dilli ke na the kuche, auraaq-e-musawwar the,
Jo shakal nazar aai, tasveer nazar aai.

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I have sighted, Mir, some swirling whiffs of breeze,
Perhaps the spring arrives, the chain beckons to me,
Winsomewere the streets of Delhi, like a work of art,
Every figure that I met was a masterpiece

Some more lines of Mir that use Dilli as a metaphor

Dil va Dilli dono agar hai kharaab; Pa kuch lutf us ujde ghar mein bhi hain

(Both heart and Delhi may have been worn out, But some little pleasures still remain in this ruined house).

Dil ki basti bhi shehar dilli hai; Jo bhi guzra usee ne loota.

(Delhi alone is a city of love; all those that have passed through have looted it)

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Khwaja Mir Dard

Dard’s spritual diaries, as we may call his Four Risalas, only rarely speak of the afflictions which his hometown had to undergo almost every year. His friend Mir compared Delhi to a colorful picture-book full of miniatures, which are now faded; Dard, in turn, said in a quatrain with clever puns, written according to the sequence of the book shortly after 1190/1776:

Delhi, which time has now devastated:
Tears are flowing now instead of its rivers.
This town had been like the face of the lovely,
And its suburbs like the down of the beloved ones!

The blessed town of Delhi,in which is the burial garden of the ‘Qibla of the Worlds’ and which God may keep cultivated until resurrection was a wonderful rosegarden, but has now been trampled down by the autumn of events of time.[…]

-Pain and Grace: A study of two Mystical Writers of Eighteenth-Century Muslim India
By Annemarie Schimmel

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Ahl-e-jauhar ko watan mein rahne deta gar falak,
Laal kyon is rung se aataa Badakhshaan chhor kar,
In dinon garche Dakan mein hai bari qadar-e-sakhun,
Kaun jaane Zauq par Dilli ki galiyan chhor kar

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Could talent live at home and thrive,
Why should the badakhshaan-ruby thus wander world wide?
Albeit in Deccan, Zauq, the Muse commands respect,
Who would quit the lanes of Delhi, and suffer exile?

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Ghalib

hai ab is mamure mein qaht-e gham-e ulfat asad
ham ne yih mana kih dilli mein rahe khavenge kya

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There is now in this town a famine of the grief of love, Asad
We've agreed that we would remain in Delhi-- what will we eat?

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Ghulam Hamdani Mushafi (1725-1824) belonged to a distinguished family of Amroha. He lived at Lucknow at first, then went to Delhi where he held famous literary reunions, at which many poets gathered. This is what he had to say about women of Dilli:

“Ey Mushafi! Na inse kabhi jee lagayiye, Zaalim ghazab ki hoti hain yeh dilli waliyan.”

(Oh Mushafi! Do not fall for these, miraculously cruel are the maidens of Delhi)

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* Translation from by KC Kanda, Masterpieces Of Urdu Rubaiyat

+ An article, The Literary Heritage of Urdu: More Than a Language of Love and the Beloved
by Syed Maqsud Jamil

++Found the Translation at quizfan