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Wine, Mullah and Poet


Zauq! Jo medresse ke bigre hue hain mulla
Un ko maikhaane mein le aao sanwar jaayenge

(Zauq! Bring the mulla misled by a medressa
To the tavern, it will correct his ways.)

-    Zauq


Lutf-e-mai tujh se kya kahoon, zahid
Hai kambakht tu ne pee hi nahin.

(How do I describe, o priest, wine’s joy to you?
A drop has never passed your misbegotten lips.)


Zahid sharaab peene de masjid mein baith kar
Ya wo  jagah bata de jahan par Khuda na ho.


(Priest, let me sit and drink inside the mosque
Or tell me that place where God can’t be found.)

- Hazrat Daagh Dehlivi


Har chabd ho mushahada-e-haq ki guftagu
Banti nahin hai badah-o-saaghan kahe baghair.

(Let us discourse, each moment, of truth divine
How do we talk without the strength of wine?)


Kahan maikhana ka darwaza Ghalib aur kahan waaez
Par itna jaante hain, kal wo jaata tha ke ham nikle.

(Where is the tavern door, Ghalib, and where he priest!
But this I know: yesterday he entered as I was leaving.)

- Ghalib


Sharaab-e-kuhan phir pila saaqiya
Yahi jam gardish mein laa saaqiya.

(Pour me that familiar wine again, saqi!
Fill the world with the same wine, saqi!)


Umeed-e hoor ne sab kuch sikha rakha hai waaez ko
Yeh hazrat dekhne main seedhe hain, saade hain, bhole bhaale hain.

(The hope of houris has taught him all he wants to know
The priest merely looks simple, humble, plain, innocent.)

-    Iqbal


Pahunchi yahan bhi Shaikh was Brahman ki guftagu
Ab maikada bhi sair ke qaabil nahin raha.

(The quarrel of Shaikh, Brahmin has reached here
Even the tavern is no longer worth a visit!)

- Anonymous

-0-

Above verses (including translation) selected from an article Would anyone dare issue a fatwa against Iqbal? by M J Akbar (Times of India dated 23/11/2008). He wrote the article because:

A Lucknow based maulana passed a fatwa against Harvansh Rai Bachchan’s seven decade old famous work titled Madhushala. This maulana fealt that these verses “eulogized alcohol and drunkenness in society".

Sample this from Madhushala:


dharm-grandh sab jala chuki hai jiske antar kee jwaala
mandir masjid girje sab ko tod chuka jo matwaala
pandit momin paadriyon ke fandon ko jo kaat chuka
kar sakti hai aaj usee ka swaagat meri madhushaala

Some people went to this maulana, read out some verses from Madhushala ('The House of Wine') and asked 'Howzzthat?'. It's a fatwa.

Harivansh Rai Bachchan's famous 135 "quatrains": verses of four lines ("Ruba'i) was inspired by Omar Khayyam's famous Rubayiat.


Sample this from Rubayiat:
 

Why, ungrateful man, repine,
When this cup is bright with wine?
All my life I've sought in vain,
Knowledge and content to gain;
All that Nature could unfold
Have I in her page unrolled;
All of glorious and grand
I have sought to understand.
'Twas in youth my early thought,
Riper years no wisdom brought,
Life is ebbing, sure though slow,
And I feel I nothing know.

- From: Charles F. Horne, ed., The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, (New York: Parke, Austin, & Lipscomb, 1917), Vol. VIII: Medieval Persia, p. 15 (Translated by E. H. Whinfield).
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