The Hidden Garden, Gopi Narang [cheapest way to read ebooks txt] 📗

urge to go to Lahore to meet another Sufi who gave sermons by the river Ravi. The old man reached Lahore with great difficulty, but to his disappointment, this so-called Sufi was a fraud who was deceiving poor people by muttering some words in Dari language which they did not understand. On his return journey, God rewarded his father by giving him a disciple, known as Sayyid, whom he brought with him to Agra, and this guest gradually became a member of the household. Sayyid taught Mir, who was seven years old at the time, to read the Quran. Mir called this person ‘uncle’ out of affection. His father and his ‘uncle’ became spiritual companions, and they could not live without each other’s company. When Sayyid died, a part of his father died with him. Mir wrote, ‘My father threw away his turban, tore open his shirt, and scarred his chest with constant battering.’ On the third day after the death, when friends and admirers gathered to mourn, Mir’s father announced that from that day onwards, he should be called Aziz Murda—someone who has lost a dear friend or a companion. He became famous by this name, and he spent the rest of his life shedding tears each day.

Before he died, Mir’s father sent for Mir and his stepbrother, Hafiz Muhammad Hasan, who was not very friendly towards Mir. The father gave Hafiz three hundred books telling him that as a fakir he had no other possession. But then he turned his face towards Mir and told him, ‘Son, I owe three hundred rupees to the people in the market. You have to pay this debt.’ Mir asked him, ‘How will I do that? I have no money.’ His father replied, ‘Do not worry. God will take care.’ A messenger came a few hours later carrying five hundred rupees from one of Sayyid’s disciples. The debt was paid, and the remaining funds were used by Mir to give his father a decent funeral.

Putting his younger brother, Muhammad Razi, in charge of the family, Mir made his first trip to Delhi and luckily received an allowance of one rupee a day from a nawab who was one of his father’s admirers. But that arrangement did not last long because Nadir Shah invaded and pillaged Delhi in 1739. Thousands were killed in the course of one night. In the morning, Nadir’s warrior chief appeared and read a verse that all men in Delhi worth killing had been killed. This carnage changed the fate of almost all nawabs and nobles overnight. Mir went to Agra, but he was disappointed to find that the people who had professed care for his father and the family turned away. Mir was left with no option but to return to Delhi.

It was on this trip that he sought refuge in the home of Sirajuddin Ali Khane Arzu, a learned scholar of Dilli who was highly respected by writers of the time. Khane Arzu was the maternal uncle of his stepbrother Hafiz. Initially, he was friendly towards Mir, but after receiving a letter from Hafiz, his attitude changed overnight. The letter advised Khane Arzu to treat Mir ‘like a snake in the grass; do not show him any courtesy; in fact, it would be good to have him killed’. Khane Arzu did many things to harm Mir. He wrote in Zikr-e Mir, ‘If I am asked to write about Khane Arzu’s enmity in detail, it would require a separate volume.’ But what was Mir hiding? What did his stepbrother write privately, which turned Khane Arzu against Mir overnight? Why did he have to leave his house? What Mir concealed in Zikr-e Mir, he revealed in two short masnavis (poems), after he had moved to the safety of Lucknow, which is quite revealing.

It was around that time that Mir started to have a very strange experience. From his early childhood, Mir was in the habit of looking at the moon at night when he was alone—a habit reinforced by one of his mother-like caretakers. Following his rift with Khane Arzu, Mir moved to a small room where he lived alone. At night, when he looked at the moon, he began to perceive a lovely feminine figure inside it. With time, the figure became lovelier; it appeared more like a fairy or a houri than an ordinary human being. Mir developed symptoms of madness. People felt unsafe in his company. This madness reached a point when people around him started to think about placing him in confinement, chained, and left alone to die. The wife of one of his father’s disciples saw the miserable condition in which Mir lived. Out of compassion, she spent a great deal of money on his treatment. He took a few months to recover. The madness vanished, his ravings stopped, his brain gradually started to work again, he was able to sleep, and once again, he started to write poetry.

Why did this madness start? What was the trigger? Two of Mir’s masnavis provide hints that while Mir was about eighteen years old, he fell in love with a girl. She was married, but because she was part of the family, she did not observe purdah from him. This love affair caused a great deal of suffering to both lovers. Mir did not talk about it in his book Zikr-e Mir or to anyone. Repressing it ripped his heart apart, and he carried with him all his life the wound of unrequited love and whatever psychological effect the madness left behind. We see the imprint of this tragic affair in all his poetic work.

A close reading of the masnavis Muaamlaat-e I’shq and Khwab o Khayaal reveals that the speaking voice is none other than that of the poet himself. Mir has provided sufficient poetic account of what happened in his early years and why he had to leave his parental home in Agra. The first masnavi appears to be about a casual affair—more like a love