Bring Out the Ghalib in You!

Posted on October 23, 2008
Filed Under >Owais Mughal, Poetry
19 Comments
Total Views: 40364

Owais Mughal

Following is one of Mirza Ghalib’s famous ghazals. We think it will be interesting if we let our readers try to translate it. You can choose a language and style of your own. You can translate it in English or salees (easy) Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi etc. You can translate it funny, silly or melancholy. You can turn it into a ‘azad nazm’ or even make ‘nasr’ (prose) or a story out of it. Wanna take this challenge? Bring out your creativity. There is no wrong answer here.

Serious Ghalib lovers! Look at ATP’s related posts on Ghalib in the middle column of this page.

19 responses to “Bring Out the Ghalib in You!”

  1. Neha Marshall says:

    Ghalib is known not only for his verse, but prose in form of Ghalib Ke Khatoot. These remain humorous and sarcastic at the same time and help understand events of the era.

    Recited beautifully by Master Urdu Reciter Zia Mohyeddin

    https://www.thesufi.com/sufimusic/zia-mohyeddin-re ads-urdu-adab-prose/ghalib-kay-khatoot.html

  2. MQ says:

    Both Allah Wasaya’s translation in Punjabi and the Translator’s rendering in English are hilarious, even profound. I read these to a small informal gathering at our place (who get together once in a while to discuss a given poet and recite one or two of his poems). Today was Josh’s and Rahman Baba’s day, but at the end I read these two translations just for amusement. Both translations received a “standing ovation” from the group!

  3. Manzoor says:

    Owais Saheb,
    your copy of the poem does not includes two couplets of the poem before the last lines:
    Han bhala kar tera bhala hoga,
    aur dervish ki sada kia hai.
    Jan tum pay nisar karta hoon
    Main nehi janta ki dua kia hai.
    Do good and have good,
    What else an ascetic could ask for,
    My everything is for you
    Though i don’t know anything about prayers.

  4. Translator says:

    Thank you guys for appreciating my humble effort. I hope you do realize that this kind of praise can only encourage more of the same – breaking the legs of other classics, as the Urdu slang goes. Not a whole lot of good can come out of that :-)

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