NAFEEZ O NASTALIKH

NAFEEZ O NASTALIKH
10 october 2006

this is one of our institute director’s favorite phrases. it means basically delicacy and sophistication, or gentility and nobility, or something like that, and it’s supposed to sum up her goals for our Urdu. aapka khubsurat tehzib ka tasharif laie, akhlaqi tarbiyet sabse ahm hain, blah blah blah. afficionadoes of Urdu literature tend to venerate the highly refined culture of the Mughal and Nawabi era, especially the art of the ghazal-- i’ve even heard people spouting couplets at each other in daily life, drawing on their repertoires for one apropos for any occasion. “do you have a shair[couplet] for this?” at this point i’m less concerned with that than with being humanly functional.

aside from the great mystical and/or courtly poets, the other main thing that Urdu lit scholars tend to be into is the Progressive Writers Movement of the 1930s-60s, who were avid anti-imperialists and anti-capitalists, and aimed to make relevant literature For The People by exchanging couplets about the Beloved and the moth and the flame and the moon for couplets about the Dawn of Revolution and red flags and oppressed masses. actually there’s still a lot of continuity here, it’s just a newly manifest flame for the impassioned moth. the Beloved is now the People, and the ecstasy of the sacred union is to be sought within the Revolution itself. as you can probably guess, i’m kind of a sucker for the Progressive Writers.

but, back to the culture of old Lucknow:
we met the Nawab, who’s a friendly fellow with a polished-looking bald pate and a clear and melliflous voice. he gave a talk on Lucknavi history and culture at our institute and answered questions about the Life of a Nawab Today [which i’m still not quite clear on, though he he doesn’t seem like too much of a threat as a Semi-Feudal Class Enemy.] then later in the week he received us in a room of his house crammed with artifacts and mementos, chandeliers, platters, urns, ivory letter openers, antique vessels and implements, commemorative plaques, pictures of him with notables, etc. he offered us bananas, namkeen and paan rolled in little brass cones, and told a rambling anecdote involving a camel, urination, and some lost pantaloons. it was difficult to know how to react-- even if you’re sure you really understad the words, which is not 100% certain, do you laugh at the dirty jokes of such a personage or maintain respectful quiet? he also passed out his business card which bore the emblem of the two fish that symbolize the old kingdom of Avadh (they look kind of like dragonish dolphins) and his hotmail account.

we also heard an excellent qawwali performance and visited the Bara Imambara, which was built by Nawab Asif Ud-Daula back when Nawabs ruled things and had things built and played power games with the Mughals and the East India Company. it’s next to a handsome mosque which he also built to compete with the mosque across the way which was Aurangzeb's; one is Sunni and the other Shia. inside the imambara it's all cavernous mint-green halls, and outside it bears signs that say things like “This is your ancestral and cultural heritage. Kindly do not insult it by spitting.” [or in Hindi more explicitly, “Paan thuk kar, gande mat karo”] and “Spreading filth is the work of animals. We are humans.” [“Gande phailana janvari ka kam hai. Ham insaan.”] the highlight of the place for me was the labyrinth of stairs and tunnels above the main halls, that give access to little galleries and alcoves overlooking the interior from the edge of the ceiling domes, as well as onto the roof, where there are panoramic views all the important domes and spires of the city. some turns lead up, some down, some inward into pitch darkness, some outward to airy arches. wandering through it you feel like you’re inside an Escher drawing.

i’ve also experienced a couple of other aspects of Old Lucknow, directly from our very own rooftop: kibootar-bazi and patang-bazi. this means the afficionado-ship of pigeons and kites, respectively. kites are still a big thing; most days if you look up in the sky you’ll see a flock of them, dipping and spinning like birds, handkerchiefs, manta rays. i’ve seen kids standing right in the edge of the traffic flying kites, since you don’t have to run to get them aloft, just do a special kind of jerking motion with the string which seems to be much harder than it looks. these are pretty much the same type of kites that you would use for kite battles during the appropriate festival, but i hear they outlawed the fighting strings, at least in Pakistan, because they’re coated in glass for cutting other strings and too many people were getting badly hurt.

there’s a guy who hangs out on the rooftop adjacent to ours who’s really good at it. our household has not yet mastered the art of launching, despite the neighbor guy throwing one over for us to use and demonstrating his technique. he also has lovely white or white-and-gray-spotted pigeons up there, and he can control their flight patterns, their wheelings and landings, through whispery hisses and arm signals. it’s pretty amazing. in the old days they used the pigeons for fighting too, and also for sending messages.

and the final cultural activity: cricket. i hate cricket. there, i said it. and yes, i am an apostate and plainly not a real South Asian. [why doesn’t anyone here like soccer?] the Institute has been closing early during the month of Ramadan, during which there’s a hiatus on guest speakers and special field trips. so what’s been happening instead is that after lunch, the teachers and students play thrilling cricket in the driveway. since hand-eye coordination has never been one of my skills and swinging at a ball gives me too many unpleasant flashbacks to grade school gym class, i kept refusing to play; though i did offer my services as a wall-scaler, ledge-reacher and stray-ball-chaser, which are things i’m good at, until the guard at the neighboring apartment building got upset with me. so then i began to serve as half a player-- namely, the bottom half. some batters had been recently sick and didn’t want to run, whereas i love to run and didn’t want to bat, so i became their surrogate legs. this seemed to be a mutually satisfactory system. but i still don’t understand the rules, the scoring, or the general appeal. give me soccer any day.