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Gulzar's Mirza Ghalib
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Khalid Siddiqui
May 2, 2021, 10:13:16 PM5/2/21
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Aadaab:
chipak rahā hai badan par lahū se pairāhan
hamāre jaib ko ab hājat-e-rafū kyā hai
Collage (کولاژ) , an Urdu magazine edited by Iqbal Nazar used to be published from Karachi, but I am not sure about the situation now. Anyway, in 2014 they decided to have the whole issue dedicated to Gulzar. The editor requested my friend Dr. Sohail Maqbool to write something about Gulzar's movie on Mirza Ghalib. He reluctantly agreed, but finally wrote a 15-page well-referenced essay on the movie. He criticized the poor rendition of the second line of the above verse by Jagjit Singh. He pointed out three pronunciation mistakes. The first one was that instead on hamare he sang hamari. The second was that Jagjit Singh sang the second word as jaib (meaning pocket), although the correct pronunciation of that Persian word is jab meaning graibaan and not pocket. The third was that he sang hajit instead of hajat. The essay was read by Gulzar. He got Sohail's telephone number from the editor and called him in the USA. He gracefully acknowledged Sohail's honest comments.
I thought I would share this story with ALUP.
Best wishes.
Khalid
chipak rahā hai badan par lahū se pairāhan
hamāre jaib ko ab hājat-e-rafū kyā hai
Collage (کولاژ) , an Urdu magazine edited by Iqbal Nazar used to be published from Karachi, but I am not sure about the situation now. Anyway, in 2014 they decided to have the whole issue dedicated to Gulzar. The editor requested my friend Dr. Sohail Maqbool to write something about Gulzar's movie on Mirza Ghalib. He reluctantly agreed, but finally wrote a 15-page well-referenced essay on the movie. He criticized the poor rendition of the second line of the above verse by Jagjit Singh. He pointed out three pronunciation mistakes. The first one was that instead on hamare he sang hamari. The second was that Jagjit Singh sang the second word as jaib (meaning pocket), although the correct pronunciation of that Persian word is jab meaning graibaan and not pocket. The third was that he sang hajit instead of hajat. The essay was read by Gulzar. He got Sohail's telephone number from the editor and called him in the USA. He gracefully acknowledged Sohail's honest comments.
I thought I would share this story with ALUP.
Best wishes.
Khalid
Zoya
May 2, 2021, 11:34:39 PM5/2/21
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aadaab,
Thank you so much for sharing this story. Very interesting. Only someone as learned as your friend Dr Maqbool could have picked up on such errors, and it is indeed gracious of Gulzar sahib to acknowledge them.
One thing I would like to add, in the serial Mirza Ghalib, this particular ghazal is actually sung by three singers. Only the matla'a and one she'r is in Jagjit Singh's voice, the rest of the asha'ar are sung by Vinod Sehgal and Chitra Singh.
The particular she'r that you have referred to is actually in Vinod Sehgal's voice. However, I totally agree that either Jagjit Singh as the composer, Gulzar Sahib as the director, or perhaps even Naseeruddin Shah playing Ghalib in this series should have picked up on these mistakes while recording/filming this ghazal. All three have very high individual work ethics and standards which make such errors even more glaring.
Regards,
_______Zoya
Naseer
May 3, 2021, 12:02:10 AM5/3/21
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I am surprised that Dr. Sohail Maqbool SaaHib just found these three mispronunciations! There are bound to be a few more, in such a lengthy serial. Besides this, in addition to any such pronunciation errors, there would be other positive and negative aspects of the production that he could have cited. I know some people, for example, were n't too happy for various reasons with the choice of Naseeruddin Shah to play the role of Mirza Ghalib.
Here is the Ghazal in question from the play.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApCwxCxX_BI&ab_channel=SonuTiwari
I am not a great fan of the late Jagjit Singh but I do believe only the recitation part was sung by him. The singing part seems to have been rendered by someone else.
"jaib" indeed ought to have been pronounced as "jaib" and not "jeb". For "Haajat", I would give the singer the benefit of the doubt. But, he is pronouncing "qaa'il" to rhyme with saa'il as qaayal rhyming with ghaayal, which is clearly wrong.
"jaib" in the sense of "giriibaan/girebaan" is masculine whereas "jeb" (pocket) is considered as "feminine. Therefore, one should have "hamaare" and not "hamaarii". Dr. Maqbool is right on this count. For some reason Platts only gives jaib/jeb to be feminine but there is a sanad from Miir that "jaib" is masculine.
Naseer
Naseer
May 3, 2021, 10:30:09 AM5/3/21
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I have managed to find the article Khalid SaaHib has brought to our notice. It was in fact published in the 2015 "KolaaZ" shumaarah no. 5 (all the 574 pages devoted to Gulzar), the title being "baar-i-Ghalib aur Gulzar". It is on page148 and stretches to page no. 167. Mirza Ghalib is Dr. Sohail Maqbool's favourite poet.
https://www.rekhta.org/ebooks/kolaz-shumara-number-005-iqbal-nazar-magazines
It is indeed a very well researched and written article concerning not only Gulzar's Mirza Ghalib serial (1988) but also, taking into account Afzal SaaHib's "favourite pastime", has a lengthy piece devoted to Sohrab Modi's 1954 film "Mirza Ghalib". He states that had Gulzar included a "disclaimer" for his serial that it is not meant to be an accurate depiction of Ghalib's life, he would not have put pen to paper.
Dr. Sohail Maqbool SaaHib not only mentions "pronunication" errors in the article but also Urdu idiom (e.g. "paa'oN se sar ke taaluu tak") and historical inaccuracies (e.g Ghalib is shown speaking Bengali whereas he did not know any Bengali). In addition to the words that Khalid SaaHib has mentioned, Sohail SaaHib mentions the following...
safaal for the correct sifaal
muqarrar for mukarrar
jalaa-vatan for jilaa-vatan (Well, here both Urdu Lughat and Platts are in agreement with Gulzar)
The article does say some very positive things about Gulzar too. Towards the end, Gulzar's short stories are discussed in glowing terms.
Naseer
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Khalid Siddiqui
May 3, 2021, 9:15:34 PM5/3/21
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If you are interested then you should read his two other articles:
1. Dagar se zara haT kar in the 3rd edition of the same magazine from 2013 and
2. Ainie aur Ainie shahid in the 4th edition of the same magazine from 2014.
Best wishes.
Khalid
Naseer
May 5, 2021, 7:14:34 AM5/5/21
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Naseer
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