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Back to the panghat ways!
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The just-concluded "Jahan-e-Khusrau" sways R.V. Smith to do away with the dust on his Sufi memoirs
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Hearing Abida Parveen, the Rumi group of Iran and the Uzbeks at the Jahan-e-Khusrau festival transported one into mystic regions. The Pakistani singer was the queen-bee, from whose lips flowed a torrent of sufiana kalam in a majestic voice that matched both the subject and the occasion. If one closed one's eyes, one could have easily associated the singer and the song with medieval times.
The Rumi group too was impressive, and so also Yulchieva Munozhat and her Uzbek accompanists. A voice like Munozhat's must have charmed the early Moghuls when there were Uzbek chiefs and begums in Delhi, some of whom had accompanied Babur on his conquest of Hindustan while others came later. The women, of course, sang in the harem not only in Delhi but in Agra and later Fatehpur Sikri too. But now times have changed.
In the days of the Delhi Sultanate, when Khusrau flourished, sufiana kalam merged with the qawwali introduced by the Tooti-e-Hind, as he has come to be known. From that period (700 years ago) we trace the origin of the qawwali and mushaira in India. Khusrau had other interests too. He was an avid traveller who described in verse all that he saw in city, temple, mosque and village. The "saucy beauties" of Delhi, he has observed, go about with "roguishly placed turbans awry on their heads".
Teasing solution
In the countryside he found the "goris" (damsels) at the village well and engaged them in conversation, part amorous, and part intellectual and witty. He asked them riddles and teased their curiosity till they gave him a drink of water and a plate of kheer to hear the solution. Not only that, Khusrau sat down under a tree and seeing them draw water from the well, was inspired to write his verse loaded with the rural dialect.
"Badi kathin hai dagar panghat ki", he wrote as he saw the "goris" labouring hard to fill up their pitchers and utensils and then carrying them delicately balanced on head or hip to their thatched homes. Those who have had the good fortune of hearing the panghat lines sung by the late Habib Painter will testify to their intensity of thought and lyrical beauty. But back to Sufism, it is a branch of mysticism just like Tantra. It was Omar Khayyam who observed: "Though wine is forbidden, this is/According to who drinks it/As to how much/Also with whom it is drunk." The translation is not from Edward Fitzgerald but from Swami Govinda Tirtha, who published it in 1941 under the titled Nectar of Grace. The wine, of course, is the love of God.
The sufi search is for the Insan-al-Kamil or the perfect man. It started in the formative years of Islam and found such exponents as Sheikh Abu Kufa, Bu Ali Qalandar, Farid-ud-din Attar, Ibn-al-Arabi, Hafiz Shirazi, Rumi, Karim-al-Juli, Khayyam, Sadi, Moinuddin Chishti, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, Baba Farid, Nizamuddin Aulia, Jami, Sanai and Sarmad, among others of note and fame.
Farid-ud-din was rediscovered by Bankey Bihari, who published 62 selections from his book, Memorials of the Saints in 1961. Farid also wrote "Divine Book", "Parliament of Birds" and "Book of Counsel". Hafiz Shirazi's advent (1300-1388) saw erotic mysticism at its acme.
He visualised a beloved God as the saqi who offered cups of divine wine through his eyes.
However, there were Sufis who lifted up the 70,000 veils of light and darkness (sic) that covered the Almighty and saw God not as a vintner, who served vintage according to the capacity of the seeker but one to be sought at all the five watches of the night. "The sanctuary is in front of you and the thief is behind you if you go on/you will win, if you sleep you die," was the dictum of Sheikh Said in his gulistan or rose garden.
Some surely must have been drawn into this trend of thought during or after Jahan-e-Khusrau - a good opportunity to recall the many-faceted personality of a genius who still continues to be viewed with awe and wonder.
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