Urdu Couplet Of The Day - 15

woh baat saare fasaane meiN jis ka zikr na tha

woh baat unko bahut nagawaar guzri hai

Faiz Ahmed ‘Faiz’ (1912-84)

वो बात सारे फ़साने में जिस का ज़िक्र ना था

वो बात उनको बहुत नागवार गुज़री है

फ़ैज़

Loosely paraphrased...

What found no mention in my entire story

Caused great offence to them...

This celebrated couplet from one of Faiz’s well-known Ghazals, alludes to the Lahore Conspiracy Case in which he was imprisoned on charges of treason, according to his close friend and co-accused in the case, poet, writer and one of the founders of the Progressive Writers’ Movement, Sajjad Zaheer. Faiz’s second anthology, dast-e-saba comprises nazms and Ghazals written in jail. In this shair, he refers obliquely to the trumped up charges of sedition against him.

Seen in another light, devoid of the political context (which not all readers may be familiar with), the shair could be interpreted as a description of the reaction of the beloved to something which was never stated.

Another famous shair from the Ghazal goes:

na gul khile haiN, na unse milay, na mai pi hai

ajeeb rang meiN ab ke bahaar guzri hai

Faiz Ahmed 'Faiz' is considered the most pre-eminent poet among the leading lights of the Progressive Writers' Movement. One of the founders of the pathbreaking leftist writers' movement, Faiz, has inspired a generation of writers and poets from the time his first collection of verses was published in early 40s (naqsh-e-fariyaadi) . The distinctive quality of Faiz's work is that while he is a classicist in his diction, he uses romantic expressions to applying them revolutionary themes.

Also Read: Urdu Couplet Of The Day - 14