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Siraj Aurangabadi was a famous mystic poet. He was born at Aurangabad Maharashtra, India. His full name was Siraj-ud-Din Aurangabadi. Along with Wali Dakhni, Siraj was the only other poet from Deccan to have left deep imprint on the tone and diction of Urdu. Influenced by famous Persian poets like Hafiz, Siraj gave ghazal a new orchestration of mystical experience. Hence his ghazals have two dimensional layers of meaning the mystical and metaphysical at one level, and secular and physical at another.

Given below is an excerpt from one of his well acclaimed poems:

Chali simt-e-ghaib se aik hava, ke chaman zahoor ka jal gaya
Magar aik shakh-e-nihal-e-gham, jise dil kahe so hari rahi,

Translation:
From the direction of the unknown arrived a gust of wind and blighted the garden of joy,
But a bough of the tree of sorrow, called heart, is green for evermore.

The reference here is to the lost Paradise, and the perennial quest to re-unite with it. The Divine breeze would burn the worldly existence leaving behind the hope for reunion. The worldly existence (chaman) has been likened to a tree of sorrow and suffering, and the Divine breeze as the liberator. Nothing grows on that tree except sadness, caused by the separation from his beloved. Now that entire existence is gone, only the abode of the beloved (heart) has survived.

Khabar-e-tahayyur-e-ishq sunn, na junoon raha na pari rahi
Na toh tu raha, na toh mein raha, jo rahi so be-khabari rahi

Translation:
Behold the wonderment of love, the madness of the fairy both vanished
You did not remain you, nor I, I. Only non awareness survived.
 
The consciousness of self is obstructive and it is only the removal of ‘knowledge’ and ‘thought’ (Rumi has used the words ‘thought’ and ‘knew’) that leads to the state of self-unconsciousness where the lover and the beloved become one.
 
 

This poem appears in the book ” River of Fire” written by renowned writer Qurratulain Hyder

 

 

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