Rasa Javidani
The Great Poet of the Small
Green Valley
Bhaderwah, well, when it is a lovely weather, warm and bright during
the day, it seems to penetrate into your body, by your eyes when you look and by
your mouth when you breathe. In the evenings the breezes lash the hilly slopes
with their short and fragrant waves, and the town of Bhaderwah, in the fold of
the green valley which slopes down to a river, lies apparelled in a magic green
colour and Nature is loaded with love. Men and women also feel the enormous
palpitation of love and life.
At the apex of the hill is a box-like small house which overlooks this enoch
arden. Here lived and worked and was inspired the great poet Abdul Qudoos Rasa
Javidani.
HIS LIFE
Rasa Javidani was an eminent poet who wrote both in Urdu and Kashmiri. He was
born in 1901 and died in 1979. Rasa belonged to a Muslim family which migrated
from village Kadipore in Anantnag tehsil, Kashmir to Bhaderwah, situated at a
distance of 200 km. from Jammu. His father Khawaja Munwar was a wealthy trader
and scholar who greatly influenced him.
He was admitted in a local school and also two tutors were selected to teach
him Persian, Arabic, Urdu and English at home. He passed his Middle examination
but could not pursue his studies, for there was no High School at that time in
Bhaderwah. But he privately passed the examination of Munshi Alim and Munshi
Fazil. He married in l9l2 at the age of eleven years. The great sorrow of his
life was his separation from his son, Khairat Ibne Rasa, who went to Pakistan by
about 1948 and settled down there and rose to be the Vice-Chancellor of the West
Punjab University.
Rasa, early in life, followed the trade of his father, which was quite
flourishing but in 1928 there was a great cloud burst and the whole town was
inundated with water and the destruction wrought by it caused great damage to
his property and business. It broke his heart but brought out the poet in him
and he wrote a poignant description of this catastrophe in his long poem Toofan
(The Storm). Later on his five shops were gutted by fire. Then he became a
forest contractor but his heart was not in this work and he suffered a great
loss. He was, therefore, compelled to take up the job of a humble teacher of
Urdu and Persian, which he continued to do till his retirement.
THE INFLUENCES
Two men left an indelible mark on his thought and life. In his early
childhood a Darvesh, named Nawab-ul-Din, came from Gurdaspur to Bhaderwah whose
lectures on spiritualism influenced him. The other was his teacher Ahmad Shah
Rafiqi, who inspired him by his knowledge. He studied deeply the poetry of Dag,
Zok, Ghalib, Momin and Romi, etc. In fact Ghalib's reflection is clearly found
in his poetry. In Kashmiri he owes his debt to Rasul Mir who became a sort of
mental commissar to him. He says:
His publications: The following are his important publications:
1. Toofan (long Urdu poem) published in 1928.
2. Lalai Sehra (Urdu) published in 1945.
3. Tofah Kashmir (collection of Kashmiri poems) published in 1945.
4. Nairangi Ghazal : (collection of Kashmiri poems) published in 1961.
5. Nazimi Surya (Urdu poems) with a foreword by Mohi-u-Din Zor.
Besides his poems appeared in Rattan, Jammu; Ranbir, Jammu; Muikhazan,
Lahore; Son Adab (1959-1963), Hamara Adab (1965).
English translation of his one poem is found in Kasheer (History of Kashmir)
by Dr. Mohi-u-Din Sufi and in Prof. J.L. Kaul's Kashmiri Lyrics (1945) and two
poems in Prof. T.N. Raina's An Anthology of Modern Kashmiri Verse (1972).
The poems of Rasa Javidani and critical essay on his poetry appeared in
special Rasa Javidani Number of Sheraza (Kashmiri and Urdu), Srinagar issued by
the Academy of Art, Culture and Languages on his death. These also contain some
elegies written by eminent men. A write-up by me on Rasa Javidani has also
appeared in the History of Indian Literature, published by the Sahitya Academy,
New Delhi.
URDU POETRY
Compared to his Kashmiri poetry not much efflorescence is found in his Urdu
one, though he sent his poems to Pt. Brij Mohan Datatriya Kaifi and got
instructions from him. He was in correspondence with Hafeez Jhalandari and
Seemab Akbarabadi, who admired and encouraged him. But in Kashmiri poetry he
flowered quickly.
His Urdu songs describe the beauty of Nature, its picturesque scenes. Some of
them are replete with human emotions and passions. His famous poems like Saharai
Phool, Bachpan ki yad, Kya Karun Sawan, Subhai-Zindgi, BarafBari, Khizan, Toofan,
Bete Din have an element of universality and the thoughts, emotions, sights and
scenes expressed therein are dear to every human being. His Urdu ghazals show
intense imagination and in them his intellectual and emotional experiences are
crystallized into simple yet sweet and passionate Urdu. In them love reigns
supreme, for example, one may give here the translation of few of the verses:
"She came not near me
yet I had a glimpse of her.
Thus she kindled the fire
Of love in my heart,
Which can never be extinguished;
It continues and consumes for ever".
Or
"I shall walk over the dust raised by your walk.
I am in quest of a remedy of love's agony
Let you be ever so faithless undaunted shall I
Work to win your love".
KASHMIRI POETRY
In 1938 he started writing poems in Kashmiri. At the Ziarat (shrine) of Shah
Asrar at Kishtwar, a song in Kashmiri in praise of the Divine came to his lips
of its own accord. Then there was no going back. Among the formative influences
in his work Rasul Mir stands prominent and it was from him that he caught the
first notes of his style that grew richer and maturer and became his own. Rasa
wrote only ghazals and short lyric poems.
Love is the quintessence of his Kashmiri poetry as well. Just as Keats feels
Beauty is Truth, Rasa believes Love is Truth and is what one needs to realise.
He recognises only the holiness ofthe heart's affections. In the following
ghazal he shows the power and the life-force of love. It is the English
rendering of the original:
"Your love in my heart stayed
Like a lotus in lake it blossomed
Come my Love, my shining sun;
Your light dispels the shadow of my sorrow.
Love alone brings splendour to the universe
And gives life to the whole earth;
Demolishes mountains and changes course of the waters;
What mortal is satisfied in the world?
Whose all the yearnings are satisfied?
Love blesses the work day world with glory and colour;
A master it is full of benevolence.
Wisdom caused Rasa to go astray
But clasped Love and lost not his way".
Thus Rasa glorifies love with all his fervour and feels that true path lies
in love. Rasa is fundamentally a romantic and predominantly talks of his
physical, human and earthly love but there are spots in his poetry where he
sings of spiritual love. He was a passionate lover and his poetry expresses
every shade of personal feeling and every fleeting insight. In most of his poems
the main interest is sensuous beauty. He sings in sensuous enthusiasm:
"Unweave thy plaits and loosen thy tresses
Be pillowed on my wounded breast.
In the tavern of love deep I drank
-n thy eyes as cups of wine moved round".
Then he recognises the power of beauty and is sometimes overwhelmed by it.
But when we contemplate his ghazals we find that there is a change of mood
from one couplet to another and from the passionate physical love to the love of
the Absolute. The element of reflection is found at many places. The following
verses express not only the emotions which the beauty of his beloved arouses but
also the thoughts of the Creator, He says:
"Often heart is charmed by your form and features Altogether the mind is
perplexed to see such aspect. This the copy of the Reality! If this the beauty
how about its Creator?"
Rasa loved Nature for its external loveliness and noted many varieties of
natural beauty. It is said, and Rasa himself has confirmed, that in the idyllic
surroundings of Bhaderwah he was under a strange spell of some ecstasy for days.
Did he have any spiritual experiences? The following lines do show his belief in
man's direct and unconditional relationship with God. Just as he surrendered his
self to his beloved he surrendered himself to God.
He said, "What have you to offer?"
"My youth", he replied.
"And what next?”
I said, "My life".
"What do you desire?"
"Only your grace, here and hereafter."
"I beseeched, "O, raise up your veil!"
"Can you bear it", He asked.
I said, "Surely" (like Moses on Mount Sinai), and I heard.
"A vain boast!"
The working on an inner light is evident, but the youthfulness of heart will
not allow the poet to entertain their exuberant fancies.
Rasa is baffled by the tragic mystery of the world and the time-old questions
like when we came and wherefore we have to go. He feels that we are helpless
before destiny about which we do not know anything. He writes pathetically:
"Why he departs, having born why he dies?
All this is not in man's grasp.
From the start he could care for the end;
At dawn he could know of the dusk;
Could he but read the Destiny's command;
All this is not in man's grasp".
In his poetry is found an element of apparent scepticism in the tradional
dogmas and he is critical:
Again:
"Where is thy light not seen?
May it be mosque, may it be temple?"
He rises above the distinctions of religion and the cry of his heart is:
"If the mosque causes quarrel, the temple conflict
Better to the tavern where the drunken drink
Together to love".
The poetry of Rasa is not manufactured by cold calculation. It is produced
almost involuntarily by him in a state of emotional tension. He himself was a
good singer and he has used sweet and sonorous words, and his poems abound in
his homely but startling phrases and imagery.
He had no interest in the socio-political upheaval of the state. He withdrew
himself within and created a world of his own. Thus, like all Romantics, Rasa is
a poet of escape; but the arts exist to provide an escape without which life
would be less tolerable than it is.
Rasa Javidani was elegant and graceful. In manners he was gentle and suave.
At the core Rasa Javidani was a man of the hills and mountains simple, candid,
patient, unselfish and devoted. It was a dreamer. To him a young girl of
Bhaderwah was a perfect type of a beautiful woman. Her simple beauty and the
charm of angelic modesty and the imperceptible smile which constantly hovered
about her lips, seemed to be the reflection of a pure and lovely soul. In his
poetry he intimately adored her. She was his obsession.
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