Abdaal Akhtar

Raag Puriya Dhanashree is dusk in sound form. It’s also the raag of deferred heartbreak. Click play on Farida Khanum singing Faiz in Puriya Dhanashree and you’re undone. At roughly the three-quarter mark in the ghazal, at 7.09 minutes, is a sher that pulls off in two lines what English poets needed entire careers to approximate. करो कज जबीं पे सर-ए-कफ़न मेरे क़ातिलों को गुमाँ न हो कि ग़ुरूर-ए-इश्क़ का बाँकपन पस-ए-मर्ग हम ने भुला दिया कज crooked, जबीं forehead, पस-ए-मर्ग after death The fulcrum of the sher is the word बाँकपन. Baankpan can’t be translated. It isn’t charm, or swagger. It’s the art of looking like you weren’t trying to look that good, and the arithmetic of knowing exactly how goodlooking you are. It’s a glance held just long enough to scandalise the air. This is my stab at translating the sher. It took a couple of extra lines and some garnish around the baankpan to recreate the emotional temperature. Don’t @ me: I don’t have Faiz’s gift for compression. When he tightens a line, it sings. When I do, it wheezes. Set my shroud at an angle. Drape it over the brow the way I would tilt my cap. Let my killers see: I died defiant, and not without flair. I didn’t fold. I posed. It was the only way to wear a head. The proud, slant grace of love is mine in death, as it was before.