banner-frontier

Humra Quraishi’s Column

Mother Teresa....

Humra Quraishi

Foremost, with Christmas coming, I must start this week’s column with this absolutely significant relay by Mother Teresa–When Khushwant Singh had asked Mother Teresa: “Tell me how can you touch people with diseases like leprosy and gangrene? Aren’t you revolted by people filthy with dysentery and cholera vomit?’ She had replied very calmly along the strain that she sees Jesus in every human being—‘‘I see Jesus in every human being…”

Mother Teresa’s selfless-earnest devotion to any human being in deep distress, saved lives and provided anchorage, shelter and food to the countless. Salutes and salaams to the spirit with which the nuns tend to hundreds amongst us …right from looking after the ailing to manning orphanages and hospices to providing affordable education. Yet the anti-Christian violence is on, along the communal strain …writ large and out in the open, right from the time Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons were burnt to death in Orissa by the Bajrang Dal members, to incidents of mob violence and damage to churches and Christian schools and property…There’s that vicious propaganda unleashed by the Right-Wing that the Christian population is rising because of conversions but the reality is that the Christian population in India has actually gone down!

Zakir Hussain and Antonia…
I had met and interviewed tabla maestro, Ustad Zakir Hussain years back at a popular coffee café here in New Delhi. During that interview he spoke of his childhood and his parents and, of course, the classical musical strains... In between that interview there were numerous interruptions as he was getting that continuous flow of attention from his fans in that over-crowded joint. Several fans were asking for his autograph, some staring at his face, whilst others marvelling his performance at the just concluded ITC Sangeet Sammelan…Those interruptions irritated me but he looked quite at ease! Together with that trying to sound unaffected, “It’s you media people who have made me into some number one table player …I am just okay!”

He told me that his father UstadAllaRakha Qureshi, was the first from his family to have entered the classical musical world. The other family members were farmers in Pagwal in the Rattangarh district of Jammu and Kashmir …He’d also detailed he keeps a very frugal lifestyle “I live with very simple habits. Very simple food. No smoking or drinking for me.”

On the constant attention he gets from his fans he said that it doesn’t affect or distract him one bit, “Not of any significance. I have never had a relationship except with Antonia, whom I married …That was in 1978. It’s been a very happy marriage. We are getting along because we give each other space. You can marry a Muslim, Hindu, Christian or American; the important thing is that your souls should meet. That, according to me, is the most significant aspect to a marriage. If your souls meet then all goes okay.”

And with that he spoke in that ongoing way about his wife and how she decided to bypass her career as a Kathak dancer to look after their two daughters. “ She trained in Kathak here in Mumbai and though her stay in Mumbai would have been excellent for her dance career as her dance-guru is here in Mumbai but she decided to shift base to San Francisco because of our daughters’ education …I travel between San Francisco and Mumbai.”

Mirza Ghalib’s Day of Birth…
Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan was born in Agra on December 27, 1797. He used the pen name ‘Ghalib’ (the conqueror). When still very young he shifted to Delhi and during his stay in Delhi he witnessed turbulent times during the 1857 revolt and also the subsequent changes that followed, along the socio- political strain… Ghalib wrote the Diwan-e-Ghalib at his house in Old Delhi, Ghalibki Haveli, ( now a heritage site).And it’s in this haveli he spent the last years of his life till he died on February 15, 1869.He was buried close to the dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya and the grave of Amir Khusro.

This verse of Ghalib—from Khushwant Singh and Kamna Prasad’s volume–‘Celebrating the Best of Urdu Poetry (Penguin):

“Love gave me the lust for living–/
To ease my pain it gave me something for sure;/
It gave me such pain that nothing can cure.”

And also Ghalib’s this verse:
“To be united with my beloved was not writ in my fate/
Had I lived any longer, it would have been the same long wait/
I lived on your promises, I knew they were not true/
Would not I have died of joy had I believed in you?/
Ask my heart about the pain of love and it will tell you /
The half–drawn bow’s the assassin, not the arrow that pierces through/
The stone’s veins would burst and nothing would stem blood’s flow/
If these weren’t sparks of anger, but outpourings of my sorrow. /
To whom can I speak of sorrows that come with the fading of light/
Death would be welcome, if it did not stand at my door every night.”
******
And this verse from Ralph Russell’s–  A Thousand Yearnings: A Book of Urdu Poetry andProse. (Speaking Tiger Books). A remarkable book by a remarkable Urdu-lover–Ralph Russell.

Quoting these lines of Ghalib from this volume:

“You stand away, and purse your lips/
and show their rosebud form/
I said ‘How do you kiss?’ Come, kiss my lips and say ‘Like this!’’

Back to Home Page

Frontier
Vol 57, No. 28, Jan 5 - 11, 2025