AajTak New Delhi Literature 2024: On the second day of Sahitya Aaj Tak 2024, the Mahakumbh of songs, music and literature, a music session was organized on Saturday evening, called Mahafil Love, Loss and Longing – The Delhi Poets. In this, singer Vidya Shah lent her voice to the creations of those poets and ghazal writers of Delhi, while Chandrashekhar of her team presented the untold stories of Amir Khusro and other poets of his time.
Vidya started like this after coming on stage. He said it this afternoon on behalf of this city. We all live in Delhi. We love Delhi too. Sometimes they even get angry, like traffic etc. Today I will try to present the history of Delhi through music and history.
Vidya started the show with a song by Amir Khusro. With his melodious throat and instrument, he presented the song of Khusro with a very beautiful voice.
Jo Jaagi from Khusro Rain Suhaag with Pi…
My body and mind are Pihu, that’s why there are two colors of one color.
Aaj rang hai ri ma rang hai ri… My beloved’s house rang hai ri…
The language learned on the stairs of Jama Masjid
As soon as Vidya’s song was over, Chandrashekhar spoke of those days when Hindi was becoming a language. He said that in the 18th century many Delhi poets had come out of Delhi. One of them was Mir Taqi Mir. He mocked the Lucknow dialect and said: The language is that which is learned on the steps of Jama Masjid, what will you say?
Is Lashkari the language of Delhi?
Chandrashekhar further said that it was the year 1802, there was a gentleman named Mir Ahmed, who published a book in Calcutta, whose name was Bagh-o-Bahar. This book was a translation of the stories written by Khusro into Urdu. This book was in colloquial Urdu. A line was written in the preface of this book: The language of Delhi is Lashkari. That means it is a language created by the market. One language came from one place, another from another place and both together became a third language.
‘Languages leave their mark on each other, they do not create new languages’
Linguists say that the union of two languages does not form a new language. In reality, there is a language, there is the influence of another language on it. Recently some people told me that one-sixth of Bengali is made up of Arabic, Persian and Urdu. I am from Kerala, where until a few days ago I was called Huzoor Kachari.
When the people of Lucknow said where is the decorum in the language of Delhi…
Now the people of Lucknow got angry because of that line from the same book of Mir Ahmed and said that we have already said that the language of Delhi is Lashkari. Where is the decorum and elegance in this? Brother, we were not talking about Delhi language, we were talking about Delhi Hindi, which we know today as Urdu. When Mir was in Delhi, that language was not called Urdu, why? When Shahjahan colonized Delhi, Delhi was settled around the fort. The fort was called Urdu-e-Mohalla-e-Shahjahanabad. For this reason, the language spoken inside the fort was called Zaban-e-Mohalla-e-Shahjahanabad and that language was Persian.
How did Khusro come to Delhi?
Then there was the ordinary girl that was talked about on the streets. People called him Hindi, Hindavi, Dehalvi. In the middle of the 13th century, a boy arrives from Etah and is taken to Nizamuddin Auliya. That boy says I will become his follower. If you answer my question. After this he became her admirer. For this reason Khusro always talked about Ishq Haqiqi.
Vidya said that the topic that Amir Khusro used to address had a feminist angle. Now the next thing is about Ishq where he presents a song as a woman.
Whatever the woman of the house says…
I looked at the Nizam…
The melody he sang was the language of Delhi. When poetry began to be composed in this language, it was the language of the common people, so everyone began to write poetry in it. Rich, poor, old, women, they all became poets in this language. Along with colloquial language, all the emotions of common people also began to appear in these poems. This language gradually reached Deccan and was adapted there. Quli Qutub Shah, Seraj Aurangabadi, Wali Aurangabadi and many other poets were born in Deccan. Later when these people came to Delhi, the people of Delhi were surprised that such poetry could be composed in our language even without Persian.
Meanwhile, Vidya gave voice to a poetry by Quli Qutub Shah in a very melodious voice.
Piyabaaz pyala piya jaaye na… Piyabaaz waktil jiya jaaye na…
It is said that a similar tragedy occurred in Amir Khusro’s life, which is why he started writing poetry. He was the first poet to write his own autobiography.
