Dr. Habib Ur Rehman’s latest collection of Ghazal Mata-E-Zeest, is undoubtedly a welcome and remarkable addition to the amazingly rich repertoire of Urdu Ghazals. It is his fourth collection of poetry after three poetic collections_“Sada-E-Ishaq, Adab-E-Ishaq” and “Dasht-E-Tashngi”_have already established his credentials as an eminent poet in the highly competitive arena of Urdu Ghazal.
The poetic journey of Dr. Habib Ur Rehman that started from Sada-E-Ishq seems to have reached a high level of maturity and perfection both from technical as well as thematic standpoint. The credit goes to Dr. Habib for he has successfully blended the traditionalist and modernist elements of his poetic art by giving a contemporary relevance and significance to the conventional and stock themes of Urdu Ghazal. He is not only the inheritor of the centuries-old golden legacy of Urdu Ghazal, which started from Vali Dakkani in the 17th Century, but is also a denizen of the modern world, and is solidly anchored in the objective realities of our digitally advanced and post-modern globalized age.
Poetry is not just the spontaneous overflow of emotions, nor a mere mirror of life or a criticism and evaluation of it, but a very effective and powerful tool to transform the world through progressive and humanistic ideals of liberty, equality, justice, and the pursuit of happiness for everyone. These are different strands and colors of the rainbow that are reflected in the poetry of one kind or the other. But the distinguishing mark of the ghazal of Dr. Habib Ur Rehman is that all these different colors of the rainbow are creatively synthesized and juxtaposed to constitute the poetic universe of Dr. Habib ur Rehman’s Ghazal in Mata E Zeest. We don’t find in Mata E Zeest a mere reflection or a critical evaluation of life, but even an earnest desire on the part of the poet to reconstruct the world on humanitarian principles_the world which is plagued and demonized by the extremist and fundamentalist forces of one kind or the other. The forces which are symbolized by the conventional metaphors of Zahid_Shaikh (dogmatic priest),
Cruel mistress (a symbol of despotic authority), Rind or Maikush(a faithful lover or seeker of wine of beauty, truth, and justice), etc.
The theme of love has always been a fundamental and predominant theme of Urdu Ghazal, and every poet has treated it in his own unique and characteristic manner. The concept of love that we come across in Mata E Zeest is not merely limited to erotic physical love but is broad and catholic enough to embrace the spiritual, metaphysical, existential, as well as cultural, societal, and political dimensions of life. Like the English metaphysical poets, love, for Dr. Habib Ur Rehman, is both body and soul, and is the expression of complete human personality, and is also a great channel or creative principle to explore all complex and multidimensional aspects of human existence. And he is against all those evil and satanic forces that impede the expression of love and frustrate the realization of the ideal of self-fulfillment_the ideal which provides salvation and redemption for the suffering mankind.
Mata E Zeest is undeniably a marvel of Dr. Habib’s poetic genius, for he has given authenticity and universality to his emotional and subjective experiences by imaginatively re-enlivening the traditional symbols and metaphors and diction of Ghazal. The traditional metaphors like rose, nightingale, candle, flask, cup, shaikh, saki, muhtasib, zahid, dair, etc., are remodeled and reinterpreted to give them a topical significance and to make them acceptable to the modern reader. It can be said without any fear of contradiction that he has put a new and fresh wine of modern ideas into the old and conventional cup of Ghazal, and has allowed us to be completely identified with the emotional, intuitive, and transcendental experiences of the poet. Each and very word, metaphor, symbol, simile etc. used in the Mata e Zeest is a marvel of creative genius of Dr. Habib Ur Rehman and is traditional and modern at one and the same time, and has a great and amazing cathartic value as it provides a rich and lavish buffet of a unique poetic experience which is a source of ‘delightful instruction’_a hallmark of great art according to the great western critics_Aristotle and Philip Sydney in particular. Let us have a look at some of selective couplets from Mata e Zeest in order to appreciate their beauty and aesthetic brilliance:
