Doordarshan, our beloved national television network, once made a mini-series on Mirza Ghalib. While some of you remember it fondly, there will be some who were too young at the time to recall Naseeruddin Shah who played the role of Mirza Ghalib so deftly too. And for those of you who remember (as this artform is so definitive of our culture), Naseeruddin Shah played the role like as if he was the man himself, down to perfection! However, they have been a part of India’s rich cultural history (regardless of whether they were produced for television or not) since the 12th century bearing a strong connection to Sufism, the existential symbol of Islamic Mysticism. (The late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan also known as the Emperor of Quawwali brings back amazing memories of the Sufi style of singing with ‘Jhule Jhule Lal Dam Mast Kalandhar’ and ‘Afreen’.) Here’s an old favorite titled ‘Afreen’ featuring the upcoming model at that time, Lisa Ray: So what is a ghazal? Is it what Jagjit and Pankaj Udhas sing? Yes, of course. But Ghazals have not necessarily been presented musically always. In its original form, as depicted by Naseeruddin Shah in ‘Mirza Ghalib’, it is presented in the form of poetry focusing solely on the subject of illicit unattainable love. Yet due to its Sufi influences, it might even touch on the subject of ‘higher love’ for God or a higher being. If you haven’t noticed, a ghazal written in its truest sense is actually written in ‘glorification of pain and separation from a lover’ and is presented from the point-of-view of the person who has suffered this loss who fully knows that in expressing his/ her love through poetry isn’t going to change the fact that he won’t find love in the manner that he desires from the object of his affection. Alcohol and ghazals, atleast in my observation, are very closely connected in some cases yet might not necessarily be the subject unless it is a substitute for the love that the poet wants to experience yet knowing that he will never be able to find that kind of love. Here’s a ghazal by ‘Pankaj Udhas’ titled “Sharab cheez hi aisee”: Ghazals are actually written with guidelines that are rigid in structure consisting of couplets (two lines of verse) that have to rhyme as well as must follow the same meter. (What meter means is that, the amount of time taken to complete each line should be the same along keeping in the mind the pauses in between the words and the stress on particular words to emphasize and convey the idea behind.) Due to its popularity today, ghazals are not only written in Persian and Urdu but in many other languages such as Turkish, Arabic, Kashmiri and even Indian languages such as Gujrati. The earliest ghazals were written by Persian mystics and poets such as Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (13th century) and Hafez (14th century). The Azeri poet Fuzuli (16th century), Mirza Ghalib (1797–1869) and Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938) wrote ghazals in both Persian and Urdu. To say that these names are but a drop in the ocean is putting it lightly in reference to an artform that has been deemed an integral part of Indian culture for a long time now, and one that will never die.