By Mohammed Wajihuddin - The Times of India - India
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Ziauddin Shakeb was horrified when he recently read a Rumi couplet translated thus: "She came to my bedroom and I tore apart her blouse."
"Rumi was a poet of love, not sex," protests the senior Hyderabad scholar. "I don't mind if Rumi is used in heavy metal as long as he is not distorted."
Crude and inaccurate translations are perhaps inevitable when a poet become popular.
Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) has never wanted for followers and UNESCO's announcing of 2007 as the 'International Year of Rumi' has only fuelled the global interest in the mystic poet who once clung to a pole outside his house, dancing in divine ecstasy.
So what is it about Rumi? What makes him the darling of the seminar and lecture circuit, of Sufi dilettantes and secular gatherings?
"Most Sufi poets sound plaintive while Rumi is essentially cheerful and doesn't complain," says Sabr Havewalla who taught Persian at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi before returning to Mumbai last year.
A young Sabr first read Rumi at St Xavier's College, and fell in love. "Our Persian teacher M. K. Kamran would make Rumi come alive in classroom. The fascination has never flagged," recalls the gentle Parsi who is keen to point out that Rumi was influenced by many sources including the stories in the Panchtantra.
When the Mumbai-born, San Francisco-based activist Shahnaz Taplin held her wedding reception at Devigarh in Udaipur last year, she hired ghazal singer Rita Ganguly to present Rumi. "His poetry is characterised by both a raw sensuality and spirituality.
He addresses the mundane and the sublime," writes Shahnaz in an e-mail interview. In India, Rumi, like Kabir and Meerabai, is loved by those of every creed.
The popular television dharm guru Asaram Bapu is a big fan of Rumi, and an even more famous one is the best-selling retailer of spirituality, Deepak Chopra. "Reading Rumi, a chill runs up your spine because you have the uncanny feeling that you have been where he is," says Chopra in his best-selling book, The Soul in Love.
"No poet is more intimate than Rumi, no lover more crazed, no saint more innocent."
It is this unique intimacy that drew the Mumbai-based Sanskrit scholar S A Upadhyay to Rumi. "I read a few poems in translation and was mesmerised," says Upadhyay.
Film-maker Muzaffar Ali, best known for Umrao Jaan, has carried Rumi in his heart for years. "Everything about him is spiritually elevating. The concept of dancing dervishes is actually a way of total submission to the creator. His 4,50,00 couplets just boggles the mind. Only a blessed soul could have achieved that," raves Ali, who is making a film on the poet and who edits a journal called Hu (a Sufi invocation).
It was to Rumi that a terror-torn America turned after the September 11 attacks. Overnight, as sales of the Bible and Koran rose simultaneously, Rumi became the fastest-selling poet in the US. It was like a desperate attempt to understand or make sense of the changed world.
It was thanks mainly to one man that the 13th-century Persian mystic was accessible to the US readership. In 1976, the famous poet Robert Bly had handed Barks a stilted translation of Rumi with the words "Release them from their scholarly cages".
Barks went on to create one of the most finest translations of Rumi, encapsulating the spirit and humour of the original.
Another American of Turkish origin, Dr Nevit Ergin, has made a career of Rumi. The globe-trotting Sufi preacher, on an invitation by American Consulate, is delivering lectures in Mumbai and Indore next week.
Indoctrinated into the mystical path by wandering dervish Shams Tabriz, Rumi tributed his mentor with lyrical poems captured in his famous book, Divan Shams Tabrizi. Rumi was so in awe of his guru that he once said, "I won't try to talk about Shams. Language cannot touch that presence."
Undoubtedly, Shams's best gift to his illustrious disciple was Sema or the whirling ceremony. And nobody performs it better than the dervishes from Konya (Turkey) where Rumi is entombed in a massive mausoleum which also houses a mosque, a dance hall and the tombs of leaders of the Mevlevi order.
"Rumi is a great lover of divine truth and dancing dervishes actually help you get closer to that truth," says the Turkish cultural ambassador M Ali Seker, whose organisation Indialogue Foundation is holding a Sema concert in Mumbai next month.
It's a Rumi party and everyone's invited. As the master himself would have said:
Come, come again, whoever your are, come!
Heathen, fire worshipper or idolatrous, come!
Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times,
Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
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Sunday, November 04, 2007
So What Is it about Rumi?
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Ziauddin Shakeb was horrified when he recently read a Rumi couplet translated thus: "She came to my bedroom and I tore apart her blouse."
"Rumi was a poet of love, not sex," protests the senior Hyderabad scholar. "I don't mind if Rumi is used in heavy metal as long as he is not distorted."
Crude and inaccurate translations are perhaps inevitable when a poet become popular.
Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) has never wanted for followers and UNESCO's announcing of 2007 as the 'International Year of Rumi' has only fuelled the global interest in the mystic poet who once clung to a pole outside his house, dancing in divine ecstasy.
So what is it about Rumi? What makes him the darling of the seminar and lecture circuit, of Sufi dilettantes and secular gatherings?
"Most Sufi poets sound plaintive while Rumi is essentially cheerful and doesn't complain," says Sabr Havewalla who taught Persian at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi before returning to Mumbai last year.
A young Sabr first read Rumi at St Xavier's College, and fell in love. "Our Persian teacher M. K. Kamran would make Rumi come alive in classroom. The fascination has never flagged," recalls the gentle Parsi who is keen to point out that Rumi was influenced by many sources including the stories in the Panchtantra.
When the Mumbai-born, San Francisco-based activist Shahnaz Taplin held her wedding reception at Devigarh in Udaipur last year, she hired ghazal singer Rita Ganguly to present Rumi. "His poetry is characterised by both a raw sensuality and spirituality.
He addresses the mundane and the sublime," writes Shahnaz in an e-mail interview. In India, Rumi, like Kabir and Meerabai, is loved by those of every creed.
The popular television dharm guru Asaram Bapu is a big fan of Rumi, and an even more famous one is the best-selling retailer of spirituality, Deepak Chopra. "Reading Rumi, a chill runs up your spine because you have the uncanny feeling that you have been where he is," says Chopra in his best-selling book, The Soul in Love.
"No poet is more intimate than Rumi, no lover more crazed, no saint more innocent."
It is this unique intimacy that drew the Mumbai-based Sanskrit scholar S A Upadhyay to Rumi. "I read a few poems in translation and was mesmerised," says Upadhyay.
Film-maker Muzaffar Ali, best known for Umrao Jaan, has carried Rumi in his heart for years. "Everything about him is spiritually elevating. The concept of dancing dervishes is actually a way of total submission to the creator. His 4,50,00 couplets just boggles the mind. Only a blessed soul could have achieved that," raves Ali, who is making a film on the poet and who edits a journal called Hu (a Sufi invocation).
It was to Rumi that a terror-torn America turned after the September 11 attacks. Overnight, as sales of the Bible and Koran rose simultaneously, Rumi became the fastest-selling poet in the US. It was like a desperate attempt to understand or make sense of the changed world.
It was thanks mainly to one man that the 13th-century Persian mystic was accessible to the US readership. In 1976, the famous poet Robert Bly had handed Barks a stilted translation of Rumi with the words "Release them from their scholarly cages".
Barks went on to create one of the most finest translations of Rumi, encapsulating the spirit and humour of the original.
Another American of Turkish origin, Dr Nevit Ergin, has made a career of Rumi. The globe-trotting Sufi preacher, on an invitation by American Consulate, is delivering lectures in Mumbai and Indore next week.
Indoctrinated into the mystical path by wandering dervish Shams Tabriz, Rumi tributed his mentor with lyrical poems captured in his famous book, Divan Shams Tabrizi. Rumi was so in awe of his guru that he once said, "I won't try to talk about Shams. Language cannot touch that presence."
Undoubtedly, Shams's best gift to his illustrious disciple was Sema or the whirling ceremony. And nobody performs it better than the dervishes from Konya (Turkey) where Rumi is entombed in a massive mausoleum which also houses a mosque, a dance hall and the tombs of leaders of the Mevlevi order.
"Rumi is a great lover of divine truth and dancing dervishes actually help you get closer to that truth," says the Turkish cultural ambassador M Ali Seker, whose organisation Indialogue Foundation is holding a Sema concert in Mumbai next month.
It's a Rumi party and everyone's invited. As the master himself would have said:
Come, come again, whoever your are, come!
Heathen, fire worshipper or idolatrous, come!
Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times,
Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are.
Labels:
poetry
By Mohammed Wajihuddin - The Times of India - IndiaSaturday, November 3, 2007
Ziauddin Shakeb was horrified when he recently read a Rumi couplet translated thus: "She came to my bedroom and I tore apart her blouse."
"Rumi was a poet of love, not sex," protests the senior Hyderabad scholar. "I don't mind if Rumi is used in heavy metal as long as he is not distorted."
Crude and inaccurate translations are perhaps inevitable when a poet become popular.
Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) has never wanted for followers and UNESCO's announcing of 2007 as the 'International Year of Rumi' has only fuelled the global interest in the mystic poet who once clung to a pole outside his house, dancing in divine ecstasy.
So what is it about Rumi? What makes him the darling of the seminar and lecture circuit, of Sufi dilettantes and secular gatherings?
"Most Sufi poets sound plaintive while Rumi is essentially cheerful and doesn't complain," says Sabr Havewalla who taught Persian at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi before returning to Mumbai last year.
A young Sabr first read Rumi at St Xavier's College, and fell in love. "Our Persian teacher M. K. Kamran would make Rumi come alive in classroom. The fascination has never flagged," recalls the gentle Parsi who is keen to point out that Rumi was influenced by many sources including the stories in the Panchtantra.
When the Mumbai-born, San Francisco-based activist Shahnaz Taplin held her wedding reception at Devigarh in Udaipur last year, she hired ghazal singer Rita Ganguly to present Rumi. "His poetry is characterised by both a raw sensuality and spirituality.
He addresses the mundane and the sublime," writes Shahnaz in an e-mail interview. In India, Rumi, like Kabir and Meerabai, is loved by those of every creed.
The popular television dharm guru Asaram Bapu is a big fan of Rumi, and an even more famous one is the best-selling retailer of spirituality, Deepak Chopra. "Reading Rumi, a chill runs up your spine because you have the uncanny feeling that you have been where he is," says Chopra in his best-selling book, The Soul in Love.
"No poet is more intimate than Rumi, no lover more crazed, no saint more innocent."
It is this unique intimacy that drew the Mumbai-based Sanskrit scholar S A Upadhyay to Rumi. "I read a few poems in translation and was mesmerised," says Upadhyay.
Film-maker Muzaffar Ali, best known for Umrao Jaan, has carried Rumi in his heart for years. "Everything about him is spiritually elevating. The concept of dancing dervishes is actually a way of total submission to the creator. His 4,50,00 couplets just boggles the mind. Only a blessed soul could have achieved that," raves Ali, who is making a film on the poet and who edits a journal called Hu (a Sufi invocation).
It was to Rumi that a terror-torn America turned after the September 11 attacks. Overnight, as sales of the Bible and Koran rose simultaneously, Rumi became the fastest-selling poet in the US. It was like a desperate attempt to understand or make sense of the changed world.
It was thanks mainly to one man that the 13th-century Persian mystic was accessible to the US readership. In 1976, the famous poet Robert Bly had handed Barks a stilted translation of Rumi with the words "Release them from their scholarly cages".
Barks went on to create one of the most finest translations of Rumi, encapsulating the spirit and humour of the original.
Another American of Turkish origin, Dr Nevit Ergin, has made a career of Rumi. The globe-trotting Sufi preacher, on an invitation by American Consulate, is delivering lectures in Mumbai and Indore next week.
Indoctrinated into the mystical path by wandering dervish Shams Tabriz, Rumi tributed his mentor with lyrical poems captured in his famous book, Divan Shams Tabrizi. Rumi was so in awe of his guru that he once said, "I won't try to talk about Shams. Language cannot touch that presence."
Undoubtedly, Shams's best gift to his illustrious disciple was Sema or the whirling ceremony. And nobody performs it better than the dervishes from Konya (Turkey) where Rumi is entombed in a massive mausoleum which also houses a mosque, a dance hall and the tombs of leaders of the Mevlevi order.
"Rumi is a great lover of divine truth and dancing dervishes actually help you get closer to that truth," says the Turkish cultural ambassador M Ali Seker, whose organisation Indialogue Foundation is holding a Sema concert in Mumbai next month.
It's a Rumi party and everyone's invited. As the master himself would have said:
Come, come again, whoever your are, come!
Heathen, fire worshipper or idolatrous, come!
Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times,
Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are.
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