https://youtu.be/eMnIbkn_vjo

This video is based on a couplet from the album Occasional Ghazal, written by Suparna Ghosh in English in traditional Indo-Persian style, and translated by her into Hindi/Urdu. The music is composed and sung by Azalea Ray. Paintings are by Suparna Ghosh.

Occasional Ghazals…

Long after reading them, some poems linger. Like the scent of a lover. What has always stayed with me, at the forefront or in my periphery, is a ghazal. Integral to my senses. Occasionally, I sing a ghazal in Urdu, to myself, to a friend, to a mate or a memory, and an ache rises within me. Sing it for a love, to a god or a spirit. It is a perfect poem.

A ghazal is separate from other forms of beautiful poetry just as an abstract painting is distinct from a realistic one.

An amalgam of couplets, each separate and complete, yet linked together and entirely harmonious. In all its mystical, mournful, romantic and maudlin glory, it rises like a structure, yet remains fluid in rhythm, like a slow moving river. Internal rhymes woven in exactly the same pattern, each taking its cue from the first couplet, yet, uncontrived, unimpeded, natural.

Embracing the tenets which bind it, yet never a slave to what defines it.

The video will illustrate my intense affinity with this poetic form.