HYDERABAD: Consider the scenario where walking along the streets of a new city you come across a young boy, probably just freshly out of college and ask him to introduce himself and all you get in response is this: tilismi chashm ne teri kiya mujhe manzoor; aur ik gumaan mein daala ke koi khwaab hoon main.
This is something that can happen only in Hyderabad. The couplet is authored by Riasath Ali Asrar, a young poet who is dedicated to preserving the rich linguistic heritage of Hyderabad and also carrying forward the legacy of his grandfathers. His paternal grandfather, Riyasath Ali Taaj, was not only an Urdu poet and scholar but also translated many Telugu poems into Urdu. On the other hand, his maternal grandfather, Yaqoob Dard, contributed to both Urdu and English poetry while pursuing a successful career as a civil engineer before retirement.
Riasath was born in Hyderabad, grew up in Jeddah and then came back to Hyderabad for studies. A student of theology, language and literature, thanks to the erudite environment he grew up in, Riasath started writing poetry at the age of 14. “I do not remember the first time I took interest in poetry but I grew up listening to and about poetry. In 2018, a couple of friends encouraged me to take some workshops in Urdu prosody. Since then, I have taken workshops at various heritage sites, given talks in some institutions and curated a couple of courses online — all revolving around Urdu literature,” he said.
At 23, Riasath has already collaborated with a number of organisations to hold workshops, talks and presentations on the Urdu language, poetry and ghazals as a form of literature. “There’s a literary organisation called Anjuman-e-Fannan that I started with a friend in 2018, through which we started organising workshops, talks and poetry symposiums in the city. The organisation also collaborated with Rekhta Foundation in 2019 for an evening of literature and music.
In 2020, I joined the team of The Deccan Archive as its research and editorial coordinator and collaborated with them on a project that involved taking Urdu language and literature classes at various heritage sites of Deccan — an attempt at visiting the cultural, literary as well as built heritage of the city. Recently, I started Kabikaj Foundation — an initiative for discovering, preserving and digitalising manuscripts and rare books,” he said, briefing us on some major projects he has worked on.
In January, he spoke at Hyderabad Literary Festival on ‘Making Ghazal Multilingual’ and in 2019, he even talked about ‘Science and Urdu Poetry’ at BM Birla Science Centre. Enlightening us on the relationship between Dakhni and Urdu, the young poet said, “Dakhni is a part of the same literature as Urdu. These are various names, based on different geographical and political factors, that we have given to the same literature - one may call it Dakhni, Hindavi, Hindi, Rekhta, Urdu or Hindustani.”
With himself shouldering the responsibility of Deccan linguistic heritage, he said that it is important to preserve Dakhni literature. “I think it is important for us to revisit, discover and preserve Dakhni literature for it has great treasure hidden inside, and we seem to have lost most of it. Modern-day Dakhni is a local adaptation of Urdu and is spread with various dialects all over the Deccan region. The Deccani literature that we speak of is from the era of the 1300s to the 1700s when the language migrated to the Deccan region.”
On being asked if he has documented his couplets in any form, he said, “I haven’t yet collected my poetry anywhere, although some of it is available on YouTube and some on my personal blog www.asrar.blog”
In the end, he leaves us with another couplet: usi nigaah-e-inaayat ki deyn hoon asrar; ke jis nigah se ghazal ne dakan ko dekha tha