HYDERABAD: Blike a tree and let the dead leaves drop: simple words, simple image. Powerful message wrapped in philosophy. Thousands of seasons have come and gone but these words of Persian Sufi bard stay fresh and bloom whichever country they are read in. Translated into 23 languages and now being made into a Hollywood biopic Rumi is quintessential not just to the Oriental world but to the Occidental as well. He towers above his own image so revered in Central Asia that’s growing bigger and bigger.
It’s not just the numbers as the best-seller, it’s the connection that people find for this poet which makes his persona so enigmatic. The write word His masnavis have been translated into English by Arthur John Arberry, E. H. Whinfield, Reynold Nicholson, Coleman Barks in 22 volumes. The most-loved book ‘The Essential Rumi’ translated by Barks has sold millions of copies and is savoured by the mystic bard’s lovers all over the world. But Rumi is not some hippie poet or a Jack Kerouac of the Beat generation, then what makes him so popular all over the world that also by youngsters? Hoshang Merchant poet, scholar and academician explains, “In a sex-crazy world Rumi teaches how to change sex into love. In a love starved world he gives us plenty of love poetry.
The Sufis don’t divide love from sex and sex from love nor do they divide man from God and God from man. He’s the most popular poet today in US though America is waging war on Middle East. Because the Americans liberals want an alternative view to their government’s racism and colonialism. Rumi speaks to the victims in US and to the war-ravaged in many countries that he lived in. It’s the oppressed who knows about patience best much like the ‘boiled chickpea’ in Rumi’s handy metaphor. After all, Christianity was a revolt of slaves against Rome’s oppression.” The grand meet In the year 1244 AD, Rumi met his mentor or sheikh Shams Tabriz, who was a wandering Sufi. Rumi was 37 then. They both developed a strong relationship of disciple and teacher.
Many scholars have disputed arguments of them being lover and beloved. After the death/disappearance of Shams, Rumi delved deep into poetry and is said to have written 3,000 love songs and 2,000 quatrains. He gave poetry its embellishments i.e., of music and dance. The poet would whirl during his creative outbursts which also was a form of deep meditation for him. That’s how he gave the world ‘whirling dervishes’ which is better known as sama which Hoshang describes as, “The dance of whirling dervishes imitating the revolution of the planets in the universe. It’s a metaphor for harmony.
There’s no continuos revolution. There’s ‘qabd’ – contraction and ‘bast’ expansion; between these two the world fluctuates and revolves like exhale and inhale. The alternating rhythm of life and death, hunger and plenty, love and starvation, spring and autumn, youth and old makers for the rhythm of the universe which makes life possible. There’s not only one rhythm, there are always two: opposite and answering each other.” So fresh Hundreds of years after the poet’s demise, his works are perennial source of inspiration for poetry, music, stories and dance written and performed in many languages. The way he juxtaposes love and separation and his handling of the same is what humans identify their several crises with and that’s how Rumi appeals to them. Contemporary connect That’s how in the Bollywood movie Rockstar Rumi’s lines ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing there is a field.
I will meet you there’ gave voice to the silent suffering of lovers. Are the words enough to connect hearts and is there something beyond that? Bill Wolak scholar and professor of comparative literature in William Paterson University who has translated volumes of Hafez’s poetry and is a big aficionado of Rumi says, “It’s Sufism that connects and chronicles the indescribable experience, the sweetness of sap, the soul of music. Sufis talk about their philosophies through wine taking the reader in proximity to the saqi. It makes you drunk as if you were in some other time sipping wine in an inn. Sufism is universal. Every religion has elements of Sufism.” People’s poet Internet has pages dedicated to the poet who at the same time appears mysterious and direct. Lines like:
‘The wound is the place where light enters you’, and ‘What you seek is seeking you’ appear so in place connecting directly to a thinking mind. That’s how Jawid Mojaddedi, a Rumi scholar from Rutgers University calls the bard ‘mystically rich’ in one of the interviews he gave. The mysticism combined with the simplicity of words is what endears him to the contemporary readers. The use of commonplace objects and images solidify the reader-poet relation. Sample these lines from ‘Rumi Poems’ selected and edited by Peter Washington: If you are joyful, I am If you grieve, or if you’re bitter, or graceful, I take on those qualities. More to come Like this book there are several being translated by scholars, poets and professors around the world that bring the simplicity and mysticism of Rumi’s poetry to the world. His philosophy flows like never-drying stream underneath hearts and cityscapes. Upcoming the next month is poet, author and teacher Brad Gooch’s biography of the master Sufi poet titled ‘Rumi's Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love’.