The best of Pakistani ghazals

Today I bought a six volume set of "Best of Pakistani Ghazals" from www.desistore.com. They were cheap ($28+shipping) and quick in shipping: overall a good shopping experience. Especially since I don't buy CDs that often. The CDs themselves have pretty poor production values ---spelling mistakes in the name of the singers, missing information about composers and lyricists and cheesy cover art with smudged printing. The sound quality is not that great either, but that is to be expected since the recordings are pretty old in themselves.

Despite all this, I really like the CD set. I love ghazals, but for some reason Indian singers like Pankaj Udhas and Jagjit Singh leave me a little disappointed. I think they are too modern for my taste ---the Pakistanis like Mehdi Hassan and Ghulam Ali hits the right spot for me. This CD set is a good opportunity to expand my collection of ghazals.

All said and done, I have ambivalent feelings towards ghazals. Ghazals are typically focused on love, especially unsuccessful love. Therefore they lend themselves easily to emotional excess which is not always good for poetry. Although many unsuccessful lovers fancy themselves poets, few of them ever write anything decent. Somebody defined poetry as emotion recalled in tranquility ---the poetry written in the heat of the moment in the grip of emotions typically degenerates to a diatribe or a well of self-pity. The greatest temptation of ghazals as a music form is two fold: good music can turn even the worst doggerel into good poetry. Secondly Urdu is a sublime language which seems to be ideally suited to writing poetry. For example, it is much harder to write technically good poetry in English than in Urdu. But overall, I still
think the ghazal has some wonderful poetry. Just wanted to quote a few verses:

kaisii chalii hai ab ke havaa tere shahar me.n
ba.nde bhii ho gaye hai.n Khudaa tere shahar me.n

kyaa jaane kyaa huaa ke pareshaan ho gaye
ik lahzaa ruk ga_ii thii sabaa tere shahar me.n

kuchh dushmanii kaa Dhab hai.n na ab dostii ke taur
dono.n kaa ek rang huaa tere shahar me.n

shaayad u.nhe.n pataa thaa ke ‘Khatir’ hai ajanabii
logo.n ne us ko luuT liyaa tere shahar me.n

-Khatir Ghaznavi

Incidentally www.urdupoetry.com is a treasure trove for finding ghazals. For the meaning of the words, one can always consult an Urdu-English dictionary.