by Justice Markandey Katju
These days in mushairas, most Urdu poets recite poetry which is flippant, frivolous, trivial and small-fry, but the inane, fatuous audience shouts 'waah waah' to every sher of every poet, however worthless.
Hali, the biographer of Ghalib, in his book 'Yaadghaar-e-Ghalib', writes that in mushairas Ghalib would rarely give 'daad' to any sher of poets there, unless he regarded it as truly great. But nowadays daad and loud applause is given to every sher of every poet, irrespective of its worth.
These days most Urdu poets recite poetry which I regard as worthless and frivolous, but they are stupidly applauded by the audiences for every sher by 'muqarrar muqarrar', 'bahut khoob', and waah waah.
Mir, Ghalib, Faiz, Firaq, Josh etc are the Raja Bhojs of Urdu poetry.
But today’s Urdu poets are almost all Gangu telis, who write rubbish, like Javed Akhtar and Manzar Bhopali, whom I heard in India Community Centre, Milpitas, California, USA
Some examples of the poetry of Popular Meeruthi, who is often invited to mushairas in India and abroad are given below
Or take the poetry of Hina Rizvi Haider, who is acclaimed by many as a great Urdu poetess
With respect to such 'poets', I regard their poetry as mere 'laffaazi'
But their audiences lap up such frivolous, inane, worthless 'poetry' as if it is equal to that of Mir, Ghalib, or Faiz, shouting '' waah waah '', '' bahut khoob '' and '' achcha hai '' after every sher.
(Justice Katju is a former judge of the Supreme Court of India and a former Chairman of the Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own.)
