Why Urdu is so perfect for poetry

For as long as I can remember, I've been in love with the Urdu language. It used to fascinate me even when I could not understand the meanings of the words. I must have been around 6 or 7 years old when one of my father's friends used to come to our town on an official tour every month, and would stay at our place overnight. As he was very fond of Urdu poetry, he used to have an impromptu mehfil with my parents (my mother was quite passionate about Urdu poetry, and she had learnt Sahir Ludhianvi's Talkhiaan by heart in her college days). I couldn't understand most of the poetry, but I used to sit in a corner and listen with rapt attention, spell-bound by the sounds and rhythm of Urdu language and the mysterious imagery of the shayari.

I remember I was 11 years old when I got hold of Deewan-e-Ghalib. It was gifted to me by one of my father's students who had noticed my fondness for Urdu shayari. I still have that torn and battered copy; the price printed on it is merely 5 rupees. But to tell you the truth, I had no idea at that time of the value of that book, nor the role it was destined to play in my life. I used to try reading it when I had nothing else to do, but could make little sense of it and used to put it away after a few minutes. But gradually, my Urdu vocabulary started expanding, thanks to PTV, and I also started understanding couplets from Deewan-e-Ghalib and some of the other Urdu poetry books I had come to possess by then. By now I've read a huge amount of Urdu poetry, and the more I explore the more awe-struck I feel at the quality of work done in Urdu language.

What makes Urdu poetry so devastatingly beautiful? It's a question I've asked myself many times. I've read English poetry too, and it doesn't come anywhere near Urdu poetry in cadence, elegance, maturity and sheer beauty. If some of the greatest English poets could be brought back from the dead, taught Urdu, and made to read the shayari of the great classic Urdu poets like Ghalib, Mir, Dagh, Zauq and Nazeer, I'm sure they would bang their heads against walls for ever having tried to write poetry in a language that is so short in rhyming words and so lacking in flow and metre.

Urdu, on the other hand, is made for poetry. The soft sounds and rhythmic swing of Urdu words make it the perfect container for delicate emotions, beautiful descriptions, and yes, also for the pain and sadness of human existence - that's reason number one.

Secondly, Urdu is a very rich language, having borrowed freely from a wide range of languages including Faarsi (Persian), Arabic, Turkish and Brajbhaasha.

The last and most important feature of Urdu language that makes it ideal for poetry - and which is also unique to Urdu language - is that it gives the user the freedom to coin new words by joining together existing words. This feature is called 'इज़ाफ़त' in Urdu (from इज़ाफ़ा करना, मतलब बढ़ा देना). To demonstrate this, I'm going to quote a Ghalib she'r from the ghazal "कब से हूँ क्या बताऊँ जहाने-ख़राब में":

ग़ालिब छुटी शराब पर अब भी कभी-कभी
पीता हूँ रोज़े-अब्रो-शबे-माहताब में

Do you notice that long compound word in the second line: रोज़े-अब्रो-शबे-माहताब? Let me explain how it is formed and what it means: रोज़ means 'day', and अब्र means 'cloud', so रोज़े-अब्र means 'a cloudy day'; the ओ in between means और; then शब means 'night', and माहताब means 'moon', so शबे-माहताब means 'a moonlit night'.

I would like to end this post with a famous she'r by Ahmed Wasi:
वो करे बात तो हर लफ्ज़ से ख़ुश्बू आये
ऐसी बोली वही बोले जिसे उर्दू आये