Haroon Rashid Siddiqi
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PUBLISHED
October 19, 2025
“Hindustan ki ilhami kitābain do hain: Muqaddas Vaid aur Dīvān-e-Ghālib.” These famous words were penned by Dr Abdur Rahman Bijnori in his seminal dissertation Mahāsin-e-Kalām-e-Ghālib, which he was writing in 1918 when the merciless Spanish flu pandemic cut short his life at the prime age of thirty-three. Though his time was brief, he left behind a luminous treasure on Ghalib — posthumously published from Bhopal in 1921 — that remains one of the finest reflections on the poet’s genius.
His remark, audacious yet profoundly reflective, declared that India possessed two revealed scriptures — the sacred Vedas and Dīvān-e-Ghālib. It was not mere exaggeration but a recognition of the unfathomable depth of Ghalib’s poetry: its layered meanings, its metaphysical reach, its inexhaustible capacity to illuminate the human condition.
To truly fathom that ocean, to chart its boundless expanse and reveal its secret currents, has been the life’s work of many. Yet if there is one figure —whether from East or West — who has come closest to this Herculean task in our own age, it is undoubtedly Dr Frances W. Pritchett.
A scholar of Urdu and Persian literature, and Professor Emerita at Columbia University, Dr. Pritchett has given us what can only be described as a magnum opus: A Desertful of Roses. This vast online project is not merely a translation of Ghalib’s diwan but a luminous archive of meanings, a living museum where the voices of centuries of interpreters converge. If Ghalib’s poetry is scripture, then Pritchett has built for us its cathedral — an edifice at once scholarly and aesthetic, where every couplet blooms like a rose amid the desert sands of history.
Her achievement lies not only in her philological precision but also in her interpretive generosity. She resists the temptation of imposing a singular meaning on Ghalib’s couplets. Instead, she acknowledges that his words contain multitudes. Each sher [couplet] is presented with a constellation of readings drawn from the most authoritative commentators — Shibli, Hali, Tabatabai, Bekhud Dehalvi, Bekhud Mohani, Gyan Chand, Kalidas Gupta Raza, Yusuf Salim Chishti, and many others —so that the reader may witness the dazzling plurality of interpretation. Ghalib, after all, was a poet who relished ambiguity, who thrived on the shimmering instability of language.
Pritchett does not attempt to “solve” him; rather, she opens the door for us to wander his labyrinths.
Her website, accessible to all and continually refined, has become an indispensable resource for scholars, students, and lovers of Urdu poetry across the globe. With its bilingual presentation— Romanised Urdu text alongside English translations — it democratises access to Ghalib, ensuring that the poet who once claimed he was understood by none may now be encountered by anyone with curiosity and patience.
One of the subtle triumphs of A Desertful of Roses is how it situates Ghalib within the broader tapestry of Mughal aesthetics. The Mughal world, with its architecture of arches and domes, its miniature paintings, its intricate calligraphy, is not merely a historical backdrop — it is an interpretive symbolism. Pritchett’s work allows us to see Ghalib’s poetry as an extension of this sensibility: ornamental yet profound, playful yet grave, endlessly self-renewing. Much like the pietra dura in the Taj Mahal, where semi-precious stones are inlaid into marble, Ghalib’s words glisten with embedded allusions — to Quranic imagery, to Persian tropes, to philosophical paradoxes. Pritchett has curated these details with the care of a master archivist, so that readers are not merely reading verses but entering chambers of a palace, each more wondrous than the last.
What distinguishes A Desertful of Roses is its polyphonic nature. No interpreter of Ghalib is silenced; rather, all are invited to speak. This multiplicity echoes the poet’s own awareness of language’s infinite suggestiveness.
To read Pritchett’s project is to witness a symposium across centuries, where Shibli and Hali debate meanings, Bekhud interjects, and Pritchett herself offers clarifying notes — never authoritarian, always respectful of the reader’s imagination. The effect is mesmerising. Each couplet becomes a prism. Tilt it one way, and you see metaphysical despair; tilt it another, and it sparkles with ironic wit. Ghalib once mused that “a thousand meanings arise from every word.” Pritchett’s work proves him right.
The very title of the project — A Desertful of Roses — captures the paradox of Ghalib’s world. The desert suggests barrenness, difficulty, endless thirst. The roses promise beauty, fragrance, sudden ecstasy. To traverse the diwan is to endure both: the loneliness of existential inquiry and the joy of poetic revelation. Pritchett, as guide, does not soften the harshness of the desert, but she ensures that its roses are visible, fragrant, and unforgettable.
In the final measure, Pritchett’s contribution must be seen as both scholarly and civilisational. She has built a bridge between cultures, enabling English-speaking audiences to approach the grandeur of Urdu, while deepening the appreciation of native readers by gathering centuries of commentary in one place. The Mughal emperors built gardens to reflect paradise on earth; Pritchett has built a textual garden, where the roses of Ghalib’s genius bloom perpetually.
To call her a great Ghalibian of our time is no exaggeration. With A Desertful of Roses, she has created a monument as enduring as any marble mausoleum, as fragrant as any garden of roses. It is a gift not only to literary scholarship but to the world of poetry itself. And just as Ghalib once claimed, “thousands of desires, each worth dying for,” Pritchett has given us thousands of meanings, each worth pondering forever.
As I reflect on her extraordinary achievement, I feel compelled to offer my own humble tribute in verse — a qitah [ a short detached piece of poetry] dedicated to Dr Frances Pritchett, who treaded the realm of Ghalib more luminously than I could ever have imagined:
Ghalib ki hai dehleez zara soch ke jaana,
Ek alam-e-afaq hai us khamagarri mein;
Har lafz jahan behre tilismaat ho goya,
Darya ko kiya bandh wahan kozagarri mein.
[Tread lightly upon Ghalib’s threshold,
for in his craft lies a universe entire;
Each word a sea of enchantments,
the ocean itself contained within a potter’s clay]
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer
Haroon Rashid Siddiqui is a freelance contributor and op-ed writer
