Originally Posted by zidd
Sahl e mumtana.
A listerner of a sher from a ghazal responds to the sher from his perspective of life and experiences.This broadly includes his education, his IQ , his literary exposure ,his station in life and most important his vocabulary, which collectively ,for the present limited purpose may be called the persons literary character.
A persons understanding of a particular sher is governed by his literary character.
The mind indulges in unfathomable permutations and combinations of the various parts of the persons literary character to analyse a sher and to absorb it.
When digested the persons brain may give him a clear meaning or a vague meaning or even just a semblance of some meaning.
This results in different people appreciating the given sher in different ways. Also this is the reason which creates likes and dislikes for various shayars by people.
How the brain processes a particular sher depends on the quality or traits of the sher.
Due to the peculiarity and the literary character of the person, the evaluation of the sher differs for different people.
Saying all this as a background ,
There is one notable exception. There is a category of ashaar ,which irrespective of the literary character of the person, is more or less evaluated as beautiful by most persons.
Such ashaar comprise the sehal e mumtana and also sehal o mumtana( both forms)
As the words indicate , it means
Sehal – simple
Mumtana – impossible (...forbidden, prohibited etc other meanings)
Lets say –Impossibly simple.
It essentially means that that a sher has such a quality that it is : (generally)
1] simple in idea
2] employs very simple vocabulary (maybe colloquial )
3] generally contains some figure of speech like a common metaphor or some simple apparent wordplay.(but not necessarily)
In essence its such a sher that any person will identify with it. A layman will instinctly like it .
A shayar or people skilled in the literary arts will ponder ,and in the first instance will not give any credit to the shayar for the sher, but will consequently definitely understand the complexity of its simple make.
A minor shayar may think ‘ whats in the sher , I can do this very easily’ , but woe betide such a bard , when he sits down to pen such a sher , to his utter dismay ,it will be impossible to attain, resulting in great greif.
To illustrate the above point, i quote Sarojni naidu , who famously said ‘ Mr Gandhi doesn’t know how much it costs the congress to keep him poor .’
The make of such a sher is always simple.
To say further ,such ashaar make themselves. A common trait is general common vocabulary and colloquial usage.
Common idioms will be employed. Another essential trait is the oneness of both the misras.
It shouls be noted here that the operative word is oneness and not mere rabt
It will seem as if there is only one sentence in place of two misras.
The two misras will weld in such a way that both will be incomplete without each other literally and not only in context of mazmoon.
One e.g exercising unidentifiable wordplay
Kahte hai jeete hai ummeed pah log
Hum ko jeene ki bhi ummed nahi...Galib
Hali in yaadgaare galib termed this sher as an example of sehal e mumtana.
Ofcourse ,meters play a pivotal role in making a sher a sehal e mumtana.
The same thought /theme /words employed in a different meter will not make it a sehal e mumtana. As the meter will cause some changes in the sequencing of words and may rob the sher of the sehal e mumtana quality.
Hali ,classified the above sher as one of the finest example of sehal e mumtana it that meter.
Sehal e mumtana achieves itself when the words do not appear to be arranged in the meter. It will have to confirm to meter but seem as if everyone would speak that sentence , in the context the its meaning.
Suppose someone asks why is your wife so glum, he may ask:
Aapne phirse kuch kahaa unko? (2122 1212 22)
If an another suitable line as ulaa or a saani was added to this line and that line had the similar quality of this line, it would constitute sehal e mumtana.
Some critics ,notably S .R. Faruqi ,though agreeing at the beauty and heart touching quality of such ashaar, still opine that too much premium should not be put on such ashaar, though he agrees at the ingenuity of such ashaar.
it is pointed out now , and not as an after thought , that such critics are heavily influenced by western literary writings , though nothing wrong in it per se.
The problem only arises because sehal e mumtana is such an easy enterprise in english poetry that there is simply no literary worth to it.
It is a laymans writing in english poetry because the english meters , are a cake walk in terms of urdu meters , if at all they may be termed as meter.
English so called meters totally rely on stress , consequently making all its syllables flexible.
In fact ,Francess pritchett , a very eminent urdu scholar and friend and collaborator of S .R Faruqi herself says ' English meters are an afterthought and a mere fancy icing on the cake, whereas the urdu meters are the cake itself'
Others say that such ashaar are so rare ,that the rareness of such ashaar makes , the quest for it a very desirable trait.
The writer feels that the make of urdu meters ,ipso facto discourages the making of sehal e mumtana.
Lafz baratna is not only giving effect and more punch to a preidentified mazmoon ,but essentially is also to put the words in the meter.
This makes the verse laboured. Unnessary words called bharti have to be necessarily used.
No poet has been able to escape from this , without taking any names how much ever reputed he is or was.
Even in the verses of great masters ,words can be very easily removed without making the mazmoon suffer to the tiniest bit.
Sehal e mumtana ashaar cannot generally accommodate any bharti words .
Unnessary bharti words will steal the commonness from the sentence and will make it a normal shayari verse .
Lastly , i must say that bollywood lyric writers ,which are given very little credit, actually deserve manyfold more credit than they receive.
They are the prime practitioners of sehal e mumtana.
It is mainly due to the fact that they do not generally use rigid urdu meters , but use mir’s meter or its close cousin the mutadaarik meter.
That is probably the reason everyone loves hindi film songs so much, because it touches the heart.
And it touches the heart because its a sehal e mumtana.
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