Rose day

 

Interestingly, by the late nineteenth century, came to be perceived as a decadent form of Urdu literature that had to be suppressed and erased. The was an interesting departure from all other forms of Urdu poetry that had taken birth in the subcontinent. Usage of words that denoted women’s endearment like and  sexually explicit demarcate this genre from its heterosexual counterpart, the Urdu while sharing plot lines that revolved around longing, separation and pain in love. By the late eighteenth century, as or what is modern-day Lucknow, emerged as the capital of a thriving Persian culture, there emerged a genre of Urdu poetry, unique in style and perhaps audacious in content. Also common in these poems rose.

While the focus of was on women’s love relationships, the agency still clearly remained in the hands of the man for whom the genre of poetry was more a means of entertainment. It reflected a world inhabited by women but more importantly, though, it gave voice to love and desire within the world of women.

Frequently performed by men in local poetry readings, these erotic poems borrow historicity from the Sanskrit tradition of the and its many as well as the Arabic romances and erotic treatises. “Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, poetry, along with Urdu poetry in general, and much literature in other Indian languages, was ‘reformed’ and ‘purified’ by literary critics, editors, and poets, with the result that the themes and content of grew more didactic and less erotic,” writes activist and author Ruth in her work, “Married among their companions: Female homoerotic relations in nineteenth-century Urdu  poetry in India.”goes on to suggest that another development that led to the suppression of was a revivalist Islamic movement in Lucknow led by people like who wanted to Urdu in the same way that Hindi was in a way to maintain its adherence to Hindu cultural mores. 

The poems were written using vocabulary common in women’s language and while a number of themes were employed, a large majority of them focused on love and sexual longing of women and for women. “In this new climate, identified with a ‘female’ voice, female and an ‘effeminate’  was seen as debased and shameful, a visible reminder of the hybrid past of Urdu itself, a past the Urdu literati were now eager to disclaim as they attempted to purify and the language,” writes. The poets were male, but both the speaker and the subject were female. Evolving somewhere between a local and the Victorian sense of morality, social reformers of this period responded by waging campaigns to purify society of other than the  kinds. For historians, the poems have gone on to serve as important sources that speak about male gaze on female sexuality, apart from of course carrying insights on how urban landscapes shaped an evolving artistic and linguistic culture in this period. Scholars, however, consider these poems to be crucial in their depiction of women’s lives within both the elite households and also in courtesan quarters, of the Begums.

By the late eighteenth century, as or what is modern-day Lucknow, emerged as the capital of a thriving Persian culture, there emerged a genre of Urdu poetry, unique in style and perhaps audacious in content. The was an interesting departure from all other forms of Urdu poetry that had taken birth in the subcontinent. The poets were male, but both the speaker and the subject were female. It reflected a world inhabited by women but more importantly, though, it gave voice to love and desire within the world of women.

Frequently performed by men in local poetry readings, these erotic poems borrow historicity from the Sanskrit tradition of the and its many as well as the Arabic romances and erotic treatises. The poems were written using vocabulary common in women’s language and while a number of themes were employed, a large majority of them focused on love and sexual longing of women and for women. Usage of words that denoted women’s endearment like and sexually explicit demarcate this genre from its heterosexual counterpart, the Urdu while sharing plot lines that revolved around longing, separation and pain in love. Also common in these poems is the understanding of same sex love being considered immoral in medieval times.

While the focus of was on women’s love relationships“Oh, your big eyes, have swept my life away.

Look at this madness, this derangement, carrying self-possession away

Every instant, her presence, her absence, endangers my life

Each of her charming ways carries my heart and away

Sense and senses, strength and rest, dreams and light,

Her being has carried everything of mine away

When it was time to come to her bed, that fairy,

Merrily, took me, oh innocent heart, away

In this existence, I found union only in the dust-

A universe took my hope of union with you away

Not only did it show me the evening of separation-

Her teeth’s brilliant carried my life away