ગુજારે જે શિરે તારે

Before Balashankar Kantharia, the ghazal did not speak Gujarati. A Nadiad Brahmin who read Hafiz the way others read scripture, he imported the Persian form whole — the paired lines, the returning rhyme, the wine and the beloved — and naturalized it so completely that his best-known ghazal turned into a proverb. ગુજારે જે શિરે તારે જગતનો નાથ તે સ્હેજે — whatever the Lord of the world sends over your head, bear it lightly — is quoted at sickbeds and funerals by Gujaratis who have never heard the poet's name. The second line completes the theology in domestic terms: what the Beloved has counted as dear, you count as dearest. Acceptance, in this poem, is not resignation; it is agreeing with God's arithmetic.

What follows is a string of couplets in the imperative — લેજે, દેજે, રહેજે, કહેજે — a wisdom literature disguised as song. Don't let the world's false talk subtract one drop from your inner joy. In the court of the world the judge's own account is worth a cowrie — so don't volunteer for the job of judging it: જગતકાજી બનીને તું વહોરી ના પીડા લેજે. Through the world's machine of glass, જગતના કાચના યંત્રે, the true thing never shows — a startlingly modern image for distorted perception, a century before anyone spoke of media. Keep the company of neither the good nor the wicked; tell no one your grief or your joy; treat an hour spent in kindness as the great Lakshmi of your account books. When the couplet about drink finally arrives, Hafiz's tavern has become a temple without losing its intoxication: if you must drink, પીએ તો શ્રી પ્રભુના પ્રેમનો પ્યાલો ભરી પીજે — drink a brimming cup of God's love. And fate? પ્રારબ્ધ તો ઘેલું — destiny is a fool: chase it and it keeps its distance, ignore it and it comes running; either way, never trust it. Then the ghazal walks into its darkest and most Persian territory: love itself is interrogated — do you revel in it? is there truth to be had there? — and answered with a shrug worthy of Shiraz: વફાઈ તો નથી આખી દુનિયામાં જરા દીઠી — I have not seen a scrap of faithfulness in the entire world, so don't linger anywhere trying to prove yours. Stand apart from what the world calls truth, says the poet, and only then speak of the pleasure of that alchemy; remain unattached, and let all the sleights of the world's conjuring go by.

The closing movement is the poet's own job description: string the flowers of God's name into a garland of verse and place it, with love, around the Beloved's neck — poetry as worship, the કાવ્યમાળા as a temple offering. Then the maqta performs the wittiest signature in early Gujarati ghazal: નિજાનંદે હંમેશા બાલ મસ્તીમાં મઝા લેજે folds three of his pen names — Nijanand, Bal, Mast — into one line of self-delighting advice. You have become a king of poets; what do you care for anything now? The whole tradition that followed took the counsel literally. Kalapi's આપની યાદી, written a decade later, walks the road this ghazal paved — and Gujarati has never stopped walking it.