Going through my old books, I found this 1959 edition of Diwan-e-Ghalib, which belonged to my father. I paused and looked at it. It is not an expensive first edition, nor a rare manuscript locked away in a collector’s cabinet. Just a modest copy of Diwan-e-Ghalib, its paper aged, its printing simple and unpretentious. It was never made to be an object of display. It was meant to be read.
The book says:
प्रथम संस्करण : मार्च, १९५९
हिन्द पॉकेट बुक्स प्रा. लि., जी. टी. रोड, शाहदरा, दिल्ली
मूल्य : एक रुपया।
First edition: March 1959. Hind Pocket Books, G. T. Road, Shahdara, Delhi. And at the bottom of the page, printed in the most matter-of-fact manner, is its price: one rupee.
This book had begun its journey long before I was born. Imagine India in the late 1950s. The Republic was barely a decade old. The wounds of Partition were still fresh. Hindi and Urdu had acquired political identities that were often much narrower than their shared literary histories. And here was a book saying, in its own quiet way: let us read Ghalib. And what better poet to choose?
Ghalib never fitted neatly into compartments. He was witty, vain, philosophical, mischievous, melancholic, irreverent and endlessly curious about the absurdities of human existence. He could complain about poverty while retaining the dignity of a man who knew perfectly well that the world owed him something for having written poetry this good. Ghalib wrote in Urdu. The script may change; the poetry does not. Language has never truly been confined by its script. Sometimes a change of script can open a door to a reader who might otherwise never have entered.
But perhaps what moved me most about this book is not only Ghalib. It is the fact that it belonged to my father. His health doesn’t allow him to read anymore. Going through the book I felt the traces of the person who bought it, read it, folded its pages, read out portions of it to my mother and me, carried it from one house to another, and eventually kept it among other books. The paper has grown yellow and the binding loosened, but the connection to its first reader remains.
We inherit houses, furniture, photographs and other objects. But books are perhaps among the most intimate inheritances. They tell us things about the people who owned them, the writers they chose, the poets they loved, and sometimes things that family conversations never did. The writers they chose and the poets they loved. Some old books carry more than words. Sixty-seven years later, I can still open this little book and find that tiny printed line on the sepia paper:
मूल्य : एक रुपया। A rupee bought the book. The years made it priceless.
Text and pictures by Prerna Jain.
