Embracing Memories: Your Past, Your ‘Maazi’ Is What You Make Of It

In Urdu poetry, the source of inspiration for ghazals has always been the poet’s reminiscences about their beloved.

In Urdu poetry, the source of inspiration has always been the beloved whom the poet reminisces about in ghazals.

(Photo: The Quint/Shruti Mathur)

Host, Writer and Sound Designer: Fabeha Syed
Editor: Shelly Walia
Music: Big Bang Fuzz

Your past, your memories, our history. These are prerequisites without which most art cannot be created, because our minds is a rich repository of the past. And ‘art’ is nothing but an ‘expression of thought’.

Thoughts come from our feelings. Feelings are nothing but our emotions. Every emotion is linked to an experience. And experiences are drawn from the time which has gone by.

So, the place where experiences are created is our past which could be as old as one day, an hour, or even a minute. So without the ‘maazi’ or the past, no art is possible. As far as Urdu poetry is concerned, the source of inspiration has always been the beloved whom the poet reminisces about in ghazals.

In this episode of Urdunama, we revel in some of the gems of shayari which remind us that if the past hounds us with all its bitterness, then there is no point clinging to it. But, if you still have to endure that sour maazi, then become iron-willed. And as they say, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’.

Tune in.