Tell The Death To Wait Awhile, I Still Have To Learn Something New Before I Die
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
1 July 2023
Kaho Maut
Se Ke Woh Zara Intazaar Kare
Seekhna Hai
Kuchh Naya Abhi Bhi Mujhe
-Nasir
Kazmi
(Please
tell death to wait awhile/ I've still to learn something new before I die)
Socrates
was in prison awaiting his execution. One day he heard a fellow prisoner
singing a difficult lyric by the poet, Stesichoros. Socrates begged the man to
teach him the lyric. " Why? " asked the singer. " So that I can
die knowing one more thing," was the great man's reply.
Disciple:
Why learn something new one week before you die?
Master: For
exactly the same reason that you'd learn something new fifty years before you
die.
"Ergon
Meut Menda Bill Noft Ecza" (One learns something new every minute till he dies). This
Turkish adage inspired Kamal Ataturk Pasha, the architect of modern Turkey.
Learning is an eternal passion. Dying Agha Shahid Ali was perfecting the Ghazal
format in English. By the way, this brilliant poet and professor who taught
English at Chicago University, introduced Ghazal to English poetry and
worked on sonnet and its seamless entry into Urdu poetry. He knew that he would
soon bid adieu to the world (he died of brain cancer at the age of 52), yet
nothing could dampen his enthusiasm for learning something new. He bettered his
own translations of Faiz's Naqsh-e-Fariyadi (Rebel's Silhouette:
Selected Poems by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, 1992) as he believed that a translator
gained greater grasp of a language with every passing hour! What a thought!
Lesser mortals would simply give up and wait for death to take them away. But
people like Agha Shahid Ali would refuse to be kayoed by it.
A fortnight
before his death, the redoubtable Dr Edward W Said was trying a difficult tune
of Chopin on his violin, while it was meant to be played on a piano. But the
great man mastered it! He also undertook a fresh assignment to ameliorate The
Seven Odes of Pre-Islamic Arabia as Arabic was his mother tongue. He was born
in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine.
Napoleon
Bonaparte started taking lessons in English from the jailor Dean Carnet despite
knowing that his days were numbered at St. Helena where he was incarcerated by
the English. Shaheed Bhagat Singh asked the hangman to condescend to give him 15 minutes so that he could finish the book. Professor Thomas Arnold quickly finished the last 18 pages on a ship when everyone panicked as tempest threatened to sink the ship. Wizard of mathematics, Srinivas Ramanujan was working on a new theorem just prior to his death at the age of 32!
Danish
Khairabadi aptly said:
Kuchh Naya
Kar Guzarne Ki Chaah
Jaanib-e-Maut
Se Hata Deti Hai Nigaah
(The zeal
to do something new, distracts our attention from death). This must be the
spirit! An overwhelming desire to do or accomplish something new, mitigates the
fear and apprehension of impending end.
----
A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in
comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed
articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including
Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/death-learn-die/d/130111
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