Braj Narayan Chakbast: From Grief to Glory in Urdu’s Gentle Voice

On January 19, 1882, a child, Braj Narayan Chakbast (who would grow up to be a brilliant twinkling star of Urdu literature) inhaled his first breath beneath the crumbling arches of Rathor Haveli in Faizabad. His blood ran through the veins of Kashmiri Pandits but the move of his family to Lucknow had left a note of silent nostalgia to its roots in his childhood.

And tragedy did not hesitate to enter into his early life; his father, Pandit Udit Narayan Chakbast, a well-known poet and deputy collector, the highest position an Indian ever would aspire to be at, passed away when Braj Narayan Chakbast was five years old. Grief and disorientation made the family move to the crowded lanes of Kashmiri Mohalla, Lucknow. In this dimness of grief Chakbast was reared in the air of classics Urdu and Persian, and schooled by custom and by occasion.

The story that he seldom told was one of his earliest recollections, that of a grieving mother, reading over the verses left behind by her husband, in the dim lamplight, in search of consolation in the rhyme and rhythm to which she knew him lovingly addicted. And in his little, eager heart there were mingled pain and beauty, on the evenings when poetry had taken the place of the lullabies. In the haze of nostalgia, the small Braj was taught that verse could make whole wounds that life caused and he would passively take into his adult life.

Braj Narayan Chakbast- Between Law, Poetics and Loss: The Unseen Battles

Privilege was not flaunted in Lucknow schooling. Chakbast, with an insatiable desire of learning and the knowledge of ancient books passed his Matriculation in 1900, and then FA, BA and lastly a law degree in 1907. But misfortunes to him Accident, not poet, sure, Wrote. He was married in 1905 and knew the joy of it, then they were flung into a pit of sorrow; a year later he was a widower and a fatherless child. It was impossible to be more brutal than to watch dreams of tomorrow to turn to shit in one season.

However, it is darkness which made him strong. In 1907, he remarried not only to get hope back, but to have the strength to rebuild. Chakbast was a junior lawyer and it is said that once he lost his first case, and he wept in the court corridor with shaking hands. Rather than give up, he would sit up nights, among the old papers of his father, and learn law and poetry–the logic that was to make him one of the most respected, poised members of the Lucknow Bar. During these times he had come to the realisation that wisdom was a combination of emotion and discipline, a theme which is reflected in the unique balance of his writings.

Braj Narayan Chakbast- Beyond Words: A Life of Service and Struggle

Braj Narayan Chakbast did not only see the growth of himself. He was a strong advocate of the agitated socio-political atmosphere of the epoch and was not afraid of activism. He also participated in the establishment of the Kashmiri Young Men Association and the Bahadur Library that meant that he was committed to education and unity. Where others only watched, Chakbast did something: he spoke out on Home Rule in India, and threw himself into the Home Rule Movement, an act that made him a thorn in the side of colonial authorities, according to documents and local rumour that have yet to be seen.

There is an episode, hardly ever referred to, which throws a light upon his daring. Braj Narayan Chakbast replied in Urdu and uncompromising calmness when British officials asked him about the aims of his association library: A library does not create sedition. Idiocy does.” It was one sentence and it was uttered in a colonial office and it is still lingering in the collective memory of Lucknow and it was full of suspicion. Insisting on reason, education and dialogue, Chakbast was turned into a permanent hope that brought the communities together regardless of caste and creed.

Braj Narayan Chakbast- Verse as Resistance: His Writings and Unsung Stories

Although most people are familiar with Braj Narayan Chakbast through his modern poems and ghazals, his works, which comprised more than 50 ghazals, nazms, a play and mathnavis, frequently tapped into the silent pools of his grief and the burning rivers of his ideals. His style was a combination of the new, the old, but it is his empathy of the ordinary suffering which brought his poems to immortality. In one such sad story, having won a landmark court case on behalf of an abused widow, he came home, composed a poem about injustice and sent the full fee to fund a school in her village. The cheque which he had never signed; he wanted thanks of his conscience only.

His poems defending Daya Shankar Kaul Nasim’s authorship of ‘Gul Bakawali’ reveal his loyalty to truth and literary legacy. He wrote not only to charm, but to inspire, to give courage–courage he had to find every day, inspired by the example of such poets as Ghalib and Mir Anis. His poems about Kashmir raised not just beauty, but inclusivity: “Zarra Zarra hai mere Kashmir ka mehmaan-nawaaz…”–every grain of Kashmir welcomes a guest–an ode to his homeland undying hospitality and his hope to see a tolerant India.

Legacy of Light: The End and the Unfinished Song

By the year 1926, Braj Narayan Chakbast was a household name not only to the poets, but also to the marginalized, the hopeful and the broken. One chilly morning in Rae Bareli where he had gone to plead a case, he collapsed at the railway station, paralyzed and died a few hours later, at the young age of 44. The word passed down the streets of Lucknow and the sorrow was as silent as the snows of the Kashmir valleys that he loved so well.

His prematurely ended life left behind verses that inspire to date. There is a story behind every poem- of a man who silently endured pain, fought the powerless, wrote straight to the heart and brought out beauty out of battle. However, even nowadays, a lot of the real legacy of Braj Narayan Chakbast is said: in the libraries he built, in the mother he consoled when he was a little boy, and in all those verses where the battle to discover meaning clashes with the tune of hope. His verse still oaths: What is life, but the bunching of things–what is death, but their benign scattering? To people who seek inspiration, his story is an answer in life.

Also Read: Dil Shahjahanpuri: The Poet Who Turned Pain into Poetry

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