NISHTER is a Persian word and it means a lancet, a surgical knife or blade. The 72 nishters or lancets, or 72 heart-pricking couplets, of Mir Taqi Mir was the mantra in Urdu criticism ever since Muhammad Husain Azad mentioned it in his Aab-i-Hayat.

Azad, while attributing this famous quote about the 72 finest couplets by Mir to `the old assayers of Urdu`, has taken it with a pinch of salt and says Mir`s divans of ghazals are `filled with moist and dry` (the good and the bad) and `the rest is just tabarruk`, or a portion of sacred offering given as blessing. But then Azad goes on to say, in his usual florid and somewhat convoluted way, that whenever someone recites a heart-wrenching couplet of Mir, it issaid that this one is from those 72.

Looking at the contradictory remarks, one wonders if Azad is praising Mir or trying to dent his reputation. Azad says that Mir took many a motif from Persian poetry and shaped them into `rekhta` (Urdu), stressing that Mir`s parlance is that of commoners and he truly shaped Urdu by using the language as spoken at the stairs of Delhi`s Jame`mosque.

But selecting only 72 as best out of more than 13,000 couplets that are preserved in six volumes of Mir`s kulliyaat, or complete oeuvre, may not be vindicated by the fact that the number of Mir`s select couplets quoted by Azad himself is much higher. Maybe, this is a matter of personalpreference orbecause ofaspecific view that one takes, as Ranjit Hoskote has translated 150 of Mir`s couplets into English and many ofthem have a political or historical ringing about them. Also, some of them have a quality of touching the heart, if not pricking.

Preceding the translations is a longish intro by Hoskote, an acclaimed poet, translator and critic from India. The intro offers a peep into Mir`s life, his times, linguistic acumen, cultural horizon, political upheavals and Mir`s inner world.

Published by Penguin Random House India and titled `The Homeland`s an Ocean` (subtitled Mir Taqi Mir Translated from Urdu), the book offers some fresh perspective on Mir and his poetry. The title of the book is derived from a couplet by Mir that says: Ek jagah par jaise bhanvar hain lekin chakkar rahta hai Yani vatan darya hai us men char taraf hain safar mein aab And Hoskote`s translation is:Like the whirlpool, still centre of giddy circling, The homeland`s an ocean that scatters us in all directions.

Mir`s text is reproduced in Roman script and the publishers would have done a favour both to Mir and the readers had they given the original text in Urdu script as well, as there is enough space left blank since every page offers just one couplet and its English translation. Most of the 150 couplets of Mir translated into English proffer a political perspective, alluding to the historical and social meltdown that Mir experienced in his long life, seeing the reins of several kings, the marauders, the invasions on Delhi and the subsequent decline of the city into chaos.

And how do these translations sound? The fact is translating poetry is never easy, in any language, let alone Urdu`s trope-laden poetry that comeswith Mir`s idiomatic expressions. If the translator goes too literal it may sound quite strange, even hilarious in otherlanguages,andifone triesto explain some notions with notes on translation it becomes a commentary and goes beyond the sphere of translation. That said, one is surprised to see some translations that are justified neither literally nor metaphorically, for instance, zahirdaar has been translated as `drama queen`, aarifaan-i-shehr as `know-it-alls` and muhre as `chessmen` (instead of pawns or pieces in chess).

One of Mir`s couplets, with a political resonance, and its translation by Hoskote: dil ki virani ka kva mazkur hai veh nagar sau martaba loota gava Of the heart`s desolation, what report? This city has been looted a hundred times over.What surprises a student of Urdu poetry, such as this writer, is that whenever Hoskote wants to say `verse` or `couplet` he refers to them as `poems, such as `Mir`s poems` and `Ghalib`s poems`. Calling a single couplet, just two lines, a poem is quite surprising, because in Urdu when we say poem we mean `nazm`, or a modern poem. And as we all know, Ghalib or Mir never wrote any `poem` in the modern sense. Perhaps he has taken a cue from Frances W.

Pritchett whom he quotes in his intro as saying `the she`r is the fundamental unit of all presentation ... the individual verse has always been treated as a small, complete, free-standing poem`. True, but it does not mean that technically a she`r or couplet can be called a poem or it becomes one.

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