Mirza Abu Zafar Sirajuddin Muhammad Bahadur Shah Zafar,
The last Mughal emperor was himself a poet and mystic.
When the Uprising broke out, Zafar became the de facto leader of the resistance - a role he resisted.
After the Uprising was over and Zafar was exiled to jail in Burma, there were rumors that he spent his last days mumbling to himself and scratching poems on the wall of his cell with the burnt end of a stick.
The dome of the sky is a maddening jail,
Oh, we do not have the strength even to raise a wail
How can the captive bird hope to fly away,
When he hasn't got the strength even to plead and pray?
~ Bahadur Shah Zafar, Wail of Grief
The Delhi poets were saying:
Our city is in trouble,
Our voices are in danger.
Our magical universe is dying.
We need to speak of these things, and get angry, and sad, and amused, and wistful, and sardonic, and aware, and sad.
Even though everything we love as poets and artists is falling away, we must remember who we are and we must remain in love with our watan, our community of place, this place...
There was a city famed throughout the world,
Where dwelt the chosen spirits of the age.
Fate looted it and made it desolate,
And to that ravaged city I belong.
~ Mir Taqi Mir (a spontaneous outburst)
A shahr ashob is a poem about troubled cities.
A shahr ashob can also sometimes be a serio-comic description of goings-on about town…