Haroon Rashid Siddiqi
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PUBLISHED October 19, 2025
“Hindustan ki ilhami kitābain do hain: Muqaddas Vaid aur Dīvān-e-Ghālib. » These famous words were written by Dr. Abdur Rahman Bijnori in his seminal thesis Mahāsin-e-Kalām-e-Ghālib, which he was writing in 1918 when the merciless Spanish Flu pandemic claimed his life at the age of thirty-three. Although his time was brief, he left behind a luminous treasure on Ghalib – published posthumously from Bhopal in 1921 – which remains one of the finest reflections on the poet’s genius.
His bold but deeply considered remark declared that India possessed two revealed scriptures: the sacred Vedas and the Dīvān-e-Ghālib. This was not a simple exaggeration but a recognition of the unfathomable depth of Ghalib’s poetry: its multiple meanings, its metaphysical scope, its inexhaustible capacity to illuminate the human condition.
Truly understanding this ocean, mapping its infinite expanses and revealing its secret currents, has been the work of many people. Yet if there is one figure – whether from the East or the West – who has come closest to this Herculean task in our time, it is undoubtedly Dr. Frances W. Pritchett.
A specialist in Urdu and Persian literature and professor emeritus at Columbia University, Dr. Pritchett has given us what can only be described as a magnum opus: A Desert of Roses. This vast online project is not simply a translation of Ghalib’s diwan but a luminous archive of meanings, a living museum where the voices of centuries of interpreters converge. If Ghalib’s poetry is writing, then Pritchett has built his cathedral for us – an edifice both scholarly and aesthetic, where each verse blossoms like a rose amid the desert sands of history.
Its success lies not only in its philological precision but also in its interpretive generosity. She resists the temptation to impose a singular meaning on Ghalib’s couplets. Instead, she recognizes that her words contain multitudes. Every sher [couplet] is presented with a constellation of readings drawn from the most renowned commentators – Shibli, Hali, Tabatabai, Bekhud Dehalvi, Bekhud Mohani, Gyan Chand, Kalidas Gupta Raza, Yusuf Salim Chishti and many others – so that the reader can witness the dazzling plurality of interpretations. Ghalib, after all, was a poet who loved ambiguity, who thrived on the shimmering instability of language.
Pritchett doesn’t try to “solve” it; on the contrary, it opens the door for us to wander through its labyrinths.
Its website, accessible to all and continually improved, has become an indispensable resource for scholars, students and lovers of Urdu poetry around the world. With its bilingual presentation – romanized Urdu text and English translations – it democratizes access to Ghalib, ensuring that the poet who once claimed to be understood by no one can now be encountered by anyone curious and patient.
One of the subtle triumphs of A Desertful of Roses is the way it situates Ghalib within the broader tapestry of Mughal aesthetics. The Mughal world, with its architecture of arches and domes, its miniature paintings, its intricate calligraphy, is not simply a historical backdrop: it is an interpretive symbolism. Pritchett’s work allows us to see Ghalib’s poetry as an extension of this sensibility: ornamental but profound, playful but serious, constantly renewed. Much like the pietra dura of the Taj Mahal, where semi-precious stones are embedded in the marble, Ghalib’s words sparkle with embedded allusions – to Quranic imagery, to Persian tropes, to philosophical paradoxes. Pritchett has preserved these details with the care of a master archivist, so that readers not only read verses but enter the rooms of a palace, each more marvelous than the last.
What sets A Desertful of Roses apart is its polyphonic nature. No interpreter of Ghalib is silenced; on the contrary, everyone is invited to speak. This multiplicity echoes the poet’s awareness of the infinitely suggestive character of language.
To read Pritchett’s project is to witness a symposium across the centuries, where Shibli and Hali debate meanings, Bekhud intervenes, and Pritchett herself offers clarifying notes—never authoritarian, always respectful of the reader’s imagination. The effect is fascinating. Each verse becomes a prism. Tilt it to one side and you see metaphysical despair; tilt it another, and it sparkles with wry wit. Ghalib once thought that “a thousand meanings flow from every word.” Pritchett’s work proves him right.
The very title of the project – A Desertful of Roses – captures the paradox of Ghalib’s world. The desert suggests barrenness, difficulty, endless thirst. Roses promise beauty, fragrance, sudden ecstasy. To cross the diwan is to endure both: the solitude of existential inquiry and the joy of poetic revelation. Pritchett, as a guide, does not soften the harshness of the desert, but she ensures that its roses are visible, fragrant and unforgettable.
In the final analysis, Pritchett’s contribution must be seen as both scientific and civilizational. She built a bridge between cultures, allowing English-speaking audiences to approach the greatness of Urdu, while deepening the appreciation of indigenous readers by bringing together centuries of commentary in one place. Mughal emperors built gardens to reflect heaven on earth; Pritchett has constructed a textual garden, where the roses of Ghalib’s genius perpetually bloom.
Calling her the great Ghalibienne of our time is not an exaggeration. With A Desert of Roses, she created a monument as lasting as a marble mausoleum, as fragrant as a rose garden. It is a gift not only to literary scholarship but also to the world of poetry itself. And just as Ghalib once asserted, “thousands of desires, each worth dying for,” Pritchett has given us thousands of meanings, each worth pondering forever.
As I reflect on his extraordinary achievement, I feel compelled to offer my humble tribute in verse: a qitah. [ a short detached piece of poetry] dedicated to Dr. Frances Pritchett, who trod the kingdom of Ghalib with more luminosity than I could ever have imagined:
Ghalib ki hai dehleez zara soch ke jaana,
Ek alam-e-afaq hai nous khamagarri mein;
Har lafz jahan behre tilismaat ho goya,
Darya ko kiya bandh wahan kozagarri mein.
[Tread lightly upon Ghalib’s threshold,
for in his craft lies a universe entire;
Each word a sea of enchantments,
the ocean itself contained within a potter’s clay]
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the author
Haroon Rashid Siddiqui is a freelance contributor and opinion writer.
