Urdu Poetry: Writing and Following the Aruuz

Urdu Poetry (Urdu Shayari) is the most inspiring bit of life for people speaking the Urdu language regardless of their region. Even most of the poetry in the Urdu language falls under the category of sad poetry but yet the readers enjoy it because they relate to it and get the hope feeling that they are not alone in this, Mirza Ghalib's poetry is there too. Moreover, the love for love poetry or any other genre of poetry is not new for humans, we feel and want to express or be expressed.

Expression Through Poetry

Human is more emotional being rather than social one that's why emotions have a strong emphasis on one's life and they play a vital role in the making of a living. If emotions are not channeled properly they may cause psychic issues and lack of their express results in if not mental diseases at least mental exhaustion. One of the ways to express these emotions is through words: if these words are in the best order (inducing rhythms) and portray their meaning perfectly are called poetry. Poetry gives you relief and peace, you feel lighter; the instinct to be expressed gets fulfilled. But we do not bother to know whether everything which we utter is poetry or not? Even in the 21st century, we do not know what is difference between poetry and prose, rather, we tend to question "does poetry need to be structured? or does creativity need to be bound?"

Making of The Poetry

Poetry is actually the beautiful words in the best order portraying their meaning perfectly in rhythm. Yes, poetry is not those words that you listen to every other teenager enunciating without rhythm and making-sense meanings. Poetry is full of music, natural rhythm, and charismatic scheme that when you listen to it you unconsciously appreciate, start to enjoy, and feel that is what was in your heart. Every language has its own rules regarding the making of Poetry, so The Urdu Language does. To write poetry in the Urdu language you must have knowledge of Aruuz or natural rhythm set to your subconscious that you do not need to learn manually. As Mehboob Khizan says

"bat ye hai k aadmi shayar"

"ya to hota hai ya nahi hota"

This means, "the matter is, a person is, naturally a poet otherwise he isn't". Therefore, the question is why do we need the knowledge of the making of poetry in the first place, if a person is a poet naturally and does not need to learn. The most usual answer we get is that this knowledge is developed for critics and those poets who are poets by nature but whose skill needs to be polished. This knowledge of rhythm in poetry is called Aruuz.

Aruuz: The Knowledge of Rhythms in Poetry

Aruuz (Urdu Prosody) is the knowledge of standard rhythmic patterns followed in Urdu poetry. To my best knowledge, there are 25 absolute rhythms and thousands of deviations of these rhythms used in Urdu poetry. Therefore, if your poem follows the meters of these 25 rhythms you are good with the rhythmic factor and if your words make sense and introduce a wonderful idea enclosed you are a poet, congrats. Unlike English or most western languages, Urdu does not rely on stressed or unstressed syllables; accented syllables, and unaccented syllables. Urdu has prosody similar to Persian and Arabic prosody where rhythm is made using high and low sounds. In the Urdu language, there are two types of sounds; one is a short syllable and one is a long syllable.

Short Syllable

A short syllable is one that is comprised of a single or composite alphabet in the Urdu language making a short sound. For instance, the word "باپ" (baap) contains a short syllable at the end whereas the alphabet "پ" (p) is a single alphabet that represents a short syllable making the short sound. let's represent it with a (-).

Long Syllable

A long syllable is one that is comprised of two or more alphabets or a single alphabet in the Urdu language making a long sound. For example, the same word "باپ" (baap) contains a long syllable at the start of the word "با" where two alphabets "ب"  and "ا" together make a long sound "baa". let's represent it with a (=).

So, in our system, we can represent the word "baap" with "=-" or if written in Urdu script as "باپ(-=)".

Rhythms

These short and long syllables in a specific order and setting comprise rhythm (بحر) in the Urdu language. Rhythms can be hetero-schematic or homo-schematic. 

Homo-schematic Rhythm

A homo-schematic rhythm is one where a small pattern is set and is repeated several times to make a rhythm. For example,  "فعولن فعولن فعولن فعولن" is a rhythm in which a small pattern "فعولن" is repeated four times in a rhythm. A "فعولن" is "==-" so the rhythm is "==-==-==-==-".

As an example see 

                                                                "ترے عشق کی انتہا چاہتا ہوں"

                                                                " =    =-=  =-= =   -=    =-"

Hetero-schematic Rhythm

A hetero-schematic rhythm is one where different patterns comprise a rhythm. For example, this is a rhythm "مفعول فاعلات مفاعیل فاعلن" which can be represented as "=-=-==--=-=-=="

As an example see

                                                            "کل رات عشق یار رلاتا رہا مجھے"

                                                            "=-  =- ==- -=  -=    -=    ="

Conclusion

Rhythm is the essence of poetry and without rhythm words in defiance of having novel ideas enclosed in them are prose. If we do not learn aruuz at least we should have knowledge of it so we can have a better idea of what poetry is in real terms.

If you are interested in aruuz you may learn it from google or comment here to contact me.