Zafar - the poet
"Do gaz zameen bhi na mili" : Bahadur Shah Zafar in the Time of Qabristan and Shamshan Bahadur Shah Zafar, above all, came to embody and symbolise the civilisational unity, cultural continuity and political integrity of India at her darkest hour. The moment when she refused to go gentle into that dark night, and raged, raged against the dying of the light. This is a requiem to what India was and a lamentation of what she could have been. Her aborted potential. It vividly captures the degeneration that had set in and the embers that still glowed under the heaps of ashes of the fire that was once the light and warmth of a vibrant civilisation. No wonder that the greatest cultural efflorescence since the age of Bhakti and Khusrau took place in the first half of the 19th century. Zafar presided over it, and Ghalib was its most luciferous star. Its sun. The greatest gift of the Indo-Islamic culture. The milky marbles of Taj Mahal may pale someday, but Ghalib will keep shining brig...