Ik aur ghar bhi thha mera: Why does Jaun Elia pine for his motherland?

This episode talks about a nazm by Syed Hussain Sibt-e-Azgar Naqvi, commonly known as Jaun Elia, a famous Urdu poet born in Uttar Pradesh’s Amroha in 1931, lived in the town of his birth until he was 26 and moved to Pakistan where he died in 2002. Elia never liked the idea of partition and was quite vocal about it. This nazm is a clear reflection of his anguish and sadness associated with the partition of our country that had a profound impact on Elia’s poetry and style of writing.इक और घर भी था मिराजिस में मैं रहता था कभीइक और कुम्बा था मिराबच्चों बड़ों के दरमियाँ(I had another home where I used to live. I had a clan, a tribe where the young and the old stayed together)To feel this nazm to the core, one needs to delve into the life and times of Jaun Elia. He loved his motherland but all his siblings moved to Pakistan and so did the woman he loved, Fareha. It’s said that she married someone else as he refused to move with her, initially. By the time he was 26, he was all alone as his parents had passed away and he had no one to turn to. Elia, then in dire need of economic sustainability and family support, had to migrate to Pakistan.इक और हस्ती थी मिरीकुछ रंज थे कुछ ख़्वाब थेमौजूद हैं जो आज भीवो घर जो थी बस्ती मिरी(I was a known figure there, and had my own sets of regrets and aspirations. The locality where I used to stay It’s still there)The entire nazm revolves around his home back in Amroha and the times he spent in India. Over the years, the agony of separation from Fareha, and India, grew manifold. Although he married and had three children, his wife left him eventually and by the time he was 50, mental illness had struck him owing to the torturous solitude he had shut himself in. Had not his friends and relatives provided support, Elia’s emotional self-infliction would have cut short his life brutally. वो घर जो थी बस्ती मिरीउस में भी थी हस्ती मिरीये घर जो है बस्ती मिरीइस में भी है हस्ती मिरीIn Pakistan, the poet did attain popularity but it was confined to mushairas. It was not until 1990 that he published the compilation of his poems, by the name ‘Shayad.‘ In this part of prose, Elia says that as an individual I had influence in my old home and here too I am quite popular.और मैं हूँ जैसे कोई शयदो बस्तियों में अजनबी(Now I feel like someone who’s an alien in both the dwellings)In the very next sentence, he paints a word picture of a soul torn apart by the sting of separation that rendered him an outsider in both the lands. The sentence clearly suggests, Elia could never feel at home in the place he had to move to and at the same time, couldn’t forget his old home either. The partition and subsequent migration had left him homeless, in metaphorical terms.The best part of this nazm is that its meaning remains relevant in changing eras. Uprooting oneself is never easy, and particularly for those who are connected emotionally to their land and the past. The pain always persists. The intensity may differ from person to person. There are so many people who migrate from their hometowns to newer cities or other countries. There’s always a sense of longing, and this nazm aptly encapsulates those emotions.Jaun Elia’s life is a story of millions of citizens of undivided India who bore the trauma of separation from their homelands, the lands of their ancestors and their childhood.Audio production: Prateek Kapoor