Mirza Ghalib’s Prose
One of the most influential luminaries of the Subcontinent literature, Mirza Asad Ullah Khan, continues to win the hearts of the posterity with his evergreen literary works. His is renowned for his poetic endeavors in Urdu and Persian language with thousands of high quality verses to his credit. He bagged a major chunk of fame through his rich philosophical verses which often eclipse his status as a prolific prose-writer. Many notable writers proclaim that Ghalib could have garnered the same magnitude of fame only on the basis of his amazing prose. He gave a new and refreshing facet to the genre of prose-writing and thereby, is often referred to as “the father of prose-writing” in the realm of Urdu literature. He is the most written about of all the poets of Urdu literature , so much so that the study of his works has surprisingly been converted into a branch of exhaustive Urdu literature named “Ghalibiyaat”.
Ghalib truly excelled in the domain of letter and journal writing (especially letter-writing which he started in 1857), endowing the style a novel characteristic. Before Ghalib ventured into literature, the prose literature included only a few theological and fictional books unnecessarily encumbered with heavy Persian and Arabic words. Ghalib divorced this highly artificial style in vogue, and hospitably welcomed his peculiar austere writing style. He effortlessly wrote two significant Urdu collections of letters; Urdu-e-Muallah (The Royal Urdu) and Ud-i-Hindi (The Indian Amber), laying a solid foundation of easy, popular and yet literary Urdu. He added another prominent feather to his literary cap through his narrative of historical accounts penned into impressive journal/diary format. This format includes Dastanboo (Pellet of Perfume) and Mihr-e-Nim Roz (Midday Sun), both in Persian language. His idiosyncrasy became so