'Aaj jaane ki zid na karo': How the ghazal became a philosophy of love and longing

Indian Express

03-05-2025

In light of the Supreme Court's recent ruling that Urdu is not a foreign language but an integral part of our own heritage, I'll be writing a series of reflections over the next few weeks to celebrate its beauty, depth, and legacy. This is the first of those pieces.
I was ten when the song first slipped into my soul. Aaj jaane ki zid na karo. Don't insist on leaving tonight. It arrived not as a demand but a devotion, as though the words had walked through centuries of separation just to sit beside me. It was dusk. My father had pressed play on a mixtape, and Habib Wali Mohammad's voice rose like mist—mellow and magnetic, filled with a kind of restrained yearning that even at ten, I could feel before I could understand. That moment, innocent and intimate, would become ritual. My father, proud and persistent, made me sing it almost every day. In rooms lit with fairy lights and filled with family, during dinner parties where laughter clinked against glass, even at weddings after the clang and chorus of traditional songs—there it would come, like a hush, like a heart pausing mid-beat. I would begin, softly, shyly at first, and then fully, fiercely: Yun hi pehlu mein baithe raho, aaj jaane ki zid na karo.
Don't leave. Just stay.
That's what the song says. But it also says so much more. It says hold the moment. It says savour stillness. It says silence can sing. The words became part of my world, not just because I sang them, but because they echoed through everything I began to love. They were the gate through which I entered the garden of Urdu, where the vines of verse wrapped around me like velvet: Ghalib's sighs, Mir's sorrows, Iqbal's invocations, Zauq's zigzagging of wit and wisdom. They weren't just poets; they were my protectors, my prophets, my portals to something far greater than grammar or genre. They gave me grammar for grief, rhythm for rage, and language for longing.
Tumhi socho zaraa kyun na roken tumhein, jaan jaati hai jab uth ke jaate ho tum. Just think—why shouldn't I stop you? It feels like my life leaves me when you walk away. How could a line so quiet hold so much quake? I sang it again and again, not just on stages but inside myself, until it became a kind of second heartbeat. And when I wasn't singing, I was watching—watching Farida Khanum with her glittering sarees and silver-toned grace, her arms arched like calligraphy, her gaze lifted like a prayer, her eyes piercing straight through the screen into the rooms of our hearts. I remember every pallu drop, every glitter fleck of mukesh work, the wine-red lipstick, the slow sway of her shoulders, the stillness between the notes. Her movements weren't gestures—they were ghazals. Her silence wasn't absence—it was architecture.
Yeh samaa, sabr ka taalab hai. This moment asks for patience. And so we waited, breathlessly. That's what the song taught me: restraint is a kind of romance. In a world that rushed to climax, this song lingered in longing. In a world obsessed with declarations, it relished pauses. It taught me that desire lives most vividly not in possession, but in presence.
And in those living rooms, across generations, the song became a shared language. It didn't matter if the guests were young or ageing, loud or languid, whether they understood Urdu or not. The moment the music played, something melted. Something merged. It was the magic of melody meeting memory. Elders closed their eyes. Strangers swayed. Children fell quiet. It wasn't a performance—it was communion. That's the gorgeousness of poetry, of language, of heartfelt expression. It transcends text. It travels through time. It tethers us to each other.
Jee nahi lagta, jaane ke baad. Nothing feels right once you've gone. The simplicity of this line unravels like silk—soft, but it slices. That kind of unadorned truth is what made this song so eternal. It didn't posture. It pleaded. It didn't demand drama. It asked for tenderness. It reminded us that even the smallest parting can feel like the sun slipping behind a cloud.
And some of its most surprising journeys took place not in salons or studios, but along borders lined with barbed wire and belief. My Phupaji—Hargobind Prasad Bhatnagar—my father's sister's husband, was the Director General of the Border Security Force, and through the tight-laced, tension-lined work of national defence, he found space for softness. Stationed near the India-Pakistan border through much of his career, he had access to the music that floated across fences—songs, voices, tapes, recordings—shared with quiet camaraderie by counterparts on the other side. In the midst of geopolitics and guard duty, there was this beautiful backchannel of brotherhood. A cassette of Mehdi Hassan. A ghazal from Noor Jehan. A Farida Khanum recording passed across with a smile, not a signature. This was the diplomacy of the human spirit. The silent service of the arts. The soft power of poetry.
Yeh bahut haseen lamhe hain, these are such beautiful moments. And we knew it. Whether we were gathered around in wedding finery or crumpled in cotton pyjamas, when that song played, the air shimmered. Inhein kho na do tum, don't lose them, the line whispers—and maybe that's why I clung so tightly to this song all these years.
That's how this song didn't just stay within me—it spread. It stretched across nations, stitched together ears and hearts that might never have spoken otherwise. And I came to see that what politics divided, poetry could momentarily mend. What language labelled, music could unname. It wasn't about Urdu or Hindi or Punjabi or English—it was about emotion. It was about essence. It was about that shared sigh we all recognise, the ache of someone turning away, and the unbearable beauty of asking them not to.
Waqt ki qaid mein zindagi hai magar, chand ghadiyan yahi hain jo aazad hain. Life is imprisoned by time, but these few moments are free. Those lines held me like lullabies when the world felt too loud. They reminded me that presence is a kind of protest. That to stay when you could leave is the most radical form of love. And that poetry, in its infinite quietness, can sometimes be louder than a revolution.
This song, sung again and again through my childhood, gave me more than musicality—it gave me moral imagination. It opened me to complexity, to nuance, to the deeply inconvenient yet deeply necessary practice of empathy. It helped me grow into a person who could see humanity before identity, melody before map, emotion before ego. And that's why I keep returning to it—not just because it reminds me of my father's pride, or my Phupaji's gentle diplomacy, or the dazzling drape of Farida Khanum's saree—but because it reminds me of what it means to feel fully.
Kitna masoom rangin hai yeh samaa, husn aur ishq ki aaj mein raaj hai. Kal ki kisko khabar jaane-jaa, rok lo aaj ki raat ko.
How innocent, how vivid, how coloured with grace this moment is. Tonight belongs to beauty and to love. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, beloved? So stop the night. Pause the clock. Pin this breath to the sky. Stay. Just stay.
It's not just a ghazal. It's a philosophy.
It's not just a performance. It's a prayer.
It's not just a relic. It's a rebellion.
And so when I sing it now, even quietly to myself, I don't just hear the past. I hear the potential. I hear what could be possible if we all paused long enough to listen. If we all let poetry into our politics. If we all let language do what it was meant to do—not divide us, but deliver us back to each other.
So please, if you're reading this, aaj jaane ki zid na karo. Don't insist on leaving just yet. Sit with the feeling. Stay in the stillness. Let the song do what it's always done—soften, soothe, and stitch.