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“Umaraan langiyaan pabaan bhaar” means, in Nate Rabe’s rendering, “a lifetime spent waiting on tiptoes.” The Punjabi poem by Mazhar Tirmazi became widely known through Asad Amanat Ali Khan’s song, then reached a new audience in a 2015 Coke Studio season-eight interpretation led by Ali Sethi with Nabeel Shaukat Ali. Rabe’s 2016 feature traces how a poem of longing and displacement moved between writers, performers and musical traditions.
What does “Umaraan langiyaan pabaan bhaar” mean?
Nate Rabe translates the title as “a lifetime spent waiting on tiptoes” and renders the refrain as “Lifetimes have passed as I wait on tiptoes.” The image suggests a life spent alert to an arrival that may never come: poised, listening and suspended in uncertainty. These are Rabe’s translations and interpretation, rather than a definitive scholarly translation.
In Rabe’s reading, the opening line directs the poem’s attention toward someone absent. Its images sharpen that sense of estrangement: a season of red roses set against flowers seen as black, and a distant, alienated beloved alongside a homeland that continues to call. Longing here is not simply romantic; it is also bound up with separation, belonging and the ache of what may be impossible to recover.
Who wrote the poem, and when?
Punjabi-British poet Mazhar Tirmazi wrote the poem, according to Rabe, in 1973. Rabe says it appeared in an early issue of the literary journal Rut Lekha, but does not identify the issue number. Tirmazi described his poetic concerns in a statement Rabe reported: “I try to express all the realities of life in my poetry,” Tirmazi has said. “The loves, the hatreds, the joys and the sorrows.”
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How did the poem become Asad Amanat Ali Khan’s song?
Rabe dates Asad Amanat Ali Khan’s first performance of the song to 1975. The feature places the singer’s encounter with the poem soon after his father, classical singer Ustad Amanat Ali Khan, died in 1974. In adapting the poem, Asad Amanat added couplets by Khwaja Ghulam Farid to the opening stanza. Rabe says the combination helped give the song a sound listeners might mistake for much older Sufi poetry.
Rabe reports that the singer did not initially credit Tirmazi as the poet, and that many listeners assumed the words were traditional Sufi kalaam. The feature also points to a joint interview from 2000 in which the poet and singer acknowledged one another’s contributions. Rabe describes the exchange as warm; the interview itself is not reproduced in the feature.
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The song became a signature tune for Asad Amanat Ali Khan. Rabe says he performed it at venues including London’s Royal Albert Hall and, during a tour of India, at Indira Gandhi’s personal request. These performance details are reported in Rabe’s 2016 account.
Why does displacement matter to the poem?
Rabe connects the poem’s emotional landscape to Partition and its afterlives. He reports that Tirmazi’s family left Jalandhar district and migrated to what became Pakistani Punjab during Partition. In that context, the poem’s distance, unsettled loyalties and persistent call of home can be heard as more than private heartbreak.
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Rabe presents loss, homesickness, divided or ambiguous loyalties, and longing for what cannot be regained as recurring concerns in Tirmazi’s poetry. The poem’s waiting image holds those feelings together: a person remains poised toward someone or somewhere absent, with no guarantee that the separation will end.
What changed in the Coke Studio version?
In its account of the 2015 revival for Coke Studio’s eighth season, Rabe describes a new arrangement led by Ali Sethi, with Nabeel Shaukat Ali joining partway through. The arrangement brought a bluegrass banjo into the mix, creating a striking contrast with the song’s Punjabi and Sufi associations. Rabe also notes a passage drawing on a folk song previously sung by Faisalabad singer Allah Ditta Lonaywala.
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The versions therefore represent different acts of adaptation, not a simple contest over which is definitive. Asad Amanat Ali Khan’s rendition is the performance that made the poem widely known as a song and includes the reported Ghulam Farid couplets in its opening. The Coke Studio interpretation reframes the work through its new arrangement, its lead-and-joining vocal structure, and its folk-song passage.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the available account establishes
The chronology, translations, reception, biographical context and performance details here come from Nate Rabe’s feature, “A rare gem from Pakistan: A lifetime on tiptoes,” published by Scroll.in on March 6, 2016. That feature is the source for this account; its claims have not been independently corroborated here. It does not establish present-day streaming availability, a specific recording release, or a current edition of Tirmazi’s poetry.
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