Begum Akhtar helped Agha Shahid Ali hear the ghazal as a performed art, not only a written form. Accounts of the poet’s attendance at her concerts describe how he studied her silences, repetitions, interjections, wit and Urdu sensibility—qualities that informed his own ghazals in English. Her influence was formative, but it was one strand in a wider literary life shaped by Kashmir, Urdu poetry, family, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and other writers.
What Begum Akhtar gave Ali: an ear for performance
A 2019 feature by Manan Kapoor, published by Sahapedia and republished by Scroll, recounts that Ali and his friend Saleem Kidwai went to hear Akhtar when she performed in town. The account says Ali sat close to her and recorded a concert on a Philips tape recorder. It describes him listening closely to the spaces and gestures around the words: silences, interjections, repetition, wit and the *nakhra*—an expressive affectation—of her Urdu performance.
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That account also connects her singing to *mazmun affrini*, or the creation of themes, and to onomatopoeia. These details come through retrospective reporting and recollections; they show how Akhtar’s performance was remembered as a source for Ali’s sensibility, rather than establishing a single, exclusive cause of his poetic development.
Why the sound of a ghazal mattered
A ghazal is a sequence of couplets, often capable of standing apart in thought or feeling while belonging to a larger poem. In traditional accounts, rhyme and a recurring refrain bind the couplets together; Urdu terms for these are *qafia* and *radif*. Meter is also part of the form’s inheritance, though modern English-language ghazals do not all follow one uncontested set of rules.
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Akhtar’s singing could make those formal features audible as expressive choices: where a line pauses, how a sound returns, and how a performer gives a couplet its emotional turn. Amitav Ghosh, writing about Ali, offered an explicitly interpretive account of the connection, saying it was “probably” Ali’s relationship with Akhtar that stirred his passion for the ghazal as a verse form. Ghosh also recalls Ali describing how Akhtar placed a ghazal on a raga until the music and syllables seemed to merge. The point is not that Ali simply transferred a singer’s technique onto the page; rather, performance helped him understand how repetition, restraint and variation could carry meaning.
From musical influence to English-language ghazals
Ali became one of the most visible advocates for the ghazal in English. His formal practice used linked couplets and recurring sound patterns to give poems unity even when their subjects shifted. The Poetry Foundation’s account of Ali discusses his commitment to the form and his edited anthology Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English, published in 2000. The book gathered English-language work that engaged the ghazal as a form, rather than treating the name as a loose label.
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Ali also wrote his own ghazals, including poems collected in Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals. A scholarly discussion of his work examines his formal choices and notes that his movement toward English ghazals drew on multiple influences, including his admiration for James Merrill. Akhtar’s example belongs in that wider account: it offered a living, musical model for what the form could do, while Ali developed his own approach in another language.
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Born in Kashmir in 1949, Ali grew up amid Kashmiri, Urdu and English. The Poetry Foundation’s biography notes his family’s friendship with Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Begum Akhtar. His literary formation also included family exposure to poetry and the Urdu literary environment around him. He translated Faiz’s ghazals; sources distinguish the translation work’s 1991 timing from the 1992 publication listing for The Rebel’s Silhouette.
Akhtar’s influence is especially tangible because Ali wrote “In Memory of Begum Akhtar” after her death on October 30, 1974, as the 2019 feature reports. The elegy makes the connection between singer and poet explicit, while his later poems and editorial work show how his engagement with the ghazal continued beyond that personal tribute.
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Where to begin with Ali’s ghazals
- Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English offers a route into the form through the anthology Ali edited.
- Call Me Ishmael Tonight is a direct starting point for Ali’s own English-language ghazals; a scholarly article discusses poems from the collection.
- For the musical side of the connection, listening to Akhtar’s ghazal performances can make the importance of pause, repetition and vocal inflection easier to appreciate. A specific recording edition should be chosen on its own merits; no particular current release is established here.
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