COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

“LAJWANTI” AND “GHAZAL”

Name: Alisha Deen

Course: B.A Programme
Year: 3rd Year, 6th semester
College ID: 20BBAP060
Subject: English GE-Indian Diversity

L ajwanti is a short story written by Rajinder Singh Bedi, while "Zihal-e-Miskin"

is a ghazal by Amir Khusrau. Despite being from di erent genres, both the
works deal with themes of love and separation. Virha or separation is one of the
most important and celebrated emotions in Indian literature.

AUTHOR
AMIR KHUSRAO, was an Indian Su singer, musician, poet and a scholar who
lived during the period of the Delhi Sultanate. He could uently speak Sanskrit,
Hindi and Persian, therefore, he could write “Zihal-e-Miskin” which is a paradox: it
is a combination of two disparate languages i.e Persian and Brij into a ghazal form
that eventually became one language, Urdu. It is a ghazal that depicts the pain of
separation between two lovers. The poem uses imagery and metaphors to convey
the intensity of the pain and the depth of the love that the two share. The ghazal
also touches upon the themes of spiritual longing and the quest for union with
the divine.

On the other hand, RAJINDER SINGH BEDI was from Punjab region of Pakistan
and moved to India at the time of the Partition. His best known work pinpoints the
immense human cost of the 1947 Partition of India divulged into Pakistan and
India. “Lajwanti” explores the plight of abducted women during the violence and
upheaval of the Subcontinent’s partition in 1947. Sundarlal, an abusive husband
whose own wife went missing during the con ict, actively campaigns for the
repatriation of abducted women but is taken aback by the unsettling emotional
transformations that attend the acceptance of his own wife back into his home. He
is separated from his love and this completely transforms him into a man. The
story highlights the trauma faced by people during the partition and the power of
love to overcome ordeals of life.

FIGURES OF SPEECH
In terms of narrative style, "Lajwanti" is written in prose and follows a linear
narrative structure, while "Zihal-e-Miskin" is a poem written in the form of a
ghazal which follows a non-linear structure and employs a repetitive rhyme
scheme. Aesthetic use of metaphors can be seen in the Ghazal where the female
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protagonist expresses the sorrow of parting from her lover and justi es her plight
and longing for him by using poignant imagery like “Long as tresses the night of
parting, The day of love is short as life”. This metaphor beautifully compares the
length of the night of separation to the length of her hair, while the day of love is
as short as life itself.

Whereas in Lajwanti, Rajinder Singh Bedi has adorned his story with beautiful use
of metaphors too like,

{ “Touch the leaves of the Lajwanti,

They curl and wither away” }

where Lajwanti, the protagonist, has been compared to the leaves of ‘touch-me-
not’ plant as she too is very sensitive.

PREJUDICE AND MINDSET

In Lajwanti, toxic mentality can be seen in a lot of instances, which highlights the
fact that how woman were treated in that period of time. For instance, it is very
normal for a man to hit his wife for imsiest of pretexts and objectifying her.
Parents and husbands denied recognising their own daughters and wives after
their return from across the border as they were expected to have killed
themselves for saving their virtue and women who did come back home, came
back with their heads bent low, to pick up the pieces left of their lives and rebuild
their homes . Women of the village themselves could be seen making comments
against women who show slightest of independence that ‘what kind of a man is
her husband that can’t even keep his little woman in line!’. In the end of the story,
when Laju is nally being treated well by her husband, expresses that “She could
be many things but could never hope to be the old Laju ever again”, this shows
that she had been so used to being treated wrong that being treated right made
her feel out of place or rather- A new Laju, who truly is a glass object too fragile
to withstand the barest touch.

In Ghazal, the woman too can be seen helpless and waiting for her lover to come
back to her and not abandon her. Here too the woman can be seen as a weak
character and giving up all her identity for the man.

CONCLUSION
I would like to conclude that both the pieces of literature try to bring out the
reality of those times and the gravity of emotions. Both the writer and the poet
have done full justice to their work of art and could bring us more close to the
truth of lives.
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