Do not ask of Me, My Love - Faiz Ahmad

Faiz
A Note On The Poet :

Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1911-1984) was born in Sialkot, Punjab. He was an intellectual,
revolutionary poet and one of the most famous poets of Urdu language from Pakistan.
His varied career as a teacher, army officer, journalist, political leader, trade unionist
and as a brilliant poet won him a wide audience. He was a notable member of the
Progressive Writers’ Movement (PWM), a powerful cultural movement to shape the
struggle against British Imperialism in India. Faiz was a recipient of Lenin Peace Prize
by the Soviet Union in 1962. He was, nevertheless, inspired by South Asia’s Sufi
traditions.

Do not ask of Me, My Love Summary :

Faiz is said to have recited this poem in a Mushaira (a poetic symposium). It depicts the
struggle going on in Faiz’s heart, between love and patriotism. In this poem, he abjures
the romantic love of the ‘beloved’ for contemplation of the misery of the world. The
poem is a landmark for it leads 1 Faiz to the consideration of the misery he saw around
him related to the freedom struggle in his homeland.

The poem can be read in two parts. The first part begins with a couplet or a two-line
stanza and is followed by two longer stanzas. In this part, the poet addresses his
‘beloved’. He asks his ‘beloved’ not to expect the kind of love that he had once shown
her.

In the next stanza, he narrates and describes the way he had viewed ‘life’. In that stage
of his life, ‘life’ looked very young and blooming because of his love for his beloved.
Since his ‘beloved’ was the source of his happiness in life, he could not withstand any
kind of suffering afflicting his beloved.

The poet says that the beauty of his beloved bestowed everlasting youth on the spring.
He says that the eyes of his beloved were everything to him and everything else failed
to please him then. Therefore, when he was in the company of his beloved, he had
thought that the ‘world’ was his. But, in the second half of the stanza, the poet
confesses that such an idea was an illusion born out of his imagination. Now, he has
come to realize that there are other agonies of the world besides the agony of love, and
there are other kinds of solace in addition to the solace of love.
In the second part, he elucidates the ‘agonies’ and other kinds of solace in addition to
the solace of love, that demand his attention. The second part begins with the same
couplet asking his ‘beloved’ not to expect the same kind of love that he had for her
once.

In the next (longer) stanza he lists those agonies that demand his attention. They are
‘savagery’ woven in silk and satin and gold lace, which are dark curses of countless
ages, and human bodies sold in street and market-place besmeared in blood. They also
demand his attention. He says that even though her beauty compels his attention there
are other kinds of bliss besides the bliss of her beauty.

He concludes the second part again with the same couplet asking his beloved not to
demand the same kind of attention that once he had for his beloved. In this poem, the
word ‘beloved’ can be interpreted as his ‘muse’, his country, or his concept of beauty or
social change. This poem is said to be Faiz’s first experiment with blending the love for
the ‘beloved’ into love for humanity, of turning the pain of separation into pain for all
those who suffered under the dark bestial spells of uncounted centuries. In the second
stanza, he is obviously referring to slavery, slave trade and prostitution.
Do not ask of Me, My Love Comprehension I :

1.When does the speaker realise what he thought about love was not true?
OR
When does the speaker’s idea of love undergo a change, in ‘Do not ask of Me, My
Love’?
Ans: When he experiences other sorrows and pleasures in the world than what love
offered him.

2.‘That’s the way I imagined it to be,’ suggests

(a) that the speaker’s concept of love is naive.
(b) the speaker’s realisation of realities.
(c) the speaker’s view of love was just a wishful, thinking.
Ans: (b) the speaker’s realization of realities.

3.‘for there are other sorrows in the world than love,’ here ‘sorrows’ refers to
miseries
(a) generated by love
(b) caused by poverty and deprivation.
(c) caused by jealousy and envy.
Ans: (b) caused by poverty and deprivation.

4.‘You are beautiful still, my love.’ Here the speaker is expressing his
(a) fidelity to his love.
(b) inability to pay the same undivided attention to his love.
(c) preoccupations with other issues in life than his love.
Ans: (b) inability to pay the same undivided attention to his love. (Please note that a and
c are also not wrong)

Do not ask of Me, My Love Comprehension II :

1.What does the line ‘those dark and brutal curses of countless centuries’
suggest?
Ans: Faiz Ahmad was a Marxist and believed in the idea of an egalitarian society. When
he writes, ‘those dark and brutal curses of countless centuries’, he probably means the
suffering caused by stark poverty which seems to be a brutal curse on the hapless poor.
The phrase ‘countless centuries’ suggests that the poor have no escape from this state
of want. At another level, the phrase can be taken as having political allusions. It
highlights the betrayal of the founding of Pakistan.

It is to be read as addressed to the nation of Pakistan, which Faiz had embraced with
much hope, and with whose political leaders he became disillusioned. The persecution
of minorities, martial laws, public floggings and public executions changed the nature of
the creation of Pakistan as a nation. The vulnerable were no longer safe in the land
created to protect them.

2.What harsh realities of life have drawn the speaker’s attention much more than
the beauty of his beloved?
OR
How is the speaker in the poem ‘Do not ask of Me, My Love’ affected by the harsh
realities of mankind?
OR
What realities of life are experienced in the poem ‘Do not ask of Me, My Love’?
Ans: The beauty of his beloved cannot keep him riveted to it as other harsher realities of
life trouble. him. Pitted against his beloved’s beautiful face, he sees bodies bathed in
blood, smeared with dust, and sold from market-place to market-place. He can also see
bodies which are afflicted by a number of diseases and bodies from which pus oozes
out. That is why, though his beloved’s face is still beautiful, he cannot give his undivided
attention to the beauty of the face alone.

3.What transformation in the perception of love do you see in the poem?

OR
What change in the poet’s attitude towards his beloved do you notice in the
poem?
OR
In the poem, the poet’s perception of love changes with time. What reasons does
he give for this change?
OR
How does the responsibility of the speaker as a human being change his
perception of love in ‘Do not ask of Me, My Love’?
Ans: We see that Faiz Ahmad moves from the personal to the political, from the
particular to the general in his concept of love in the poem ‘Do not ask of Me, My Love’.
If the poet was confined to the world of romantic love in the past, he now moves out of it
to enter the world of love where he can extend his love to his fellow brethren. It is not
that he loves his beloved less, but that he knows that the emotion of love is all-
encompassing and it need not remain limited to one individual.

In the past, if one individual happened to be his world, now he sees that the world is
much more than just an individual. Earlier, if he thought there was no greater joy or
sorrow than the ones resulting from his love for the beloved, he now knows that the
world has greater promises and greater trials too. Thus, the speaker accepts the truth
that in the past he wove around himself an illusory web of love, but now he knows that
such a world was far from being real. Thus we see that the poet rises from the material
to the ideal in his concept and avowal of love.
Do not ask of Me, My Love Comprehension III :

1.At the end of the poem we feel ‘the speaker does not love his beloved less, but
the suffering humanity more’. Do you agree?
OR
“Suffering of humanity is much greater than the love for his beloved”. Explain
with reference to the poem.
OR
“The perception of love changes when one realizes one’s responsibilities”. How
is this idea brought out in the poem ‘Do not ask of Me, My Love’?
Ans: Yes, certainly. The very fact that he addresses the poem to his beloved makes it
clear that he wants to lay bare before his innermost feelings. Perhaps he has the
courage to do so because he knows that his beloved would understand his feelings. If
he has to have that confidence in his beloved, then the love between them must be real.
It is as if the speaker seeks the approval of his beloved in taking up work that would
make him serve the less fortunate in society.

There is a note of pleading when he says, “But I’m helpless too’. It is as if he is saying
that unless she understands him and cooperates with him, he will not be able to
continue on his path of fighting for the cause of the less fortunate. So, in a way, the
poem can be taken as an indirect plea of the poet to the beloved to let him go so that he
can take up the national and political cause. So, though at one point of time the poet
says that his earlier love seemed to be an illusion, it is clear that he still has a love for
the beloved, but is impelled to answer the call of the suffering humanity. It isn’t that he
scorns love, but that he understands that it can’t exist in isolation from the world.

The phrase ‘comforts other than love’ suggests the joys of political struggle and
comradeship, which are a different and wider form of love. In the repetition of ‘my love’
in the final line, Faiz nevertheless re-emphasises how difficult it is to leave behind his
former bliss. This is a poem about the heavy burden of taking on responsibility, and the
inner struggle that it entails.

2.Many critics have pointed out in this poem ‘the beloved’ means not just a lover, but
country and ‘ nationalism. With this observation, does the poem read differently?
Ans: The word ‘ghazal’ comes from Arabic and has been translated as ‘to talk with
women’ or ‘to talk of women’. Much of Faiz Ahmad’s poetry follows the conventions of
ghazal, the classical form of traditional Urdu poetry, which had been influenced by
Persian literature. But Faiz’s work revolutionises the conventions, extending the
meanings of many traditional terms.

For instance, though Faiz often addresses poems to his ‘beloved’, a central word in the
ghazal vocabulary in his hands, it refers to both a person and also to the people as a
whole, and even to revolutions. He sees the individual as existing within a wider context.
The poem ‘Do not ask of Me, My Love’ is not written in a strict Ghazal form, although
the phrase ‘my love’ for the beloved is repeatedly used. On the one hand, if the poem
can be viewed as a rejection of romantic love, on the other, it is possible to take the
beloved as the country or nationalism. It can be argued that Ahmad’s initial love for the
country underwent disillusionment as the country was guilty of persecuting the innocent.
This persecution was the outcome of narrow nationalism.

Political leaders who did not have a wider worldview upheld narrow nationalism which
was opposed by Faiz Ahmad. He upheld universal brotherhood and was of the opinion
that even as a citizen is proud of belonging to his own nation, he should be equally
conscious of the fact that he is the citizen of the world.