Saba Afghani
Table of Contents
Saba Afghani was an Urdu poet whose name surfaces most often through a single ghazal — Tujh Ko Dariya-Dili Ki Qasam — made famous in the voices of Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh. Beyond this, his biography remains obscure: the ghazal itself is his most reliable credential, and it is enough of one.
The ghazal is sometimes attributed to Jagjit Singh himself, but the maqta settles the question — the takhallus Saba appears in the closing sher, the traditional place where the poet signs his work. Saba Afghani wrote it. Jagjit and Chitra Singh gave it the voice that carried it everywhere.
The ghazal belongs to the winehouse tradition — saqiya, meyqada, the rounds of wine — but Saba uses it with a particular lightness that turns heavy at the end. The request running through every sher is simply that things keep going: the rounds, the blooming, the burning, the grieving. The maqta withdraws that wish quietly. Some things, it says, just burn.