With these lines signed by Huma, Meher Baba’s pen name when He was still Merwan, we introduce a new Tavern-Talk series, The Beloved’s Lane. This series is accompanied by a new, dedicated section of the same name on the Trust’s website (https://avatarmeherbabatrust.org/the-beloveds-lane/), that will present Baba’s own compositions from across His life.
Throughout history, the Avatar’s incarnations have shown intimacy with words—consider Krishna’s Bhagavad Gita, literally “Song of God” and Muhammad’s Qur’an, literally “Recitation”—to the extent that, at times, He was identified as “the Word” Himself. In His most recent Advent, this legacy continued, yet in a new form: the very absence of spoken words, His Silence, became the medium through which He dictated and gestured words acquired their forceful meaning.
From His early years, first as Merwan Sheriar Irani, and later as Meher Baba, He spoke and sang, read and wrote, then dictated by pointing to letters on an alphabet board, and ultimately communicated by gesture only. Before Babajan unveiled Him to His Divinity, Merwan was already steeped in poetry and literature, composing ghazals and other pieces in Urdu and Gujarati. Early accounts hint at the tavern to be opened soon: He would gather His young friends to recite verse and sing and play together. Then, as He became Meher Baba, this creative flow never ceased, though it assumed new and various forms. Distinct features recur: crossings of languages such as Persianised Gujarati, or an English word entering an Urdu couplet; boundaries blurred between poem and prayer; an extraordinary ability to bind the profoundly spiritual to the playful; and finally, the immediacy of the impromptu act of creation and composition, as if echoing the Original Whim.
Frame from the film Beyond Words by Louis Van Gasteren, 1967. (Courtesy of Meher Nazar Publications)
The 1967 film, Beyond Words, by Louis Van Gasteren records masterfully how, until the end, Baba chose each of His words with unwavering precision, even as His body grew frail and the process of relaying His gestures through the Mandali became laborious. As Knowledge incarnate, He knew exactly what He wished to say and how He wished it said, even if it meant resorting to someone else’s pen or mouth.
Here, we want to focus on the words He chose not only for their meaning, as shown in the film, but also for their beauty; phrases He gathered as bouquets of roses from His garden, or a collection of sighs lifted from His lovers that dare to walk on His lane. This project does not attempt to interpret the deeper spiritual significance of His way with words—that’s the privilege of each lover—but instead focuses on His sheer pleasure in language. The Beloved’s Lane series and web section will honour that delight by presenting His creations: here some rhyming aphorisms published for the masses, there an arti, an Urdu ghazal, a playful turn of phrase, prayers from the New and Free Life periods, or a couplet of deep intimacy dedicated to His closest ones.
Frame from the film “Beyond Words” by Louis Van Gasteren, 1967. (Courtesy of Meher Nazar Publications)
Throughout His life Baba praised and mentioned great poets—Hafiz, Kabir, Tukaram, among them—and delighted in hearing their verses turned into songs, or quoting them in His own books. Yet He rarely, if ever, commented on His own spontaneous compositions. Nevertheless, alongside His books and sayings, in His “Last Will and Testament” Baba specifically entrusted the custody of His poems to the Avatar Meher Baba Trust. The Beloved’s Lane aims at fulfilling this responsibility.
These poetic compositions by Baba are dispersed across books, periodicals, pamphlets and more importantly, archival collections. We have begun the long, careful task of gathering, organising and now presenting them in one place. As such works continue to surface in unexpected places, the endeavour will remain ongoing for a long time. To make these selected treasures accessible, a dedicated repository has been created on the AMB Trust website, which will offer the source materials, illustrations, transcriptions, translations, essays, tables and notes from this series, regularly. It is a humble beginning that will, we hope, have a bright future. Alongside it, Tavern-Talk will regularly present curated items. Thus, seekers and lovers will be able to approach Baba’s chosen words in the way most natural to them.
Cropped photograph of Khorshed K. Irani, probably in June 1923 in Quetta, photographed by Sohrab Irani. (Courtesy of Meher Nazar Publications)
Baba’s poetic compositions and prayers may have not been systematically collected; however, we are fortunate that parts of His early work were preserved in different personal songbooks. One of the oldest and most extensive of these belonged to Baba’s early close mandali, Khorshed K. Irani, who had been with Him since the very early years—visiting during the Manzil-e-Meem days and later living in the Ashram at Meherabad with Mehera and the women Mandali from 1924. In her handwritten songbook, Khorshed recorded ghazals, poems, and songs that the women would perform or hear while with Baba in those early years. The collection contains roughly eighty pieces in Persian, Urdu, Gujarati, and Marathi, most of which can, without any doubt, be attributed to Merwan Sheriar Irani as their author. It feels natural to start our endeavour by presenting through this series some of the poems that were found in it. This treasure-trove, a two hundred-page medium-sized notebook, has its cover missing and opens on the third page with an oval picture of Meher Baba glued on top, bearing a title, “Shree Meher Baba 30.9.1927”, carefully written in Roman script. The entire text is written in Gujarati script and starts with Merwan’s pieces. From the sixty-fifth page, Khorshed added ghazals and bhajans by other authors, creating an invaluable record of songs sung around Meher Baba in the early days. More on this songbook and related archive material will follow in later The Beloved’s Lane installments.
Upper part of the third page of Khorshed’s songbook. (Courtesy Asha and Sudam Wagh)
Although Baba’s early poetry, commonly known as “Huma’s ghazals”, is famous among Baba-lovers, notably because some of them were sung by the women Mandali, not much is available about their history. One of Baba’s earliest disciples, Baily J. Irani, tells us in his diary[1] that “[…] a few of Meher’s articles written in English and Gujarati on various subjects got published in various newspapers, not in his own name but in the pen name of ‘Huma.’ All such articles were well appreciated. Similarly, His poems, ‘shairis’ and ‘ghazals’ written in English, Gujarati, Persian, Urdu and Hindi under the pen name of Huma were greatly appreciated.” Baba confirmed it Himself during an interview by K.J. Dastur who asked Him, “When did your poems appear in the ‘Sanj Vartman’ [newspaper]?” Baba answered, “1911, matric[ulation] time.” Then Dastur asked, “In which language were they composed?” to which Baba replied, “Urdu, Persian, Gujarati.” Baily recounted that, “All such published and unpublished works in large quantity were in the possession of His [Baba’s] elder brother Jamshed […]. After Jamshed, the collection passed on to his wife’s custody and thereafter to mine. Later on, […] I left behind all my belongings there [at Meherabad] and I do not know even today who has taken custody of it […]. Baba Himself expressed ignorance of their whereabouts to me. And so the treasure of Merwan’s best works of His youth remains a mystery and I am still shocked about it. As He wishes; all that has happened is as per His wishes and His wish is fulfilled. That is the only solace and there is no other alternative.”
Excerpt from a 4-page typescript “Mr. K. J. Dastur’s Questions to Baba on
His Boyhood and Baba’s Replies”. (Courtesy of Avatar Meher Baba Trust Archives)
This intimate account of a partly lost treasure seems to indicate that Khorshed’s songbook is among the oldest and the most reliable source we currently have for Baba’s early poetry. This is the reason why we chose to consider it as a main primary source material, until older archives are found.
In The Beloved’s Lane section of the website, and in accordance with the Trust’s policy, each work presented here on Tavern-Talk is accompanied by its source materials, transcriptions, transliterations, translations, and explanatory notes. In addition, further pieces and essays will be added to the website on a regular basis. We therefore invite you to visit it not only today, but whenever the heart yearns to take a stroll in His Lane.
AVATAR MEHER BABA Ki JAI!