By Dr. Syed Eesar Mehdi
When someone you love dies, you don’t lose them all at once. They disappear slowly, in pieces. A shirt left in the wardrobe. A silence where their voice used to rise. A prayer they once whispered, now lingering in the curtains, in the dusk, in the dust.
That’s how I lost my grandfather. And that’s how I have held onto him. Through the echo of his verses. Through the trembling of his voice when he spoke of Karbala. Through the hush that falls when his Marsiya is recited even now, in the Imam Bargah in Budgam, where time seems to bow down before grief.
Syed Hussain Mosvi wasn’t just a poet. That word, though true, feels too small. He was something else. Something closer to a lantern. He was a bright light carried carefully through storms.
He came from Pallar, a village where the air smells of snow and books and the incense of old prayers. He lived only thirty-five years, but he spoke with the weight of centuries.
When he wrote, it was as if history passed through him like wind through chinar leaves. His words didn’t perform. They remembered. And remembrance, in his hands, was sacred.
I still hear his lines each year on the 25th of Rajab, when thousands gather to mourn Imam Musa Kazim (AS). That night in Budgam is unlike any other. The sky is heavy. The crowd sways like a sea in sorrow. And then comes his voice, his Nouha, spoken now by others, but still his in soul.
Azż sappūn barpã dôyum Aãshũrā / Zàhar dètth mõrukh imam-e-mùbeenā // Hýý wàwailā bànoûv tūfãanā / Zàhar dètth mõrukh imam-e-mùbeenā
(Again, Ashura bleeds through time / The Manifest Imam—slain without a crime // O wail, O storm! Let heavens cry / They gave him poison—let truth ask why.)
That cry doesn’t age. It doesn’t soften. It cuts through the years, fresh as the first wound. And maybe that’s what makes him eternal. His poetry bleeds, but never dries.
His Marsiyas were more than poems. They were places. You didn’t read them. You entered them. In them, the desert of Karbala came alive. The sun grew cruel. The thirst returned. And in the center stood Hussain, not as a story from long ago, but as a heartbeat.
Mosvi always began with a Hamud, a praise of Allah. But his Hamuds didn’t feel like praise from a distance. They felt close, trembling, full of awe, like someone who had caught a glimpse of the Beloved in the middle of a tear.
Yā Khãliq-e-aɽz-ô-samå wàthrêth zamėēn bàrmā / ‘Wal-arḍa farashnāhā’ Kôrřûth wàsfā
(O Creator of earth and the sky so wide / Who spread the land with perfect pride.)
And in Surbandh, again:
Hàmmḍaș haṁ sárdãrā Nãt-ē-Råsôôl-è-můkhtārā / Sàr-é-dafṭǎr zěbaãnåý
(Praise be to Allah, forever raised on high / We glorify His Chosen—a light that shall not die.)
These were not introductions. They were veils lifting. Rumi once wrote, “The wound is where the light enters you.” And that’s what Mosvi’s Hamuds did. They opened the wound gently. They let the light in.
He didn’t just write Marsiyas. He taught. At the Islamic School in Budgam, he wasn’t only an educator. He was a cultivator, of thought, of faith and of wonder. Students recall not lessons but presence: The calm force of a man who could quote Ali (AS) and Ghalib in the same breath.
He helped lay the foundations of Jamia Babul Ilem, a place where knowledge is still taught with reverence, not rush. He believed, like Iqbal, that knowledge without soul is a hollow tree.
There was something else in him too. Something hard to name. Presence and peace, maybe. You could be with him and feel unhurried, unhidden. He listened the way some people pray. He spoke the way some people light candles, softly, and without drawing attention to the flame.
And yet, the flame burned bright. His Nouhas and Marsiyas were not performances. They were prayers. And in them, the sorrow of Karbala did not feel distant or foreign. It felt like it lived in our own ribs.
His elegy Zameen feels like the earth itself remembering. Wahee feels like revelation through grief. Bukah means weeping, but his verses weep not just with tears, but with truth.
When he recited in the days of Aga Syed Ahmad, people didn’t cry out of ritual. They cried because the past had suddenly entered the present. Karbala stood beside Budgam. Dust and blood beside snow and saffron.
Poets like him don’t need a library to be remembered. They become the book. And when you read their work, you feel not just educated, but changed.
Even now, his son Syed Mehdi Mosvi carries his name, and his rhythm. The flame did not go out. It was passed, like a sacred trust.
It’s been years since he died. But his Marsiyas remain soaked with truth. Still tender. Still trembling. Like Russell said, the greatest men leave us at a loss. Not because we forget, but because remembering them hurts in the most beautiful way.
Syed Hussain Mosvi’s life was not long. But some stars don’t need centuries. Some voices don’t need microphones. Some wounds don’t need healing.
He wrote with his whole being. And in doing so, he reminded us how to grieve. How to praise. How to remember.
He reminded us that Karbala is not history, it is presence. That poetry is not decoration, it is direction.
And maybe that’s what he leaves behind. Not just words. But a way to live, with dignity, with devotion, with fire.
As Sohrab Sepehri once said, “Let us not seek melodies or words, let us open the window and let the wind play.”
Syed Hussain Mosvi opened the window. And the wind still plays.
- Dr. Syed Eesar Mehdi is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Peace Studies, New Delhi, India. He can be reached at [email protected]
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