jaan saahib jis se khul jaati hai sab neki badi
rekhti such much meri hai paansa ye rammaal ka
Meer Yaar Ali Jaan Sahib

Rekhti was a unique genre of Urdu poetry where male poets assumed a voice to speak as women by appropriating their language, as well as their gesture. Although Rekhti poetry had a rich harvest in Deccan but it found its finest expression especially in Delhi and Lucknow, the two major centres of Urdu poetry, in the late 18th century.

It developed so distinctly that it acquired the status of an inimitable genre of Urdu poetry of which there was no parallel in either Eastern or Western literary traditions. 

To put precisely, Rekhti poets wrote the poetry of difference and created a literary tradition unlike the one inculcated by the Rekhta poets during the same period. Incidentally, Rekhti may also be considered as a feminine version of Rekhta which had already made its mark as a respectable language of literary expression by the late seventeenth century and which, in the later part of the eighteenth century, came to be known as Urdu for good.

Themes and style

It would be important to bear in mind that Rekhti poets drew upon such areas of experience, as well as idiom and expression that were quite different from the ones cultivated by other poets. This poetry told the stories of the lives of women who nursed their private desires, lived within the precinct of their homes and found their momentary escape in public spaces only occasionally.

Their stories were told in a linguistic register that was typically of their kind. As such, the Rekhti poets chose to echo the dreams, desires and fantasies of those women without much inhibition.

Interestingly, far from being feminist in their attitude and expression, these stories were typically feminine stories of love, longing and disappointment. This poetry can best be appreciated as poetry of ploy that was read for the curiosity it evoked rather than the literary merit it represented.

To put it in yet another manner, Rekhti poetry has been defined as poetry that represented eroticism and licentiousness in multiple manners of speech and action. On account of being so, it has also been treated as a genre of profane poetry, even of obscene poetry, by the literary establishment. This has led to its marginalisation over a long period of time ever since and has resulted into its disappearance from the domains of serious literary studies.

The male voice in Rekhti

While reading the Rekhti poets, one realises that this was the domain of male poets essentially. The question as to why the women poets abstained from writing this poetry may possibly be answered by positing that it was a social taboo for women to write poetry then and that too on such subjects that the Rekhti poetry engaged with. 

In spite of this, Rekhti poetry remained the kind of poetry which found favour in the inner quarters and developed its own set of readers.

It has been suggested that Saadat Yaar Khan Rangeen who wrote during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the one who came up with the term Rekhti and also compiled his divan of this genre of poetry. Apart from him, the major Rekhti poets with complete divan unto themselves included InshaAllah Khan Insha, Mohammad Siddique Qais Hyderabadi, Meer Yaar Ali Jaan Sahib, and Mohsin Khan Anqa.

There are several others also who are less talked about but they too put together their complete divans which deserve equal attention. Such poets include Kallan Khan Bijapuri, Babu Ali Bakhsh Dua Azimabadi, Maikash Thanvi, Maulvi Mohammad Hussain Khan Shaida Allahabadi, and Syed Sajid Sajni.

It would be important to note further that all the Rekhti poets chose to write mostly about one and the same theme but from their own perspectives. So, in spite of being repetitive thematically, these poets developed their own perceptions and also discovered their own idiom for their poetry. They drew upon a typical set of characters rather repeatedly. While personages like yagaana, dogaana, and zanaakhi made recurrent appearances in their poetry, there were several others also who kept appearing with regularity.

They included the ones who constituted the dramatis personae of the inner courtyard and were known as bubu, saheli, suhagan, mughlani, bua, mua, nigoda, saut, chhinal, bhadwa, khasam laundi, launda and many more of the kind. All of these characters that included both male and female, constituted a small social set up and together they played and replayed the games of love, deceit, coquetry and flirtations.

As far as the formal style of Rekhti poetry is concerned, it was written in the form of the ghazal, rather than nazm, and appeared as the true replica of ghazal. Although love appeared as the prime concern here, as in ghazal, but it found different manifestations in Rekhti poetry where sexuality emerged as a point of greater concern.

However, while reading Rekhti poetry it comes out clearly that it was not the male but the female who took the centrestage which was in clear opposition to the grand tradition of ghazal.

In this respect, Rekhti poetry was direct in its references. That is precisely why it suffered from the paucity of metaphors and symbols which is the hallmark of great poetry in any language. Characteristically enough, Rekhti poetry is defiant, direct and demonstrative rather than suave, suggestive and layered.

Anyone who would read Rekhti poetry would meet two characters—dogaana and zanaakhi -- quite frequently apart from others who constituted the small world of the inner household. All these characters could be easily recognised for the typicality of their character.

The poets represented them unabashedly but always in disguise which makes this poetry both unique and interesting. Here are a few examples from Rekhti poetry that should help understand the essential nature of this poetry and the socio-cultural condition it represented:

mere ghar mein zanaakhi aai kab
main nigodi bhala nahaai kab
Saadat Yaar Khan Rangeen

tees pedoo mein utthi ooh hi meri jaan gayi
mat sata mujh ko dogaana tere qurban gayi
Saadat Yaar Khan Rangeen

ai jaan jaan lo ye meri jaan jayegi
rah jayega jo pait to ho jayega ghazab
Meer Yaar AliJaan Sahib

unki tali hai naaf meri tal gayi naal
main pedu pedu karti hoon aur wo kamar kamar
Meer Yaar Ali Jaan Sahib

main terey sadqe gayi ai meri pyari mat cheekh
mat jaga neend bharey logon ko waari mat cheekh
InshaAllah Khan Insha

lagti hai chote toh lagne de masos aur zari
aik dum ke liye khatir se hamari mat cheekh
InshaAllah Khan Insha

raat kothhey pe teri dekh li chori anna
kaali ooper thhi chaddhi neeche thi gori anna
Mohammad Siddique Qais

ruswaayi ka mit ab ye khalal jaaye to achha
baandi tuu merey ghar se nikal jaaye to achha
Mohammad Siddique Qais

chandni begum ko haath aayega kyunkar aaftaab
ai bua shab mein kaheen phirta hai ghar ghar aaftaab
Kallan Khan Bechain Rampuri

saut se keh do merey ghar pe na aanaa hargiz
marte dum tak mujhe ab moonh na dikhaanaa hargiz
Kallan Khan Bechain Rampuri

dar ba-dar bheek hi maangega mua mere baad
yaad rakhna ye meri baat bua mere baad
Mohammad Mohsin Khan Anqa

mujhe bewajah’a bhadwaa maaraa hai
badaa be-dard mera mardua hai
Mohammad Mohsin Khan Anqa

begamaan paas mein kal jaaoongi InshaAllah
paas se us ke chhuri laaoongi InshaAllah
Babu Ali Bakhsh Dua Azimabadi

mardue pe kya ho asar baat ka
ye to goiyaan aadmi hai laat ka
Maulvi Nisar Hussain Khan Shaida

betakalluf un se itna bi padosan ho gaein
dekhtey hi dekhtey ik roz sautan ho gaein
Syed Sajan Sajni Lucknowi

Rekhti poetry stood as a mirror to decadent Muslim society of the eighteenth century. It laid bare the condition of nobility and recorded all that was strange and odd in a social set up that constituted a variety of women representing different social categories. Even though this poetry did not receive the attention that the ghazal received, but it remained a literary-cum-historical marker. It caught the attention of the readers then as it does now but only as a manifestation of a literary curiosity.