آج رنگ ہے Aaj Rang Hai — Today There Is Colour

There is colour today — oh, such colour. There is colour in my beloved's house.

Rang means more than colour. It is the glow on something, the mood in a room, the state a thing puts you in. Nothing is actually being described here. No scene, no face. Only that everything has taken on a colour. There is also a second way to hear the first line, and singers disagree about it: ai maha, oh great, or ai maan, oh mother. Hear it as mother and the whole song becomes a girl bursting through the door at home with news.

رنگ rang

colour; and the glow, the splendour, the state something puts you in

محبوب mahboob

beloved

ری ri

a call to a girl or a close friend — like saying hey, listen

I have found my master — Nizamuddin Auliya.

This is the one line the song exists to say, and it says it once, plainly, in the middle of everything else. Payo means found, the word you would use for coming into money. And a pir is not a teacher in the classroom sense. A pir is the person you hand yourself over to.

پیر pir

a spiritual master, the one a seeker gives themselves to

پایو payo

found, got hold of — Braj

Nizamuddin Auliya, Alauddin Auliya. Alauddin Auliya, Fariduddin Auliya. Fariduddin Auliya, Qutbuddin Auliya. Qutbuddin Auliya, Moinuddin Auliya. Moinuddin Auliya, Mohiuddin Auliya.

The excitement stops and turns into a list. This is a silsila, a chain of teachers, where each name taught the one before it. Nizamuddin learned from Baba Farid, Fariduddin Ganj-e-Shakar. Farid learned from Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki of Delhi, and Qutbuddin from Moinuddin Chishti of Ajmer. Sung out loud it sounds like a rope being passed hand over hand. She is not just saying she liked someone. She is showing where he came from, and how far back it goes.

اولیا auliya

friends of God — a title for the saints; the plural of wali

سلسلہ silsila

a chain — the line of teachers running back from any Sufi master

Wherever I look, he is with me. Oh — listen, my friend! Wherever I look, my bridegroom is with me.

The line comes twice, and the second time it adds one word. First he is simply with her. Then he is her bar, her bridegroom. That single word changes the whole claim. And she is telling her sakhi, the friend a bride tells everything to, who is the audience songs like this have had for centuries.

سنگ sang

with, alongside — Braj

سکھی sakhi

a girlfriend; the close friend a bride tells everything to

بر bar

bridegroom

Ah — ah — ah. The very bridegroom I asked for is here beside me.

Munh mange means asked for with your own mouth: the exact one you named, not whoever you were handed. For most of the people who have sung this over seven hundred years, choosing was not how marriage worked, so the phrase carries a real charge. The line before it is not words at all, just the sound qawwals stretch between phrases, and nobody has ever taken it out.

منہ مانگے munh mange

asked for by name; exactly the one you wanted

Nizamuddin Auliya lights up the world. Lights up the world, lights up all creation. And that bridegroom I asked for is here beside me.

Jag ujiyaro is village Braj: he lights up the world. Khusrau knew the whole Persian vocabulary for divine light and used it freely in his other work. Here he reached for the word a child would use, and then said it twice. The second time it grows from jag to jagat, from the world to everything there is.

جگ jag

the world — Braj

اجیارو ujiyaro

one who lights up, brightener

I have found my master, Nizamuddin Auliya. And Ganj-e-Shakar is with me too.

Ganj-e-Shakar, treasury of sugar, is Baba Farid, Nizamuddin's own teacher. So the chain she sang earlier stops being a list and becomes hers. By finding one master she has been given everyone who taught him, and she names the closest of them as though he had walked in too.

گنج شکر ganj-shakar

treasury of sugar — the name Baba Farid is known by

I have never seen colour like this before, my friend. I went looking for colour like this from country to country.

Des-bides, home and abroad, is the everyday phrase for everywhere there is. The order matters. She says first that she found it, and only then how long she spent looking. That is how anyone actually delivers good news. The searching gets remembered afterwards, from the other side of it.

دیس بدیس des-bides

home and abroad; everywhere

ڈھونڈ پھرنا dhoond phirna

to go about searching, to wander looking for something

Your colour has taken my heart, Nizamuddin. The bridegroom I asked for is here beside me.

Man bhayo is about as plain as language gets: it pleased my heart, the sort of thing you say about a sweet or a song. She finally speaks to him directly, by name, and she does it in the smallest words available. After a whole chain of saints and the light of the world, this.

من بھانا man bhana

to please the heart, to be liked

My love is met with in this courtyard. Love, love — my whole body — my love is met with. In this courtyard, in that courtyard. In this one, and in that one too. Wherever I look, he is with me.

An angan is the open courtyard in the middle of a house, where the family actually lives. This courtyard and that one. Mine and his, here and there, the world and whatever lies past it. The lines refuse to pick between them, and then say he is in both. It is the closest the song comes to stating a belief, and it does it using the floor plan of an ordinary house.

سجن sajan

beloved, sweetheart — Braj

آنگن angan

the open courtyard at the centre of a house

Beloved of God — I have never seen colour like this. There is colour today, oh such colour. There is colour in my beloved's house.

Mahboob-e-Ilahi, Beloved of God, is Nizamuddin Auliya's title, the one his shrine in Delhi still carries. And mahboob, beloved, has been sitting in the very first line of the song the whole time, sounding like an ordinary pet name. Only here do you find out it was his name. Then the song circles back to the line it opened with, which is how a rang ends: back at the beginning, with the words changed underneath.

محبوبِ الٰہی mahboob-e-ilahi

Beloved of God — the title Nizamuddin Auliya is known by