Legends
The Eternal Lament and Wisdom of Aziz Nazan’s ‘Chadhta Suraj’
There are songs that one remembers as melodies, pleasant to the ear but ephemeral in the mind. Then there are songs that become part of the bloodstream, that pierce the soul with their resonance and refuse to leave. Aziz Nazan’s ‘Chadhta suraj dhire dhire dhalta hai’ belongs to the second category. More than just a qawwali, it is a sermon, a dirge, a reminder of the ultimate truth of existence. Its poetry carries the voice of eternity; its rhythm beats with the inevitability of time; its performance fuses majesty with humility. More than a melody, it is a philosophy.
To encounter it is not merely to listen to a song; it is to be confronted with one’s own mortality, with the fleeting nature of worldly glory, with the urgency of repentance and introspection. To hear it is to be reminded not of love’s sweetness or the thrill of youth, but of the one truth no human being can escape: that all glory fades, that the sun which rises must one day set.
At first hearing, the lines themselves sound simple, even stark:
Laake qabr mein tujhko, qurqabat daalenge,
Apne haathon se tere muh pe khak daalenge…
Tere chahanewale kal tujhe bhula denge
The imagery is unadorned: the grave, the dust, the inevitability of being forgotten. Yet, in that spareness lies its power. These are truths that no one can evade, no matter how high they rise or how deep they burrow into the comforts of wealth. What is offered here is not entertainment but revelation.
To understand why ‘Chadhta suraj’ endures, one must know something about its writer and its singer. But before that, there’s a personal memory associated with the song that has carved its place in my psyche.
A Personal Memory of the Song
Before I listened to Aziz Nazan’s great rendition, I heard this song on the Bombay local train during my three-year stay in the city at the cusp of the new millennium. After a particularly tiring day looking for work, I took the slow train – I was in no hurry to get anywhere anyway – from Churchgate to Dahisar (where I stayed at the time). I still remember these two young boys in their mid-teens in ragged clothes boarding the train at Charni Road.
One had a dafli and an ektara, the other a beat-up peti. Both sported bandanas on their heads. I was standing at the door to the compartment, feeling the breeze soothe me, when their voices broke through my tired reverie:
हुए नामवर…बेनिशां कैसे कैसे …
ज़मीं खा गयी … नौजवान कैसे कैसे…
आज जवानी पर इतरानेवाले कल पछतायेगा
चढ़ता सूरज धीरे धीरे ढलता है ढल जायेगा
(Look, how the once famous have vanished from our memories,
The grave has devoured [what were once] dashing young heroes
Listen you, who are proud of your youth today, you might repent tomorrow,
The sun that is rising now, will slowly but surely set)
For the next ten minutes I listened totally enthralled as their untrained, rustic voices washed over me. It was one of the most shattering experiences of my life till that time. By the time they came to the end of the song and we had reached Lower Parel or Prabhadevi, I was having difficulties holding back my tears. What was it that shook me so? It was only later I would revisit the exceptional words – few songs convey the ultimate truth of life with such stark honesty. But in those ten minutes, the two boys introduced me to something I have not been able to fathom yet. Intimations of mortality that I have carried with me ever since? The sheer senselessness of existence, of pride in your achievements (at thirty, I had not achieved anything worthwhile – and I have not done it yet)? I am not sure. Even today, when I listen toAziz Nazan, my mind goes back to those boys on the evening slow train from Churchgate toDahisar, giving me one of the most eloquent life lessons.
Qaiser Ratnagirvi and Aziz Nazan: The Voice of Fire and Faith
Among the many voices that shaped the subcontinent’s tradition of qawwali and Sufi verse, Qaiser Ratnagirvi occupies a strange, almost spectral place. His name, unlike the titans – Amir Khusro, Bulleh Shah, or later Sabri Brothers and Aziz Nazan – does not ring familiar in the collective memory of audiences today. Yet for connoisseurs of Urdu poetry and seekers of devotional music, Ratnagirvi remains a figure of stature. His work straddled the intricate balance between faith and defiance, spirituality and social consciousness.
Born in Ratnagiri, a coastal town in Maharashtra better known for its political history and exiles, Qaiser Ratnagirvi carried the fragrance of that soil into his poetry. A self-taught poet steeped in Urdu and Persian traditions, he emerged in the middle decades of the twentieth century as a voice committed to what the qawwali tradition had always promised: to make the ineffable palpable, to render the eternal truths of life and death into verses ordinary people could sing, sway and weep to.
Ratnagirvi was never a court poet or a darling of literary salons. He belonged instead to the popular, performative world of mehfils and dargahs, where poetry was not recited for applause alone but for catharsis, for awakening. What makes his poetry remarkable is the blend of simplicity and depth: a villager could understand his imagery, while a scholar could marvel at its layered metaphors.
Though he wrote across genres, Ratnagirvi’s name is inseparable from one composition that has outlived its author and become an anthem in the qawwali repertoire: ‘Chadhta suraj dheere dheere dhalta hai, dhal jayega’. If Ratnagirvi’s name lingers at all today, it is because these verses found immortality in the powerful, resonant voice of Aziz Nazan.
Aziz Nazan, one of the most charismatic qawwals of the 1970s and 1980s, discovered in Ratnagirvi’s composition a truth that spoke not just to the faithful but to every human being who has ever contemplated mortality. The song is at once a memento mori and a celebration of life’s fleeting beauty. Its simple metaphor – the rising sun must eventually set – carries within it the weight of centuries of philosophy and the tenderness of a whispered prayer.
Ratnagirvi, in these lines, condenses the Sufi tradition’s core teaching: that pride, wealth and worldly attachments dissolve in the face of death, and that man’s only true wealth lies in humility, remembrance and surrender. That Aziz Nazan chose to sing this poem in a style both majestic and raw only enhanced its reach. Performed in smoky halls, cinema qawwalis and even in political rallies, ‘Chadhta suraj’ transcended the confines of religious performance to become a universal hymn of ephemerality.
To understand the majesty of this song is also to understand Qaiser Ratnagirvi, who gave it words. It is a reminder that poets may fade into obscurity, but when their lines are married to music and feeling, they enter eternity. And so, to approach ‘Chadhta suraj’ is to enter not just a qawwali, but a philosophical universe, one in which Ratnagirvi’s words, carried by Aziz Nazan’s thunderous timbre, continue to ask us to reckon with the one truth none can escape.
Aziz Nazan (1938–1992) was not merely a performer but an institution in the qawwali tradition of the 1970s and ’80s. While names like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the SabriBrothers gave qawwali an international stature, Aziz Nazan made it resonate in India’s popular culture, particularly through cinema and stage shows. Unlike many classical qawwals, Nazan had a knack for communicating with large, diverse audiences. He could bring spiritual truths to the common listener without diluting their depth. His qawwalis often blurred the line between religious admonition and philosophical musing, between ritual and performance.
‘Chadhta suraj’ became his signature piece, the song most associated with his name along with ‘Jhoom barabar jhoom sharabi’. For years, it was a staple of live qawwali mehfils, playing on stage and echoing in cheap cassettes across the subcontinent. People who might never attend a Sufi shrine or study metaphysics found in this song a doorway into reflection. It was not a scholar’s lecture but a people’s sermon, delivered with rhythm, melody and fire.
Philosophy of the Grave: The Unveiling of Impermanence
The qawwali begins by placing us directly at the scene of death. It is uncompromising: one day you will be carried to your grave, and the very hands that once caressed you, applauded you, clasped yours in affection will heap soil upon your face. In a few lines, the singer annihilates all illusions of permanence.
Here, the philosophy is deeply rooted in the Sufi and Islamic tradition, but its resonance is universal. Every civilization has grappled with the mystery of death and the futility of worldly possessions. What makes ‘Chadhta suraj’ remarkable is the way it compresses this cosmic meditation into a visceral, almost cinematic image: the hand throwing dust upon a beloved face. There is no abstraction; there is no metaphysical jargon. It is an image anyone can see, anyone can feel.
In doing so, the song strips human life down to its essence. What remains when love fades, when wealth decays, when memory itself turns treacherous? The answer: nothing but dust. And from that nothingness, a call to humility arises. Perhaps the most piercing truth the song lays bare is not death itself but the betrayal of remembrance: Tere chahanewale kal tujhe bhula denge.
The cruelty of time lies not only in ending a life but in erasing it from the minds of others. Friends, admirers, lovers – those who once placed someone at the centre of their existence – will move on. Today’s idol is tomorrow’s forgotten shadow.
This recognition has a historical dimension too. Aziz Nazan himself witnessed how artists, once celebrated, were abandoned in illness and old age. His own career, though glittering at its peak, faded as popular tastes shifted. The qawwali, then, is both universal and autobiographical: a warning drawn from the lived experience of fleeting fame.
There is a profound sadness in this recognition, but also a strange liberation. If one accepts that the world’s memory is fickle, the frantic pursuit of fame, wealth and recognition is shown to be folly. What survives, if anything, is the moral and spiritual essence of a life.
The middle section of the song becomes a moral exhortation:
Isliye yeh kehta hoon, khub soch le dil mein,
Kyon fasaaye baitha hai jaan apni mushkil mein?
Kar gunahon se tauba, aqbat sambhal jaaye
Here, Aziz Nazan assumes the role of the preacher, reminding us that the path back to truth is open. Even in its sombre meditation, the song is not without hope. It does not merely lament the futility of life; it points towards redemption. Stop the crimes, cease the corruption, release yourself from the entanglements of worldly desire, it says. Life may be uncertain, but sincerity and repentance are still possible.
In this way, the qawwali performs one of art’s highest functions: it becomes a mirror in which we see not only our doom but also the possibility of renewal.
Few verses in the song are as chilling as: Dum ka kya bharosa hai, jaane kab nikal jaaye.
The uncertainty of breath, dum, is the pivot of the entire human drama. Every ambition, every attachment, every act of arrogance rests on a single fragile rhythm: the inhalation and exhalation of air. One breath withheld, and all empires collapse. This truth, sung with the gravitas of Nazan’s voice and underscored by the steady rhythm of the qawwali, is not meant to terrify but to awaken. It is a reminder that urgency belongs not to our ambitions but to our repentance, our awareness of impermanence.
One of the most haunting metaphors in the song is: Mutthi baandh ke aane waale, haath pasaare jaayega.
The infant arrives with clenched fists, as if determined to seize the world. The corpse departs with open palms, unable to take anything along. Between these two gestures lies the entirety of human existence. This parable resonates across cultures, echoing the biblical ‘dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’ and the Hindu reminder of ‘shunyata’ or emptiness. What makes Nazan’s rendition so compelling is the musicality with which this philosophical truth is carried: the rise and fall of his voice mirrors the rise and fall of human fortunes, the rhythm underscores the inescapability of the cycle.
Finally, the refrain returns, majestic in its simplicity: ‘Chadhta suraj dhire dhire dhaltahai, dhal jaayega.’
The rising sun – symbol of glory, power and vitality – must inevitably set. No matter how radiant, no matter how high it climbs, decline is certain. The metaphor applies not just to individual lives but to empires, dynasties, civilizations. All that rises must fall; all that blooms must wither.
And yet, there is beauty in this rhythm of decline. The setting sun is not merely a tragedy. It is also majesty, the grandeur of twilight, the serenity of acceptance. To sing of decline is also to sing of continuity, of the eternal cycle in which every end births a new beginning.
The Majesty of Aziz Nazan’s Voice
To read these verses as text is powerful; to hear them sung by Aziz Nazan is overwhelming. His voice carried a raw, almost primal force. He did not embellish the melody with excessive ornamentation; instead, he allowed the weight of the words to settle, to echo, to pierce.
The qawwali form itself aids this power. The rhythm is insistent, mesmeric, almost hypnotic. The tabla and harmonium weave a repetitive pattern that mimics the inevitability of time, each beat a reminder of mortality. The repetition of lines is not redundancy but ritual. The listener is not allowed to escape the truth after a single hearing; it must be hammered into the heart until it becomes undeniable.
Nazan’s delivery is not mournful alone; it is commanding. He sings as one who knows, as one who has seen through the illusions of wealth and fame. There is in his voice the authority of experience, the authority of faith.
Part of the enduring power of ‘Chadhta suraj’ lies in its cultural journey. While born of the shrine tradition of qawwali, the song became immensely popular through cassettes, stage shows, and even Hindi films. In the 1970s and ’80s, when qawwali was a staple of Hindi cinema, Aziz Nazan’s voice was everywhere, his powerful delivery often dramatizing scenes of confrontation, revelation or moral reckoning.
But unlike many film qawwalis, ‘Chadhta suraj’ was never trivialized into mere entertainment. It remained a sermon. People heard it at religious gatherings, at fairs, at weddings, even in political rallies. It crossed the boundary between sacred and secular. For the devout, it was a reminder of repentance; for the common listener, it was philosophy in everyday language; for the lover of music, it was sheer rhythm and majesty.
The Mesmerizing Rhythm
The rhythm of ‘Chadhta Suraj’ is worth dwelling upon. It is steady but relentless, almost like the ticking of a clock. Each cycle of beats is another reminder of time passing, another step towards the grave. And yet, within that inevitability, there is ecstasy. The music does not depress; it uplifts by forcing us to confront the truth without fear.
This duality, sombre content carried by mesmerizing rhythm, is what gives the song its majesty. One is both sobered and entranced, both reminded of death and elevated by song. This paradox is at the heart of all great qawwali: joy in the midst of sorrow, ecstasy in the midst of loss.
The Afterlife of a Qawwali: Cassettes, Stages, and YouTube
The endurance of ‘Chadhta suraj’ owes as much to the medium of its transmission as to its intrinsic power. In the 1970s and ’80s, the proliferation of cheap audio cassettes brought qawwali out of shrines and elite mehfils into the homes of shopkeepers, drivers, students and housewives. Aziz Nazan became a household name through this culture of duplication and circulation. People played the song on long bus rides, at late-night gatherings, even at tea stalls where time itself seemed to pause.
Stage shows too were crucial. Unlike the Sabri Brothers, who often performed in devotional contexts, Aziz Nazan thrived in public arenas: stadiums, community halls, wedding pandals. He knew how to hold thousands of listeners in thrall, weaving repetition, audience participation, and dramatic pauses into the performance. ‘Chadhta suraj’ became less a song and more a collective ritual of remembrance, a shared encounter with mortality.
In the digital era, the song has found fresh life on YouTube, reaching younger generations who never experienced cassette decks or live qawwali nights. Clips of Nazan performing the piece, grainy with age but still thunderous with energy, continue to attract millions of views. The comments beneath often testify to the song’s ongoing impact: listeners confess to tears, to sleepless nights, to renewed reflections on life’s impermanence. Thus, even decades after Nazan’s passing in 1992, the song lives, not as nostalgia but as a living text in the global archive of sound.
The Other Face of Aziz Nazan: ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom Sharabi’
If ‘Chadhta suraj’ is a sermon of mortality, Aziz Nazan’s other immortal qawwali, ‘Jhoombarabar jhoom sharabi’, is a celebration of abandon. Together, they reveal the range of his artistry and the paradoxical spirit of qawwali itself: ascetic philosophy on the one hand, intoxicated ecstasy on the other.
‘Jhoom barabar jhoom sharabi’ became one of the most popular qawwalis in Indian cultural history. Unlike ‘Chadhta suraj’, which confronts listeners with the grave, this piece invites them to lose themselves in drink, literal and metaphorical. The wine here is not merely alcohol; in Sufi tradition, it symbolizes divine intoxication, the overwhelming joy of union with the beloved, who may be God or the beloved human form.
The ethos of ‘Jhoom barabar jhoom sharabi’ is that of surrender through joy. It asks the listener to let go of rigid propriety, to dissolve the self in rhythm, music and intoxication. It is not a negation of the world but a wild embrace of it. Where ‘Chadhta suraj’ preaches humility through awareness of death, ‘Jhoom barabar’ preaches humility through excess, by showing that the self is never in control, always carried away by forces larger than it.
Aziz Nazan delivered this qawwali with infectious energy, turning auditoriums into carnivals. Audiences clapped, swayed, sometimes even danced. For many, this was their first encounter with the ecstasy at the heart of Sufism. Not in dry theological language but in visceral sound and rhythm.
The pairing of these two songs reveals Nazan’s genius. He was not confined to one mood or message. He could admonish and he could intoxicate; he could preach death’s inevitability and he could celebrate life’s fleeting joys. In both, he reminded his audience that human life is fragile, that pride is foolish, and that surrender – to God, to love, to rhythm – is the only truth.
A Sermon for All Time
‘Chadhta Suraj’ is more than a song; it is a sermon, a requiem, a philosophical treatise set to music. It strips away illusions and confronts us with mortality, but in doing so, it also offers liberation. To remember death is to live more truthfully, more humbly. In an age where music often celebrates ego, wealth and excess, the enduring popularity of this qawwali is a testament to its power. It speaks not to our appetites but to our souls. It reminds us that the applause will fade, the wealth will scatter, the body will return to dust, but the truth, sung with conviction and humility, will endure.
As long as human beings continue to rise with clenched fists and depart with open palms, as long as the sun continues to rise and set, ‘Chadhta suraj’ will remain relevant. It is the song of impermanence, the hymn of humility, the music of eternal truth.
Set beside it, ‘Jhoom barabar jhoom sharabi’ shows the other path to truth, not through solemn reflection but through ecstatic surrender. One qawwali draws its power from silence and dust, the other from clapping hands and wine cups raised in metaphorical joy. Together, they form a complete vision of human existence: death and life, loss and celebration, admonition and intoxication.
