In 1938, Victor Kiernan, a young Englishman, left the confines of Trinity College, Cambridge for a journey to India. A communist since 1934, he carried notes from the Communist International to the Indian party. But this was his side mission. His primary one was to meet the dancer and activist Shanta Gandhi, whom he later married. Gandhi was a founder member of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), and it was through her extensive contacts that Kiernan found his feet among the radical artists whom he came to cherish. Among them was Faiz Ahmed Faiz. They had communism in common, but also a love for poetry, and they remained friends till Faiz's death in 1984.
Kiernan used his remarkable facility with language to translate Faiz's ghazals. It was a risky venture. The tempo of Urdu poetry 'rests on a basis too remote from that of English to be reproduced with any exactness,' wrote Kiernan. The only way to approach Faiz's poetry, he found out, was to absorb the sounds in Urdu. 'We all, it is probable, hear the rhythm of verse far more with an inner ear than with the ear of sense. The best advice that can be given to a novice is to hear Urdu verse recited in the emphatically rhythmic style common in public declamation. '
Kiernan also translated his other friend, Mohammed Iqbal, whose verse was more elaborate (Poems from Iqbal, 1955). 'Iqbal wrote of the tribulations of the poor majestically,' Kiernan reflected, 'as if looked down on them from heaven; he preached revolt of downtrodden peoples, relief of downtrodden classes by wealthier men infused with Islamic fraternalism. ' Faiz was different. His poems 'examined poverty at close range, with its dirt and its sores, and he learned its problems in social, economic detail. '
In 1955, People's Publishing House published Kiernan's first translations of a selection from Faiz. It was an immediate success. The book, Poems by Faiz, had the Urdu text, prepared by Kiernan's closest collaborator, Nazir Ahmed, the well-known teacher in Lahore. It also had the Urdu transliterated into English, and then two translations, one literal and the other with flourishes. The more elegant translation of 'Mujhse pahli si mohabbat" is below: