Ghazals Of Ghalib

The Almighty Of Rekhta

Mirza Asadullah Khan (Ghalib)-27-12-1797(Agra) To 15-02-1869 (Delhi)

OTHER LINKS

Indian Classical Music
 

Interpretation-Ghazal-10


1.
The paradise is a suitable word as bouquet,people put bouquets in niches for decoration, and then forget,
When we have forgotten ourselves, why would not forget a common place bouquet like paradise.
(This is a high order of innate wit. This is a special trait of Ghalib.)
2.
The movement of beloved's eyelashes has turned every drop of blood into a tear,
These when strung together on a thread,have shaped in prayer beads of coral.
(I use these prayer beads when reciting her praises.)
3.
The tyrant's decrees had no weight at all in my eyes. When in a terrifying manner she forbade me to complain,my heart did not agree,
What ever came to my lips it expressed at the risk of my life and the terrifyingness did not work at all.
(People of heart say whatever they want to say before dying ,even under the shadow of the executioner's sword.)
4.
My love increases daily if the age gives me leisure, I will create a show (Expression of despair),
My heart can generate many such fireworks as every wound is a seed of fireworks-tree.
(When the trunk of cypress is lit,the branches sway and glow like lamps.And when fuel is finished,it goes out with a sound like a crack.)
(Show=Worldly and mystical dimensions.)
5.
The mirror can not endure your glory,
The way dew can not endure before the sun-rays.
(From a ray of sun,every drop of dew glitters. In the same way the mirror chamber shone from your glory.)
6.
My body is mortal, my existence is the proof of my mortality,
The farmer's hot blood (Labor) is the cause of ruin, the harvest is the essence lightning.(Destiny itself is the cause of its oblivion.)
(If the harvest had not grown, then lightning would not have fallen.)
7.
The desolation has reached such a pitch that "Strange greenery" has sprouted in my home,(It is inappropriate.),
If the poor man (Doorkeeper) did not uproot grass then what else would he do (To keep strangers away),he has to think about his employment.
8.
My longings have all turned into a mere pool of blood that is going nowhere,
Like the lamps on a poor and stranger's grave.
(A lamp has a tongue of flame,but my longings are all hidden in the dark,like the grave of a poor man or a stranger.)
(It is the kind of verse that a traditional audience could enjoy immediately:-If Ghalib had written nothing but verses like this,he would never have become the controversial figure he had become.)
9.
Both prison cell and heart are dark and empty, Joseph has left the cell,the beloved has left the heart.But both are dimly lit by lingering ray,
The cell by the last flicker of Joseph's beauty, the heart by the doubly distanced picture of thought of beloved.
(What a state the heart must have been in at the time radiance of beloved was lit.)
10.
Suspicion says that she must be sleeping by the rival's side, otherwise,
Why the smile in the dream of mine, and that is also with a secret.
(I have only ever seen her brow wrinkled in an angry frown.)
11.
I do not know which innocent ones you have killed,
Your eyelashes becoming wet with tears is in no way less than doomsday.
(Who has the strength to see your eyes full of tears.)
12.
The thread of oblivion with which all the pages of the world sewn together,I have not forgotten it,oblivion is always before my eyes,
No matter how Incommensurate and opposed they may be become one in oblivion.
(it is strangely triumphant in its awareness.)
____