Deewan I

                        

نقش فریادی ہے کس کی شوخیٔ تحریر کا

کاغذی ہے پیرہن ہر پیکرِ تصویر کا

This couplet can be interpreted in two ways. The first interpretation can be read as a theological critique of dependence. The “naqsh,” or the image, is like a complainant standing before its Creator, wearing a paper robe: an image drawn from Persian royal courts, where those seeking redress would appear before the king in such garments, symbolizing both humility and the acknowledgment of power. In this context, the verse can mean: the human being, clothed in the frailty that the Creator Himself decreed, pleads for mercy against the very conditions set by that same authority. The irony, then, is logical rather than emotional, as the petitioner seeks relief from the sovereign responsible for his suffering. This reasoning parallels the problem of theodicy in philosophy as to how an omnipotent God can also be the author of human pain, and finds resonance in Nietzsche’s critique of divine dependence in The Gay Science (1882), where he challenges the rationality of seeking salvation from the very order that defines one’s subjugation. Ghalib’s verse, however, stops short of outright denial; it questions not faith, but the internal contradiction embedded within the act of supplication itself.

The second interpretation approaches the verse through a Sufi-philosophical lens. When Ghalib says “Kāghazī hai pairahan har paikar-e-tasvīr kā,” it can mean that every being wears the paper robe of transience: fragile, temporary, and deliberately so. This fragility, however, is not condemnation; it is imtihaan, the divine test through which the worth of the soul is measured. From this view, to seek grandeur or permanence within the material world is misguided, for existence itself was designed to dissolve. The verse thus becomes a reminder of detachment: to recognize impermanence not as punishment, but as purpose. This reflects the Sufi ontology of fana (annihilation of the self), where dissolution is the path to union, and echoes the wisdom of Rumi’s Masnavi, where the world is described as a temporary mirage intended to awaken the longing for the eternal.

Taken together, these interpretations form two sides of Ghalib’s metaphysical vision, the rational protest of man and the spiritual acceptance of the seeker. The first exposes the paradox of dependence on the very source of suffering; the second transcends it by reframing fragility as divine design. In this way, Ghalib bridges what later became separate in Western thought : Nietzsche’s revolt against divine causality and the Sufi’s surrender to divine wisdom,  merging them into a single dialectic: the cry of the finite being that both questions and accepts the terms of its creation.

 

 

کاوِ کاوِ سخت جانی ہائے تنہائی نہ پوچھ

صبح کرنا، شام کا لانا ہے جانِ جوئے شیر کا

 

Getting through long, lonely days is hard. 

جذبۂ بے اختیارِ شوق دیکھا چاہیے

سینۂ شمشیر سے باہر ہے دمِ شمشیر کا

Witness my passion. 

آگہی دامِ شنیدن جس قدر چاہے بچھائے

مدّعا عنقا ہے اپنے عالمِ تقریر کا

Ghalib is projecting himself as the best. 

بس کہ ہوں غالب اسیری میں بھی آتش زیرِ پا

موجِ آتش دیدہ ہے حلقۂ مری زنجیر کا

Even when contained and imprisoned, I am filled with the fire of passion. This passion has made this suffering turn into nothing