P2: Ghalib
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
جراحت، تحفۂ الماس ارمغان داغِ جگر ہدیہ
مبارک باد، اسد، غمخوارِ جاں درد مند آیا
Sometimes the one who warns us against the fire is the one who secretly tends its flame. An alternative interpretation is that love itself is the wound, and its inherent nature demands loss in life.
جز قیس اور کوئی نہ آیا بروئے کار
صحرا مگر بہ تنگی چشم حسود تھا
No one else could follow the same path of madness and devotion. The others, unable to reach that level of passion, conveniently place the blame elsewhere. With subtle wit, Ghalib suggests that they may even accuse the desert itself of jealousy, as if the desert were hostile and did not wish to host another tale of Majnun.
آشفتگى نے نقش سویدا کیا درست
ظاہر ہوا کہ داغ کا سرمایہ دود تھا
This verse reflects the paradox of moral refinement through suffering. The impurity or evil within the heart becomes tempered and corrected through life’s trials. It is only when the smoke of our flaws rises visibly, when our vices manifest into pain, that we recognize their source and seek purification. The hardships, therefore, are not curses but forces shaping the soul towards clarity. It is through such affliction that the heart finds its way to reflection, to philosophy, & to God.
تھا خواب میں خیال کو تجھ سے معاملہ
جب آنکھ کھل گئی نہ زیاں تھا نہ سود تھا
This verse can be interpreted in two ways. The first is that there is no such thing as a transaction in love. When affection is treated as a matter of profit and loss, it becomes a delusion, and a dream of the ego. The second meaning is more religious, as ghalib reflects that his entire transactions in life were nothing more than a dream. All his profits or losses in life were an illusion, carrying no real substance beyond the dream itself.
