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.
لیکن یہی کہ رفت گیا اور بود تھا
Ghalib declares himself a novice in the school of love, while suggesting a quiet acknowledgment of defeat that he continues to suffer.
Too many misdeeds in life
تیشہ بغیر مر نہ سکا کوہکن اسد
سرگشتۂ خمارِ رسوم و قیود تھا
The verse meditates on the paradox of freedom and necessity. Even the mountain-breaker, Ghalib himself, could not die without his tool. The instruments of action, which represent means and material support, remain essential even in the quest for liberation.
Ghalib declares himself a novice in the school of love, while suggesting a quiet acknowledgment of defeat that he continues to suffer.
Too many misdeeds in life
تیشہ بغیر مر نہ سکا کوہکن اسد
سرگشتۂ خمارِ رسوم و قیود تھا
The verse meditates on the paradox of freedom and necessity. Even the mountain-breaker, Ghalib himself, could not die without his tool. The instruments of action, which represent means and material support, remain essential even in the quest for liberation.
The beloved says she will retrieve the heart if she finds it, but that very statement implies she does not yet possess it. Ghalib, however, knows he has already given it to her. So he is playing on irony, and playing out the usual but subtle communication seen between lovers.
Love breaks the monotony of life. Yet, paradoxically, love itself remains incurable.
Sensing the suffering to come, the heart bets against our own self and dulls the effect of his pleas; thus the sigh is in essence ineffectual and hence, the wail falls short.
Simplicity and ecstasy are strategic: an act of manipulation to test the patience of the lover. Beneath modesty lies control and deliberate provocation.
This verse carries the poignancy of an older man witnessing the passionate innocence of his younger self in a rosebud. He sees the same intensity, and passion but with the wisdom of age, he knows that it all fades and dies with time.
The poet admits that the beloved knows his heart better than he himself does. She always finds it, while he continually loses it. It may be a tender acknowledgment that she understands him more deeply than he ever could.
This closing verse is both satirical and sharp. Ghalib criticizes the moralist (zaahid) who advises restraint in love while simultaneously enjoying and making fun of the lover's suffering. The lover can’t curse him due to societal norms, but the sarcasm cuts through.
