Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Few of my favourite nazms with meaning!

The best ghazals I have heard till this date are mostly by Mirza Ghalib. He is one of the best poets urdu ever saw! He had a bleeding heart of a lover and thoughtful mind of a saint. I love his works and Jagjit ji has done a great job singing some of Ghalib's best nazms. I am putting down a few of my fav. lines and for the convenience of those who are not very well versed in Urdu i am also giving an english translation (My Urdu sucks so please forgive me for being so audacious )Works of Mirza Ghaalib need very careful reading in order to understand them, but trust me, the meaning they carry make them worth the pain


1. Ye na thi hamaari kismat ki visaal-e-yaar hota,
agar aur jeete rehte to yahi intezaar hota!

Koi Mere dil se pooche tere teer-e-neemKaSH ko,
Ye khalish kahaan se hoti jo Zigar ke paar hota!

Kahun kisse mai ki kyaa hai, shab-e-ghum buri balaa hai,
Mujhe kya bura tha marna agar ek baar hota!

Meaning goes something like this:

->This was not my fate that i get to see my love (visaal - to come face to face)
If i had been living any further, this same wait would have continued.

->Some one should ask me about the half pulled arrows which you hit,
Where would have been this pinch if the arrow would have went across my heart!

->Whom should i go and complain what a curse this night of seperation is?
What bad it would have been for me to die if only it was for once!



2.
Dil hi to hai na sangh-o-kisht, dard se bhar na aaye kyon,
Royenge ham hazaar baar koi hame rulaaye kyon?

Kaid-e-hayaat aur band-e-ghum asal me dono ek hain,
Maut se pehle aadmi ghum se nizaat paaye kyon?



->Its heart only, not some stone or brick, why souldn't it get overwhelmed with pain and chagrin?
I will cry thousand times why should some one make me cry?

(this line describes life the best!)
->The bondage of life and bondage of pain (stuggle, dejection) is the name of the same bondage,
Why should some one be liberated from this struggle and dejection before his END?


The peotry of Mirza Ghalib is very deep and requires lot of efforts to understand.... for example in the verse Koi mere dil se pooche tere teer-e-neemkash ko... the reader will have to comprehend that if a arrow is hit with only stretching upto half on the bow, it will not go with full force and will only get fixed in its target instead of coming out from the other end of it... thus it will create a prick when it will hit!

If any poet in Urdu did the best justice to love, romance and emotions with words... it was no doubt Mirza Ghalib!



3 comments:

Unknown said...

agreed my friend...thanks for the translations...

Mohit pawnday said...

I noticed the second set of the verses for the first time good efforts

Anand Shrivastava said...
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