===
0007,
10
===

 

{7,10}

yaa;N ke saped-o-siyah me;N ham ko da;xl jo hai so itnaa hai
raat ko ro ro .sub;h kiyaa yaa din ko juu;N-tuu;N shaam kiyaa

1) in the white-and-black of here, the amount of access/authority we have is this much:
2) weeping and weeping, we made night into morning; or we somehow turned the day into evening

 

Notes:

da;xl : 'Entrance, ingress, admission, access; entering (upon), taking possession (of), possession, occupation, occupancy; making way or progress (in a study), progress, proficiency, knowledge; reach, grasp, scope, comprehension; possibility; capacity, competency; influence, power, authority, jurisdiction'. (Platts p.507)

*Platts Dictionary Online*

S. R. Faruqi:

The wordplay of 'white' and 'black' with 'day' and 'night' is very fine. Another aspect of pleasure is that saped-o-siyaah ( yaa siyaah-o-saped ) kaa malik honaa means 'to be entirely powerful, to be entirely in authority'. Thus the complaint about not 'having access in white and black' creates a superb expression of temperament. Usually people say hame;N us kaar-;xaane me;N , yaa kalaam me;N , mu:tlaq da;xl nahii;N ! . Just the reverse of this, Mir says hame;N yahaa;N ke saped-o-siyaah me;N mu:tlaq da;xl nahii;N ! .

A further pleasure is that he nevertheless has this much access in white and black, that he can change day into night, and night into day. But with this much access he's not satisfied; rather, he wants more.

[See also {545,10}.]

FWP:

SETS
MOTIFS == GRANDIOSITY; NIGHT/DAY
NAMES
TERMS == PATHOS

What's really irresistible about this ver se is the total opposition between the pathos of the extremely humble reading, and the grandiosity of the extremely arrogant one.

It's an obvious reading to take the verse as a lament of powerlessness: 'Alas, we have no power in the affairs of this world, all we can do is weep and suffer and somehow manage to struggle through each everlasting night and then each interminable day'. It suits the conventional image of Mir as a weepy poet of suffering and helplessness and pathos, and it's a perfectly possible interpretation.

But it's equally possible to stand that reading on its head. For it's worth noting that the first line doesn't contain any word or particle to convey the idea of 'only' this much power. So the verse can be read as a matter-of-fact description: we have this much power, namely, that our tears turn night into day, and then we are able to turn day into night. In short, our suffering is what keeps the world going, it has a mystical or cosmic dimension of power. And as SRF observes, it's quite possible that the speaker is not satisfied with this kind of access, but wants even more!

Compare the evocation of a similar possibility in:

{451,3}.

For a Ghalibian example of this kind of cosmic power, see

G{62,8}.