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damiidah : Blown, blossomed, shot forth, opened out, expanded, vegetated (a plant); blowing, blossoming; sprouting; broken forth (as the dawn of day)'. (Platts p.527)
baal : '(P) Wing, pinion: arm' (Platts p.124)
baal : '(S) Young, childish, infantine, juvenile, immature, not full grown; puerile, ignorant, uninstructed, unwise; —s.m. Infant, child, boy, youth, minor'. (Platts p.124)
par : '(H) But; still, yet, nevertheless, however'. (Platts p.234)
par : '(P) Pinion, feather, wing, quill'. (Platts p.234)
FWP:
SETS == STRESS-SHIFTING; WORDPLAY
MOTIFS == BONDAGE; HOME; [LOVER AS BIRD]
NAMES
TERMS == ZILAIn fact the wordplay in this verse is spectacular. The Indic word par here definitely means 'but'; but of course the Persian par , 'wing', can't possibly not be noticed. Similarly, the Persian baal here definitely means 'wing', but the idea of 'newly opened wings' can hardly fail to evoke the all too apposite Indic baal , 'child, immature or ignorant person'. (See the definitions above.) And the presence of damiidah too reminds us that birds are caught in a daam , a 'net, snare'. This mesh of wordplay binds the verse tightly together, Ghalib's verse, by contrast, is powered almost entirely by the single potent slash of sa;xt .
To what exactly does that par apply? It's located at the crucial hinge point of the verse. Here are some possibilities:
=I was a fledgling, my wings barely had feathers yet-- 'but' I foolishly left the nest too soon, so I got caught
=I was 'garden-born', so I didn't know the ways of the larger world and the cruelties of the bird-catchers-- 'but' I left my home and ventured out anyway, in my ignorance, and naturally got caught
=I was 'garden-born', so I knew the ways of the garden-- 'but' despite my sophistication, I was unfortunate, and ended up getting caught
=I was a fine young bird, eager to try my wings-- 'but' instead of peeking cautiously out of the nest, I rashly flew right up-- right into the net
With a few cleverly crafted phrases, Mir has opened out a whole panoply of possibilities. Depending on where we place the interpretive emphasis, the weight of the verse falls very differently, and the tone is affected accordingly. I call this structural tactic, for want of a better name, 'stress-shifting'.