===
0909,
3
===
 

{909,3}

do chaar tiir yaaro us se bhalii hai duurii
tum khe;Nch khe;Nch mujh ko us palle par nah laa))o

1) three or four arrow-shots, oh friends-- from her, that's a fine distance!
2) don't you keep drawing me within that range!

 

Notes:

bhalaa : 'Good, excellent, virtuous, righteous; honest, respectable; benevolent, kind; healthy, well, sound; fortunate, prosperous'. (Platts p.190)

 

pallah : 'Space, distance, reach, range (of a gun, &c.)'. (Platts p.267)

*Platts Dictionary Online*

S. R. Faruqi:

pallah = distance; that distance that would be within an arrow-shot

This verse is one of 'padding'; it has been included in order to complete the number of three verses [used in SSA as a minimum ghazal-selection]. But in it the pleasure of wordplay and the depiction of a situation are superb. Some people are already lovers of the beloved; now they want to take the speaker near her as well, to show him how beautiful she is. Or else the beloved's archery is famous, and some people want to take the speaker to meet her. The speaker says, 'No, my friends-- from that one, only distance is safe! Who would go there for no reason and make himself a prey?'

Here palle par laanaa means 'to bring within the range of an arrow', but this idiom does not appear in any dictionary. In any case, the meaning of pallah is known. For measuring distance, tiir kii duurii or ( tiir ke ) palle kii duurii was already in use as an idiom. Thus there's wordplay between do chaar tiir kii duurii and palle par laanaa . With regard to tiir , there's the pleasure of a zila in khe;Nch khe;Nch ['draw', as in 'drawing' a bow].

There's also pallah-kash honaa meaning 'to accompany'; and pallah-kash is used for a worker who, so to speak, 'draws' heavy burdens (as in ma;hnat-kash ). Thus the people who are 'drawing' the speaker are themselves pallah-kash in both senses. All these wordplays are full of relish, and then there's of course facetiousness/humor in the theme itself. Even in an ordinary verse, in Mir's poetry one or two things are usually to be found.

FWP:

SETS == EXCLAMATION; HUMOR
MOTIFS == ARCHERY
NAMES
TERMS

The verse really is amusing! The most enjoyable part is the way the safe distance from the beloved is imagined not as beyond the range of an arrow-shot, but as beyond the range of several arrow-shots! (The idiomatic 'two four' [do chaar] is more like 'three or four' than like 'two or three'.) Either the speaker is (crazily?) prudent and risk-averse, or else the beloved's archery has (possibly unknown) capabilities well beyond the normal. Or, of course, both.