===
1161,
4
===

 

{1161,4}

jaa ke dunyaa se tujhe yaad aa))uu;Ngaa mai;N bhii bahut
ba((d mere kab u;Thaave;Nge tire yih jaur log

1) after having gone from the world, even/also I will come much to your memory
2) after me, when/how will people endure this oppression of yours?!

 

Notes:

u;Thaanaa : 'To support, bear, carry; to take upon oneself, bear the burden or responsibility of, undertake; to undergo, experience, suffer, endure; to incur'. (Platts p.20)

S. R. Faruqi:

The first pleasure of this verse is that he neither regrets his own death, nor makes for himself a great claim to esteem and worth by saying he was a sincere and true and life-sacrificing lover. Though there's certainly the fact that after him, no one else would be able to endure your oppression.

The second pleasure is that as long as he is present, people endure your oppression. Perhaps this is because they hope that sometime you might be gracious toward him. People have sympathy for the lover to the extent that for his sake they too endure the beloved's tyranny. When the lover no longer remains, people will also stop enduring oppression.

FWP:

SETS
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS

The best feature of the verse is the double meaning of 'to lift up, to carry, to bear' [u;Thaanaa] (see the definition above), which fortunately is more or less captured by 'to bear' in English. There are two senses in which people don't 'bear' something: if they want to but are unable to ('I can't bear the suspense'), and if they refuse to ('We will not bear this injustice').

Thus in the first case, after the lover is dead, who will be capable of such astonishing feats of endurance, in suffering the beloved's cruelty and oppression without breaking down? The beloved will remember the speaker when her other lovers, who are made of flimsier stuff, fall apart at the first real 'test' (or wave of persecution).

And in the second case, after the lover is dead, who will put up with the beloved's arrogant behavior, who will constantly dance attendance upon her, who will hasten to agree with everything she says, who will carry out every arbitrary command she may give? Nobody, that's who. Her neighbors, her acquaintances, will be fed up, and will simply decline to humor her in the same way, and to the same degree, that the besotted lover did.

Compare Ghalib's more dramatic, less personal version of the same question:

G{57,7}.