Ghazal 4, Verse 11x

Gyan Chand:

A baaj-;xvaah is that individual who would receive taxes from zamindars or highway guards [raah-daar] or merchants of the bazaar, and would convey them into the royal treasury.... One who is dying from the beloved's negligence considers death to be the end of longing. Therefore he doesn't demand the 'blood-price' from the beloved. Then after dying, why wouldn't wildness/madness attain peace? Or again, there can be this related meaning, that Ghalib saw that the one dying from the beloved's negligence was an enemy of the 'blood-price'. Which would mean that to die from negligence would be some greatly pleasing thing. Thus his wildness/madness has attained peace: if we too would be compelled to die through negligence, then it will be no loss. (68)

FWP:

SETS
MADNESS: {14,3}

For background see S. R. Faruqi's choices.

The 'blood-price' was a payment traditionally exacted from a murder (or the murderer's family or clan), to satisfy the claim of the victim's family or clan, and remove the right or duty of killing the murderer to avenge the victim's death. For other examples of 'blood-price' verses, see {21,9}.

Obviously, the beloved's guilt for 'murder by negligence' is a special case. The one who has been slain that way apparently still has opinions, and is able to make them known, for he has been found to be an 'enemy of the blood-price'. Thus this verse is one of the group in which the dead lover still somehow speaks from beyond the grave; for more examples, see {57,1}. Why is he an 'enemy of the blood-price'? As so often, we're left to decide for ourselves. Perhaps because he's grateful to the beloved for putting him out of his misery, and thus doesn't want to see her punished? Perhaps because he doesn't think 'negligence' really constitutes murder?

Or perhaps because he doesn't want his requital in money, but in something else more desirable? Perhaps he'd rather take it out in trade, in the form of peace, tranquility, a promise of serene, soothing vibrations from the beloved? This idea is the one that connects to, and retrospectively enables us to understand, the first line.

For the dead lover's claim for 'peace waves' rather than a 'blood-price' gives not (the poetic persona) 'Ghalib' himself, but Ghalib's 'madness', an idea. Why shouldn't he become the middleman, the tax-collector, and receive these waves of tranquility himself? After collecting this tax or toll, he would naturally keep a small share for himself, and then pass it on to the designated recipient. He would thus have an excuse to approach the beloved, and even to get his own cut of the beloved's peace waves.

Alternatively, we could say that Ghalib himself was the murdered lover who was, in his madness, demanding the 'peace waves' in lieu of 'blood-price', and actually seeking to collect them himself.