kaar-;xaane se junuu;N ke bhii mai;N ((uryaa;N
niklaa
merii qismat kaa nah ek-aadh garebaa;N niklaa
1) even/also from the workshop/factory of madness
I emerged naked
2) a collar or two didn't turn out to be of/in my {destiny/'cutting out'}
kaar-;xaanah : 'A workshop, factory, manufactory; an arsenal; a dockyard; a laboratory; any place where public works are carried on; an office; a great work; a business, concern; way of action, procedure'. (Platts p.799)
qismat : 'Division, distribution, partition (of a thing);... a portion, share lot; fortune, fate, destiny; divine decree'. (Platts p.791)
SETS
CHAK-E GAREBAN: {17,9}
CLOTHING/NAKEDNESS: {3,5}
MADNESS: {14,3}
For background see S. R. Faruqi's choices.
The mad lover, as we know, rips open the neck of his kurta (actually a vertical slit neck, for which 'collar' is a misleading translation) as a matter of course. For a discussion of this basic ghazal theme, see {17,9}. The discussion in {17,9} also deals with the secondary sense of qismat as the cutting out of cloth (as well as of destiny)-- and here, does it also refer to the 'cutting out' of the lover himself, as he's shaped in the workshop of madness?
Here it seems that the lover didn't even have the chance to tear open his collar, for right from the 'workshop of madness'-- and what kind of place is that?-- he emerged naked. It seems that his destiny-- or his 'cutting out', as in fabric-- didn't include 'a few collars'. Here are some of the implications of this observation:
=his destiny was so impoverished and wretched that it didn't include even a few collars for him to rip open and thus temporarily ease his madness
=even before he actually emerged from the workshop of madness, he had already ripped to pieces however many collars destiny had allocated to him
=in his destiny was only one collar, not 'several', and once he'd ripped that one open in the workshop of madness, there were no more to come
=his special, elite destiny as a mad lover was nakedness, and this destiny was clear from the moment he emerged from the workshop of madness: unlike other lovers, he didn't even have the chance or need to rip open a series of collars
Compare this verse's more fortunate second cousin, {6,1}, a verse that (deservedly) made it into the published divan.
Gyan Chand:
Since they call a 'factory' [faik;Trii] a workshop, from this Ghalib has created the thought that there must be many fabrics there. But even from there he emerged naked. No collar-- that is, garment-- became available to him. In the verse bhii is superfluous, because to emerge naked from the workshop of madness is precisely what is natural. bhii ought to have come at a time when there was some unexpected situation. (70)