kyuu;N a;Ndherii hai shab-e ;Gam
hai balaa))o;N kaa nuzuul
aaj udhar hii ko rahegaa diidah-e
a;xtar khulaa
1) why is the night of grief dark? there is the descent
of disasters!
2) today the eye of the stars will remain opened only/especially in that
direction
Urdu text: Vajid 1902 {14}
That is, in the night of separation disasters are descending on me from the sky, and the eyes of the stars are spectators of them. For this reason the stars have turned their faces toward the sky. If the light of the stars were present, and I were able to see those disasters discending from the sky, then perhaps I would be able to make some plan to protect myself. (30)
The stars too are watching the spectacle, and today the stars' faces won't be turned toward the earth.
Disasters come from the influence of the stars; thus today the stars are giving orders to the disasters, and the stars' gaze is fixed on their behavior and movement. Tonight the world can't be illumined. Those elders who have read 'in that direction' as 'in this direction', and taken 'the eye of the stars' to mean 'the eye of the stars of fate' have fallen into error. (33)
Bekhud Mohani is referring to the fact that udhar , 'that way', and idhar , 'this way', look just the same in Urdu script (unless small vowel markers are added, which they usually aren't). If we were to read the word as idhar , we'd have to read kyuu;N as a negative exclamation (What! Who says it's dark? It's not dark at all!). That kind of exclamatory use of kyuu;N wouldn't be at all improbable, and it makes wonderful use of the second line: tonight won't be dark, because there's a huge fall of disasters, and all the stars will have their eyes this way [idhar], riveted on us, watching in sympathetic horror.
However, Arshi goes unambiguously for udhar , so I follow my usual policy of accepting his readings. The stars are apparently looking over 'that way', watching the earlier stages of the disasters in their long fall towards us. Only in the final stages would the disasters be near enough to us so that the stars' view would include us, and we'd notice a return of their usual gaze. And, of course, we might notice a huge group of falling balaa))e;N , brightly visible in the starlight.
When I first read this verse my immediate reaction was to feel that the stars were averting their gaze from us, in hapless sympathy for our peril. They couldn't bear to watch, and were prudently turning their eyes elsewhere. That's still my favorite interpretation.
Nazm:
In the first line is a question and answer; that is, the reason for the darkness of the night of grief is that even more disasters are coming down from the heights of the heavens, and in order to see the spectacle of their descent, the stars have turned their gaze from this direction to that. That is, they're coming down in such numbers that it's worth seeing, like a fair. (15)
== Nazm page 15