Ghazal 16, Verse 6x

Gyan Chand:

In a metal mirror, the polish-marks are usually in the form of spots and dots; thus they are likened to dust. The verse can have two meanings:

1) When a hunter dashes into some valley in search of prey, then in every direction dust will spread. The valley of the mirror is full of the dust of polish-marks. It seems that here someone has been hunting. The hunter is the beloved's madness for mirror-regarding, and it has made prey of the lover's longings.

2) In the tradition of Urdu poetry, in the state of madness one goes into the wilderness and makes a commotion ['kicks up dust', ;xaak u;Raanaa]. The mirror is mad to see the beloved, and this madness has finished off all the mirror's other longings. Because the mirror-chamber is full of dust, it's clear that here somebody's madness for sight has been in action!

The first meaning is more probable, because in the second reading tamannaa shikaar is broken into fragments. (93)

FWP:

SETS == TRANSITIVITY
GAZE: {10,12}
JAUHAR: {5,4}
MADNESS: {14,3}
MIRROR: {8,3}

Raza p. 227. S. R. Faruqi's choices. This is the first verse of the ten-verse ghazal that Ghalib originally composed; in his published divan he included only verses three through seven.

Well, it seems that somebody or something has been hunting somebody or something else. One of these entities is junuun-e diid , either the madness 'of' sight (seeing something so intensely beautiful drives you crazy) or the madness 'for' sight (intense longing for a sight of something drives you crazy). This 'madness of sight' was either 'longing-hunting' (it was pursuing its prey, a 'longing' for something), or 'longing-hunted' ('longing' was pursuing it, to overpower it and make prey of it); the grammar of the compound tamannaa-shikaar can go either way. Whose 'madness of sight' is this, asks the first line. Needless to say, we haven't a clue; we can only turn to the second line in the hope of some clarification.

As so often, the grammar and imagery start completely afresh. And there's obviously what I call 'transitivity' operating: we can read either 'A was B' (2a), or 'B was A' (2b). In this particular verse, because of the ambiguity of 'polishmarks-dust', these are actually quite different choices. The first alternative (2a) locates the setting in a mirror-chamber, and then likens the polish-marks on the mirrors to the dust kicked up in a narrow valley by a vigorous hunter and a desperate prey. The second alternative (2b) locates the setting in a narrow valley full of dust churned up by a vigorous hunter and a desperate prey, and then likens this dust to the polish-marks on mirrors in a mirror-chamber.

In either case, there's a down-to-earth problem in the imagery that apparently doesn't even register in the stylized world of the ghazal. For a 'mirror-chamber' is inset with small mirrors that are always made of glass; many examples survive in medieval (and later) palaces. For more on mirror-chambers, see {10,5}. But then, of course, there would be no 'polish-marks', for these are created only by the scouring and polishing of a metal mirror, to keep the verdigris off it. For more on glass vs. metal mirrors, see {16,2}.

Apparently we first notice the scene depicted in the second line: either a mirror-chamber full of the 'clouds of dust' of polish-marked mirrors, or a narrow valley full of clouds of dust that suggests a mirror-chamber full of polish-marked mirrors. In either case, we conclude that a hunt has been in progress, and we wonder about the identity of the chief personage involved, the one who harbors the 'madness of sight'. Can we narrow the chase scene down any more than that? I don't think so, really. It's a profoundly interrogative, inshaa))iyah verse: asking the question it asks is really its chief task. After all, just this technique goes all the way back to {1,1}; the present verse is only a bit more obscure than that first one.