Ghazal 19, Verse 7

Nazm:

We have learned to experience the relish of 'eating' grief, and that is not available here; that is, in this city there are no beloveds for whom passion would be felt. (20)

Bekhud Dihlavi:

He says, our food is the grief of love. And the grief of love falls to one's lot when a person falls in love with someone. In Delhi, there's a famine of the grief of love. That is, here there are now no such beloveds whom one could love. (41)

Josh:

Since to 'eat' grief is an idiom of the language, this rhyme is a gift bestowed by this idiom of the language. The interpretation is that the city which has become a stranger to love-- how would we who have given our hearts manage to live in it, how would we survive? (77)

FWP:

SETS == KYA; WORD
FOOD: {6,4}

The verse hinges of course on ;Gam khaanaa , to experience-- literally, to 'eat'-- grief. If there's no grief to eat, then there's a 'famine' of grief. The verse thus sets up what I think of as a 'word-exploration' of the concept of 'eating grief'.

There's an implicit contrast between the city and the desert, the usual haunt of wild lovers and madmen. Hunger in the desert is almost de rigeur (think of the skeletal Majnun); in the desert there's a famine of food to eat, while in this well-peopled, pleasant city (see the definition above) there's a famine of grief to 'eat'. The first part of the second line [ham ne yih maanaa] suggests that the speaker has been (reluctantly?) persuaded to remain in Delhi, at least half against his will, and thus feels entitled be perverse about it.

On the first reading (2a), he raises practical objections. For having a steady diet of grief to eat is obviously as important to the lover as having a steady diet of food to eat would be to anybody else. Or, as in (2b), he emphasizes that he has agreed only to remain in Delhi-- and that limited agreement doesn't commit him to have to eat, since the local food supply isn't what he's accustomed to or has a taste for. It's quite possible, it seems, that he'd rather starve to death.

Thus we're led to ask ourselves whether the big city and the desert are more similar (both lack the wherewithal for 'eating') or more different (a famine of grief amidst a crowd, or a famine of food in solitude).

It's rare for Ghalib to mention anything as specific, as 'real', as a city in the world, and that too the one he actually lives in. Of course, he doesn't go so far as to give us any genuine information about it-- it becomes a ghazal city, distinguished only by its temporary ('now') grief-famine. The fact that even something as minimal as a place name stands out so vividly shows how deep in the realm of stylization and abstraction the ghazal itself lives.