yaar ne tishnagii-e
shauq ke ma.zmuu;N chaahe
ham ne dil khol ke daryaa ko bhii sa;hil baa;Ndhaa
1) the beloved wanted themes
of the thirst of ardor
2) we {unrestrainedly / 'having opened the heart'} versified/'bound' even/also
the sea as a 'shore'
SETS == POETRY
Raza p. 223; Raza p. 224. S. R. Faruqi's choices. In the same year Ghalib composed another, ham-:tar;h ghazal; this ghazal appears in Raza and Arshi with only three verses, not including this one; but it appears in Gyan Chand with four verses, of which this present one is the third verse. Since Faruqi has recommended it, I am including it; I'll check on this further.
For more on the literary sense of baa;Ndhnaa , see {29,2}.
It's fascinating to compare the present verse with {29,4}, this verse's more fortunate, published sibling. (And deservedly so, since it encases the same kernel in a far cleverer shell.) Both verses contain the same operative element: the literary activity in which we dil khol ke daryaa ko bhii saa;hil baa;Ndhaa . To drive home the theme of the 'thirst of ardor', we said that if we imagine the whole paradigmatically wet ocean ss a 'dry-lipped', perpetually thirsty shore-- that is, that even having as much water as the ocean does, it is still as insatiably thirsty as the shore-- we might have a dim glimmer of how thirsty ardor is.
And why do we do this dil khol ke ? Idiomatically, the sense is 'unrestrainedly, uninhibitedly', which is appropriate to the creation of such hyperbole. But literally, of course, the meaning is 'having opened the heart'. Physically speaking, it's possible that once the floodgates of the heart have opened, a huge torrent of ardor, passion, longing, desire rushes forth, like an ocean-- like, in fact, the ocean we're just about to describe as a shore.
Or else the sense could be that the beloved asks us a technical literary question-- she wants some examples of the poetic 'themes' of the thirst of ardor. But we reply only after 'having opened the heart'-- so that our reply is personal and emotional, as well as literary.
Gyan Chand:
We guessed that the beloved was inclined to listen to words about the intensity of passion and the thirst of ardor. With great eloquence we expressed them. We showed that everything is absorbed in the thirst of longing-- for example, the shore is thirsty and the sea is wet. We achieved even this: that we showed that even the sea was thirsty like the shore. That is, the sea too is absorbed in the thirst of desire for the beloved. (87)