Ghazal 44, Verse 3x

Gyan Chand:

In the intensity of wildness/madness, desert-wandering is done. For the one on whose feet blisters appear, after the blisters have appeared on his feet, running ceases to be possible. The poet has put it like this: that I continue to wander, in the privacy of the blisters on my feet. That is, I don't wander at all. Because of this sorrow of my wildness/madness, the heart of the desert has been wasted/'murdered'. The desert feels sorrow: my expanse lies useless, the lover doesn't even pay attention to it. In 'narrow-heartedness' there's also a gesture toward narrowness of place.

The second line can also mean that the blood of the blisters on the feet itself has now become for me a desert for wandering in. (111-12)

FWP:

SETS == GROTESQUERIE
DESERT: {3,1}
MADNESS: {14,3}

Raza p. 127. S. R. Faruqi's choices. Ghalib originally composed a ghazal of eleven verses, from which he chose two for publication in his divan. In the original eleven-verse ghazal, this verse was the first one.

The verse opens with an astonishing claim: 'in the privacy of the blister(s) of the foot' is my 'wandering' or 'coursing around'. Blister-footedness is of course normally a situation when wandering around is impossible (although {60,9} suggests a remedy). Here, it looks on the face of it as if the speaker actually does his wandering inside a blister, the way one might run on a small private track instead of in the desert (or swim in a small private pool?).

Is this idea grotesque? YES! The vision of the lover wandering (swimming?) around in the fluid inside a blister, is distractingly gross. Even if we don't think of pus or blood, but of a clear serum, it's still such an unattractive yet horribly fascinating vision that it both distracts us from, and detracts from, the pleasure of the verse.

No doubt we can invoke the flexibility of the i.zaafat , and take ;xalvat-e aabilah-e paa me;N to mean something like, in the privacy 'pertaining to' blister(s) on the foot'-- that is, in the privacy of the solitude that results from an inability to go out and run around. But that's a rescue job that we undertake by an effort of will; it can't be more than a secondary reading.

The verse invokes the desert's two essential qualities of expansiveness (so inviting to the mad lover's wanderings) and dryness (here it's literally a bayaabaa;N , a be-aab or 'waterless' place). Then the verse juxtaposes these qualities to their opposites: the tight compression of a 'narrow' or sorrowful heart (and the small size of a blister); and also the wetness of blood and of the fluid inside a blister. There's a certain elegant word- and meaning-play here, unquestionably.

In the second line, what does meraa modify? It can't modify the feminine dil-tangii , so we're left with a choice between bayaabaa;N and ;xuu;N . If we choose the former, as in (2a), then 'my desert' is 'blood' in the literal sense (the way my wandering is in a blister, perhaps even a blood-blister); or else in the idiomatic sense of 'wasted, squandered' (see the definition above): I can't use the desert for wandering in, since my feet are too blistered. Or perhaps 'wildness/madness' itself has even somehow 'murdered' or destroyed my desert (as in {5,4}).

If we take meraa to modify ;xuu;N , as in (2b), then my blood itself becomes a desert, the way my blisters (blood-blisters?) become some kind of wandering-place. This reading works well with the first line, but we have to pull meraa from the very end of the second line, back to the very beginning, which is a stretch when the bayaabaa;N is right there next to it. Still, knowing Ghalib, it doesn't seem impossible.

Compare {3,1}, which plays with the same juxtaposition of expansiveness versus narrowness, and of the desert with physical imagery of the body, but arouses no distaste.