FWP:
SETS
BUREAUCRATIC: {38,7}
GAZE: {10,12}
The classic lover's dilemma (though to the lover it's not a dilemma at all) appears once again-- I live only in my longing for a glance from you; and a glance from you will slay me. So in fact I am passionately pleading for my death. But what a death! Not a meaningless, ordinary end, but a burning instant of supreme ecstasy and annihilation-- the death of the Moth who flies into the candle-flame and becomes one with the fire. (Or, as Bekhud Mohani points out with reference to {78,5}, the death of the dew-drop when it receives a single glance from the sun.)
There's an elegant ambiguity too about the nigah-e garm , which can refer either to the warm glance of affection and desire, or to the hot glance of wrath. Perhaps the lover doesn't even care about the distinction, since both would have the same effect.
Moreover, we are in a court setting, for the lover is 'your plaintiff' or 'your justice-seeker' (with the 'you' receiving the intimate tuu ). Is the beloved the defendant, or the judge? Both together, without a doubt, since all power belongs to the beloved. Is there any hope of justice in such a situation? Perhaps so, since ironically what the plantiff is petitioning for amounts to a death sentence. If the beloved is merciful, she will grant it on the basis of his ardent plea. If she is cruel, she might grant it with a sneer, as an appropriate penalty for insolence.
And the lover feels that this glance is somehow owed to him.
He has taken the trouble to retain a suitable advocate or attorney, the Moth.
Why is it owed to him? For his devotion, for his passion? Is there any higher
standard of justice in the universe than the beloved's whim? For another verse
about a plaintiff whom Ghalib himself described in a letter as a justice-seeker
[daad-;xvaah], see {1,1}.
Nazm:
Asad's life is in the longing for one warm/hot glance, as if the advocate of your justice-seeker were someone as enthusiastic as the Moth, who longs to be burnt. (42)
== Nazm page 42