hai yih barsaat vuh mausam kih ((ajab
kyaa hai agar
mauj-e hastii ko kare fai.z-e havaa mauj-e sharaab
1) this rainy season is that [kind of] season-- it's
hardly strange if
2) the generosity/overflowingness of the air/desire would make the wave
of life, a wave of wine
fai.z : 'Overflowing, abundance, plenty; --beneficence, munificence, liberality, bounty, bountiful kindness favour, grace; charity'. (Platts p.785)
havaa : 'Air, atmosphere, ether, the space between heaven and earth; --air, wind, gentle gale;... --affection, favour, love, mind, desire, passionate fondness; lust, carnal desire, concupiscence'. (Platts p.1239)
He says that in the rainy season, the fallen rain on the ground engenders greenery. Is it strange if the spring breeze [baad-e bahaarii] would make the wave of life into a wave of wine? The meaning is that the spring season [bahaar kaa mausam] produces fervor and enthusiasm in temperaments. (88)
The mention of the rainy season along with spring in this verse has come in because in Iran, spring and the rainy season come together, and these Persian ideas have spread over Urdu too. (122)
WINE: {49,1}
According to Arshi, this verse is the beginning of a verse-set. I really have no idea where it would end. Perhaps with {49,8}? Since nobody but Arshi seems to mark it or treat it as one, I don't have any good ideas. But he does mark it in both editions of his work, so I'm duly noting it.
The rainy season in India has always been the season of erotic passion for lovers who are together, and erotic suffering for lovers who are separated. But it isn't exactly 'spring'. Its fertility is lush, voluptuous, but also almost overripe; everything is always on the verge of rotting and decaying in the extreme wetness. The monsoon air is often not like a 'wave of wine', but more like a wave of steamy water vapor and intense humidity, until the weather gradually cools off.
But here, as Josh observes, the rainy season is pressed into service to play the role that spring plays in different climates. The main South Asian seasons have been described as 'cold' (mid-December to March), 'hot' (April to June), 'monsoon' (July to September), and 'post-monsoon' (October to mid-December). Azad speaks of Zauq as living in a small house through 'heat, cold, rains-- the full flowering of all three seasons': garmii _ jaa;Raa _ barsaat _ tiino;N mausam kii bahaare;N vahii;N bai;The gu;zar jaatii thii;N [p. 448]. (Though he conspicuously brings in bahaar for the sake of the wordplay.)
Nazm and Bekhud Dihlavi and other commentators effortlessly turn 'the rainy season' into 'spring' in their commentary, apparently without even noticing the discrepancy. (And I'd never given it any thought either, until Josh's observation made me reflect.) For more examples of rainy season imagery, with and without conflation with springtime, see {48,7}.
But then, how important is the discrepancy really? The world of the ghazal is in any case made up of characters and environments possessing exactly, and only, the qualities needed for poetic effectiveness within the verse. If roses smile and laugh, captured birds talk, beloveds shoot eyelash-arrows, and dead lovers describe their own decomposition, does it really matter if the rainy season is endowed with the qualities of a stylized springtime?
The rhyme-word, havaa , is also surely crucial to the verse. The same rhyme-word has been used in {49,2} as well; this is just one of many proofs that Ghalib had no objection to recycling rhyme-words within the same ghazal. The rhyme-word is in a position of unique emphasis and power; especially, as I've argued, in the case of what I call mushairah-verses, but more generally as well. It's the last chance the poet has to make a particular effect, before moving on to the fixed refrain; and in the poetics of oral presentation, with their dimension of temporal sequence, that last chance is much more significant than in poetry designed for the eye rather than the ear. The havaa here is the sole agent and active principle in the verse: the first line calls our attention to the background of its operation, and the second line begins by giving us the object it would transform. Then, at the last possible moment, we finally discover what this agent is-- and it's either 'air, breeze' or 'desire', both of them entirely capable of fai.z in all of its senses, both of them characteristic of the season, both of them able to turn a 'wave of life' into a 'wave of wine'. How elegantly clever it is that we're unable to choose between them! (For more on havaa , see {8,3}.)
Compare {181,6} for a very similar play on havaa .
Nazm:
The spring breeze [havaa-e bahaar] brings such revolutionary changes.... When one substance turns into another, it gives great pleasure. A second reason that poets have given attention to this theme is that when in a simile movement is the ground of similitude, then that simile is usually extremely eloquent [badii((].... In short, the author has here created a movement in expressing the generosity of the air-- he has given the simile of a wave for swiftly-passing existence, and thanks to the generosity of the air he has made that wave a wave of wine, with the affinity of being joy-producing. (45)