Ghazal 57, Verse 9

{57,9}*

aa))e hai bekasii-e ((ishq pah ronaa ;Gaalib
kis ke ghar jaa))egaa sailaab-e balaa mere ba((d

1) at the forlornness of passion, weeping comes, Ghalib
2) to whose house will the flood of disasters go, after me?!

Notes:

aa))e hai is an archaic form of aataa hai (GRAMMAR)

 

bekasii : 'Forlorn state, friendlessness, destitution'. (Platts p.203)

 

sailaab : 'A flood, torrent, stream, deluge, inundation'. (Platts p.712)

Nazm:

In the second line, he has constructed passion itself as the flood of disasters. (53)

== Nazm page 53

Bekhud Dihlavi:

He says, oh Ghalib, I weep for the loneliness and helplessness of passion. After my death, who will become its host, and to whose house will the flood of disasters-- that is, passion-- go? (99)

Bekhud Mohani:

That is, I don't see in anyone else the courage to accept this flood of disasters. (126)

FWP:

SETS == A,B
GRANDIOSITY: {5,3}
HOME: {14,9}

Two independent 'A,B' lines-- how to connect them? The commentators want to apply them to the same situation by taking 'flood of disasters' as an epithet applied to passion, so that the verse expresses compassion for a homeless orphan. Thus the lover weeps for the plight of hapless Passion, who will be without a home once the lover himself is gone-- to whose house will Passion, the poor forlorn disaster-filled thing, be able to go then?

Yet we needn't equate the two, to make the verse work. The 'forlornness of passion' could be simply the inability of the passionate lover to continue his activities beyond the grave. Throughout his life he was always available for the 'flood of disasters' that constantly poured down on him from the heavens; who will show them such hospitality after he is gone?

Or perhaps the lover sympathizes with the plight of those equally forlorn lovers, his fellow victims of passion, whom he is leaving behind. While the 'flood of disasters' was falling on his house, others escaped. Now that he is not available to take the punishment, on whom will the flood of disasters descend next? (In a nice bit of wordplay, tears 'come' to him about where the flood will 'go'.)

And of course, 'tears' come to the lover in his anxiety over the future of the 'flood' of disasters. Could he be somehow creating the torrent himself? In {111,16} he suggests this threatening possibility, and in {233,17} he calls his tears 'equipment for a typhoon.' There's also {58,2}, in which the lover describes what his tears have done to his own house.