Ghazal 78, Verse 4

Nazm:

The meaning is that when the news reaches you, you will take heed, but while the news is on its way to you-- here, we are finished off. (80)

== Nazm page 80

Bekhud Dihlavi:

To pull out from this ground such a clear and unexampled verse-- this was a task for an accomplished master like Mirza. He says, we're persuaded that you won't engage in neglect, and will come quickly. But while news is in the process of reaching you, we will turn to dust, so what's the cure for that? (127)

Josh:

It's a very clear and well-worked-out [suljhaa hu))aa] theme. That is, I'm persuaded that you will give up negligence and will return quickly. But the state we are in in your absence will finish us off, and by the time news of our bad state reaches you, we will already have been done for. (164)

FWP:

SETS == CATCH-22; HUMOR

A lovely, witty, little 'catch-22' lies at the heart of this one. If I don't accept your pledge not to neglect or ignore me, I'll offend you-- and thus I'll never get any favors from you. Yet if I do accept it, and thus earn your good will, I'll never live long enough to get any favors from you. (For I'll of course be in such bad shape in your absence that I'll be dead before you even learn of it.) So no matter what I do, I'm doomed.

Yet the tone of the verse is surely wry, dry, rueful, even amused. The lover is quite aware of the paradoxical quality of a non-negligence that has exactly the same effect as negligence: a non-negligence that will be brought to bear only after the non-neglected person is dead.

In fact, this paradoxical quality reminds me of {17,8}-- oh, the repentance of that 'quick-repenter'! First she kills me, then she swears off murder. In the present verse, first I will die without her, then she will show her non-neglect! For a more inward perspective on the problem, compare the previous verse, {78,3}.

Why will it take so long for word to reach her? Perhaps because she's always so far away, so inaccessible, so basically indifferent, that even a Messenger traveling at full speed would take ages to reach her. Or perhaps because my condition without her will be so dire that I won't last any longer than a candle in the wind, so that even a fast channel of communication will prove too slow. Or perhaps because she will use slowness of communication as an excuse-- oh, I would have come, but alas, the message only reached me too late. (Or, of course, since these possibilities aren't mutually exclusive, all of them at once.)

And most centrally, what is the 'news' that will reach her too late? One possibility of course is the news of the lover's generally dire condition and imminent death. But another, at least as likely, possibility is the 'news' that I've conceded, and have claimed to be persuaded, that she won't show negligence. Perhaps we had had a quarrel, and I accused her of being negligent. She denied it, and stormed out in anger. Later, upon reflection, I decided to concede the point, maybe as a gesture of reconciliation. But of course, my concession is useless, because I'll be dead before she learns of it.

What can a poor lover do but at least tease her, at least enjoy the irony? That much he's doing. The verse, after all, is addressed directly and familiarly [tum] to her.

Note for grammar fans: Here's one more case in which the tenses don't align perfectly between Urdu and English. In colloquial English we'd be much more likely to use the present perfect ('we've conceded'). For more on this topic, see {38,1}.