Ghazal 90, Verse 3

Azad:

An anecdote: One time Mirza became very much burdened by debt. The creditors took him to court. He was summoned to answer the charges. It was the Mufti [Azurdah] Sahib’s court. When he was brought before the court, he recited this verse: {90,3}. (506)
==Translation: Pritchett and Faruqi, p. 414

Nazm:

That is, one day he will be disgraced by the wine-sellers in the public market. (89)

Bekhud Dihlavi:

Concerning this verse of Mirza Sahib's this anecdote is famous: that before 1857 some shopkeeper had instituted a case against Mirza Sahib for the cost of wine. The case was brought before the court of Mufti Sadr ud-Din Khan Sahib [Azurdah]. In answer to the complaint, Mirza Sahib extemporaneously composed this verse and recited it. The Mufti Sahib paid the plaintiff's money out of his own pocket, and freed Mirza Sahib from the court case. (140)

Bekhud Mohani:

He was compelled by habit, and borrowed money to drink wine.... That is, in this state of poverty the result of wine-drinking is that one must confront humiliation. From this verse it also emerges that after becoming the slave of habit, a man cannot act on the commands of wisdom, and begins to endure humiliations. (183)

FWP:

SETS == HUMOR; MUSHAIRAH; WORDPLAY
WINE: {49,1}

Oh pooh! to the commentators, one and all. Has there ever been a verse so amusing, and so mishandled by their pedantic moralism and naive (and fake) 'realism'? Don't they have any sense of humor? Don't they know how much Ghalib loves wordplay?

In fact, there's not the slightest historical foundation for Azad's implausible anecdote, much less for Bekhud's even more radical version (in which the verse is not merely recited, but is composed impromptu just for that occasion). Yet the anecdote is so widespread that it's also told by Baqir (233) and Josh (180) in the more radical Bekhud version; and by Mihr (296) in the slightly milder Azad version. The anecdote is clearly some kind of back-formation from the fact that Ghalib loved wine (though in fact he usually mixed it with rose-water) and always struggled with debts. And in Azad's case, the anecdote is part of his larger hatchet job on Ghalib, as any close reader of aab-e ;hayaat will have noticed. (For another such example, see {17,9}.)

Nazm, to his (relative) credit, confines himself to a simple moralistic reading, avoiding the anecdote. He is followed by Shadan (259) and Chishti (500). Bekhud Mohani offers a more didactic expansion of the same reading. Not a single commentator that I've looked at recognizes for the verse any other possibility than the humiliating anecdote or the moralistic lesson.

Yet in fact, this witty little gem is one of the world's ultimate mushairah verses. The first line sets us up for just the kind of repentant, moralizing verse that Nazm and company expect. The words 'but' and 'indeed' suggest an anticipation of change. 'I used to drink wine on borrowed money, but indeed I believed...' leads us to expect in the second line 'that one day I would suffer for it', or something to that effect (perhaps with some clever wordplay about 'paying the price'). In a mushairah setting, we have plenty of time before we're allowed to hear the second line, plenty of time to imagine the show of repentance to come.

And what do we get instead? First, we don't get a verb of repentance or chastisement, but the multiple and often positive meanings of rang laanaa (see definition above). And then, what feminine singular thing will govern that verb rang laavegii ? In proper mushairah-verse style, the kicker is withheld until the last possible moment: it is our faaqah-mastii -- literally, our 'poverty-intoxication'; in a well-established idiom, our state of good cheer and gallantry even under dire conditions of need and deprivation. In short, it is a virtue!

So instead of the verse the audience initially expected-- 'we did a bad thing (drinking wine on borrowed money), but always felt that we'd suffer for it'-- what they actually get is, 'we underwent hardship (having to drink wine on borrowed money), but always felt that our cheerfulness in bad times would pay off somehow'! What an entirely different slant this gives to the verse! It turns out in retrospect that the first line was not repentant and apologetic after all, but in fact self-congratulatory: even when times were so bad that we had to borrow our drinking-money, we were still full of good cheer, gallantry, and grace under pressure.

How would our 'cheerfulness in adversity' show its color/wonders? It might cause our cheeks to become rosy, or make us blush; or 'present a fine appearance or form, to bloom; to find resources; to accomplish wonders; to bring about a change'. These possibilities are favorable, though there are negative possibilities as well (we might blush at our indebtedness, or the 'change' it would bring about might have bad sides too). This is typical Ghalib-- lots of possibilities, lots of meanings, inextricably bound together in a very small space.

As a final touch of subtle uncertainty, there's samajhte the . We always 'considered, felt, believed, supposed' that our cheerfulness in adversity would see us through in the end. (The future tense in the second line is because of the traditional preference of Urdu for direct over indirect discourse.) We could be making this remark at some joyous time in the future, savoring the thought that our faith had been vindicated and our virtue rewarded. Or we could be observing wryly that in fact our faith was misplaced and our 'cheerfulness in adversity' turned out to do us no good at all. Or we could be saying this verse as the beginning of a story far stranger and more complex. The lives of lovers, after all, are full of vicissitudes.

Discussing this verse, S. R. Faruqi felt (Nov. 2005) that it might be faulted for failing to indicate what kind of effect the cheerfulness in adversity might be expected to have. But then he decided that a suitable response to any such criticism would be to cite {160,1}-- both the verse itself, and also Ghalib's own comment about it.

And then, there's faaqah-mastii , the culmination of the verse, which remains an absolutely stunning example of wordplay-- and thus of meaning-play too, as Faruqi would insist. The faaqah recalls the poverty and want (literally, 'hunger, fasting') that caused us to borrow the money for wine, and the mastii evokes the intoxication of drinking it. But when put together, their idiomatic meaning is such a delight! It suddenly turns the whole verse around, and gives it a fresh, crisp, rakish slant. How could those at the mushairah not have burst out laughing with sheer pleasure?

The commentators do somewhat similar things, though no doubt less egregious, to {70,3}, {189,2}, and {194,5}.