har-chand jaa;N-gudaazii-e qahr-o-((ataab
hai
har-chand pusht-garmii-e taab-o-tuvaa;N nahii;N
1) {although / however much} there is life-meltingness of
anger/violence and wrath/rebuke
2) {although / however much} there's no {support / 'back-warmth'} of fortitude/'heat' and strength
har-chand : 'Although, even if, notwithstanding; --how-much-soever, howsoever; as often as'. (Platts p.1222)
pusht-garmii : 'Warm support'. (Steingass p.252)
taab : 'Heat, warmth; burning, inflaming; pain, affliction, grief; anger, indignation, wrath, rage; light, radiance, lustre, splendour; strength, power, ability, capability; endurance'. (Platts p.303)
Although [harchand] her anger is life-melting, and there's no strength for endurance in us, even so we don't ask for a truce from the anger; rather, we seek more wrath. (81)
Although this anger and wrath is melting my life, despite this, the power of fortitude and strength has enabled me to respond [as in the next verse]. (142)
Although her anger is life-melting, and my strength too doesn't stay with me, nevertheless my courage rouses my enthusiasm. Even now my spirit says, if there are any troubles left, then bring them along too-- I still don't ask for respite! (185-86)
SETS == PARALLELISM; WORD
Isn't it striking that both lines begin with har-chand ? We can't really make grammatically complete sense of two 'although' clauses. Formally speaking, it's hard to see how this verse can be made to consist of a grammatically complete sentence or thought. Ghalib has presented us with a strange, oblique, suggestive fragment, with no possibility of grammatical coherence or closure.
But not to worry. This is the first verse of a two-verse verse-set. All the commentators read the two verses together, as a single grammatical whole, which surely seems the best approach. This is the first case of a 'compulsory verse-set' that I've seen. Usually the verses in a verse-set can fruitfully be read together, as parts of a larger whole, but each is also structurally complete on its own and makes sense independently. Not this time, however.
In this case, I'm tempted to argue that Ghalib might also mean for us to reimagine one of the 'although's as a 'nevertheless'. In that case, of course, we'd have two possible readings: 'Although there's life-meltingness of anger and wrath, nevertheless there's no support of fortitude and strength'; and 'although there's no support of fortitude and strength, nevertheless there's life-meltingness of anger and wrath'. Both these readings make reasonable sense. Since Ghalib is capable of some wild and woolly grammatical inventions (see {230,5} for a fine example), we could declare that he's doing a kind of semantic riff on harchand if we wanted to. This feels arbitrary to me, but the autonomy of the individual verse in a ghazal is so fundamental that I hesitate to give it up entirely.
Whether we read this verse independently at all costs, or as an integral part of the other verse in its verse-set, it's got excellent wordplay: pusht-garmii , or 'warm support', literally means 'back-warmth', so that it resonates with 'meltingness' and taab , which has among its numerous meanings 'heat'. The sound effects of ((ataab and taab also work well together.
Nazm:
Although [harchand] her anger and wrath are melting my life, although fortitude and endurance responded to it-- even so, the afflicted one is saying, 'if some cruelty is left, don't hold it back, and even now I'm not asking for a truce'. (90)
== Nazm page 90