bah rang-e saayah hame;N bandagii me;N hai tasliim
kih daa;G-e dil bah jabiin-e kushaadah rakhte hai;N
1) with the aspect/mood/color of a shadow we offer, in servitude, acceptance/prostration
2) {since / in that} we keep/maintain the wound of the heart with a cheerful/subjugated/'open' forehead
saayah : 'Shadow, shade; shelter, protection'. (Platts p.631)
tasliim : 'Saluting, greeting; salutation, obeisance, homage, touching the ground with the fingers and then making salaam ; health, security; ... surrender, resignation; conceding, acknowledging, granting; assenting to, accepting'. (Platts p.324)
kushaadah : 'Opened, uncovered, disclosed, discovered, detected, revealed, expanded, spread out, displayed, drawn forth; taken, subjected, subdued; open, ... ; free, frank, cheerful, glad, happy; serene, clear'. (Platts p.835)
SETS == BAH; WORD
BONDAGE: {1,5}
Raza p. 155. S. R. Faruqi's choices. Ghalib originally composed a ghazal of eight verses, from which he chose one for publication in his divan. In the original eight-verse ghazal, this verse was the third one.
A shadow 'prostrates' itself at the shadow-owner's feet, because the end of the shadow always touches the shadow-maker's feet, and because the rest of the shadow lies on the ground. Our surrender, or acceptance, or prostration, in servitude is like that of a shadow in its absoluteness (since the shadow can't imagine any other form of life). Accordingly:
=we keep a 'cheerful, happy' face that belies the presence of a wound in the heart
=we keep a 'subjugated, subdued' face that shows the presence of a wound in the heart
=we keep a face that is is 'open, revealed', while the wound in our heart remains hidden
The verse thus elegantly explores the various possibilities of kushaadah (see the definition above). The protean grammar of bah also plays its part in assuring flexibility.
The jabii;N also cleverly does double duty, since the forehead or face is a primary means for revealing (or concealing) emotion, and is also the part of the body involved in literal prostratiolike that of a shadow (as a sign of humility, sometimes literally so marked by contact with the ground, as in {91,10}). It's also prominently involved in gestural acts of symbolic prostration (as in the courteously deferential greeting of tasliim ).
Note for grammar fans: It's of course grammatically possible to generate: 'we keep a wound in our heart that has a cheerful, happy expression' (or 'a subjugated, subdued expression'). But the effort required in endowing the heart-wound with a 'forehead' or a 'face' seems too distracting to be really poetically effective.
Gyan Chand:
From servitude, a wound falls upon the heart. An 'open' forehead is a sign of cheerfulness. The meaning of the second line is not that we duplicated the wound in the heart on the open forehead; rather, it means that along with an open forehead we maintain a wound in the heart. A shadow is the servant of its shadow-caster, and it wholeheartedly accepts this relationship. We too have very cheerfully accepted the wound of servitude on our heart. (274)