131_05

Notes:

;Gara.z : 'An object of aim or pursuit, or of desire, or of want; aim, end, object, design, view, purpose, intention; business; meaning; a want, need, necessity, occasion; interest, concern; interestedness, interested motive'. (Platts p.770)

nashaa:t : 'Liveliness, sprightliness, cheerfulness, gladness, glee, joy, pleasure, exultation, triumph'. (Platts p.1139)

guunah : 'Colour; kind, sort, species; form, figure, fashion; mode, manner'. (Platts p.927)

*Platts Dictionary Online*

Nazm:

That is, he keeps causing forgetfulness of grief through unconsciousness and selfless-ness. (140)

== Nazm page 140

Bekhud Dihlavi:

By drinking wine, my intention is not that I would obtain joy and delight, but rather I drink wine so that I would forget grief and sorrow. Night and day, I need some small selfless-ness. (196)

Bekhud Mohani:

This is a verse of such broad meaning that it's not easy to comment on it. Besides joy, all the other things that necessitate drinking wine may be there-- all are present in it. Because the author has left the burden of understanding them on the mind of the hearer. Many different aspects can be seen in this verse.... The meaning of ik guunah emerges as, I need one kind of selfless-ness. That is, there's nothing special about wine. I need selfless-ness, however it might be obtained.... The phrase din raat is a doomsday/wonder! That is, the whole day my heart is full of troubling thoughts, and if at night I sleep, then frightful scenes occur in dreams. In short, asleep or awake, I find no peace. From chaahiye a doomsday/wonder of power has been created in the verse. That is, it's not that I have an ardor for selfless-ness-- rather, it's become my new necessity. Or say, rather, that it's a type of medicine. (262-63)

Mihr:

Compare {33,2}. (128)

FWP:

SETS == EK
BEKHUDI: {21,6}
NIGHT/DAY: {1,2}
WINE: {49,1}

The color imagery offers some elegant wordplay: guunah means literally 'color', and ruu-siyaah means 'black-faced'. And of course, there are the two highly color-coded words, black 'night' and white 'day'. There are also the overtones of the ruby (or blood) color of wine, and we can hardly avoid thinking of the idiomatic expression siyaah-mast , 'black-drunk', for someone who's very drunk indeed-- drunk enough to become 'self-less', perhaps. (For examples of siyaah-mast , used with imagery of (dark) shadows, see {49,2} and {80,4}.) As always, I use 'selfless-ness' to remind the reader that this is not the English word 'selflessness', meaning 'extreme unselfishness'; rather, it's about serious loss of self or obliviousness to self.

The speaker sounds contemptuous, fierce, almost desperate-- people who naively (or culpably?) seek joy through wine are called 'disgraced ones' or 'wretches'. Why such harshness? Perhaps the speaker means to imply that he himself would never be so vulgar as to seek mere joy or pleasure-- where he is, joy doesn't even exist, and only relief from pain is the point. Or perhaps he thinks that such people are frivolously misusing a great and serious medicine, and turning it into a mere toy; such vulgarization of something so vital and precious is a 'disgrace'.

As for the speaker himself, his words are chillingly bleak. Bekhud Mohani has pointed out some of their implications. A milder, more compassionate version of this theme can be seen in {86,3}-- where those who seek joy in wine are not 'disgraced', but are simply naive remnants of an earlier, more hopeful generation.