Ghazal 137, Verse 5x

{137,5x}

:tarf-e su;xan nahii;N hai mujh se ;xudaa nah kardah
hai naamah-bar ko us se da((vaa-e ham-kalaamii

1) does he not turn aside from speaking with me? may the Lord forbid--
2) the Messenger has a claim/pretension of speaking with her!

Notes:

:tarf : 'Averting, turning away, repelling'. (Steingass p.813)

 

da((vaa : 'Pretension, claim; demand, suit; plaint, action at law, lawsuit; charge, accusation; contention, assertion'. (Platts p.519)

 

ham-kalaamii : 'Mutual discourse; conversation'. (Platts p.1234)

Asi:

May the Lord forbid! He does not speak directly/straightforwardly to me; rather, my Messenger has a claim of speaking with her.

== Asi, p. 217

Zamin:

That is, may the Lord forbid! Why has he begun to address me? To speak with me is contrary to his prestige! Indeed, in speaking with a Messenger no prestige is lessened.

== Zamin, p. 321

Gyan Chand:

:tarf = To avert the eyes, to look askance at.

The Messenger is not meeting my eyes while speaking with me. He claims to have returned after speaking with the beloved. May the Lord forbid that this would have happened! The suspicion is that he himself has given his heart to her; for this reason he scarcely speaks with me.

== Gyan Chand, p. 333

FWP:

SETS == EXCLAMATION; GESTURE; KYA

For background see S. R. Faruqi's choices. This verse is NOT one of his choices; I thought it was interesting and have added it myself. For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.

The phrase at the beginning of the first line requires an implied kyaa , to make it into a rhetorical question; otherwise the verse becomes incoherent.

The evidence that the Messenger has spoken with the beloved is his reluctance to speak with the lover-- his averted eyes, his looking askance. What dreadful suspicions might be going through the lover's mind? Here are some of them:

=That the Messenger himself fell in love with the beloved the moment he saw her, so that he now considers the lover to be a Rival.

=That the Messenger, having been admitted to her presence, now feels himself so lofty in his dignity that he disdains to bother conversing with the wretched lover.

=That the Messenger, having conversed with her, has come to share her low opinion of the lover, and to treat the lover as disdainfully as she does.

=That the Messenger, having come under her influence, has undertaken at her instigation to carry out some evil plan against the lover.

=That the Messenger might be practicing a bit of coyness or even extortion: he claims to have spoken with the beloved, but is showing a (real? feigned?) reluctance to report what she said.

It's also possible that the madly paranoid lover is imagining the whole thing, and simply fancies that the Messenger is averting his eyes. But of course, 'paranoids have enemies too'. The range of possibilities is something like that of {14,3}.

A traditional carrying-case, in which a messenger would convey a rolled-up letter: