nah sataa))ish kii tamannaa nah .sile
kii parvaa
gar nahii;N hai;N mire ash((aar me;N ma((nii nah sahii
1) neither a longing for praise, nor a care for reward
2) if there's no meaning in my verses, then so be it
If some non-connoisseur would give something, then let him not give; if some ignorant person would offer praise, then let him not offer it. (197)
[See also his comments on {5,3}.]
Someone has said that Mirza's verses are meaningless/absurd. In reply to this he says, 'all right, they are meaningless/absurd, so be it; I have no longing for praise, nor any care for reward; if anybody says such things, it causes me no grief'. (345)
SETS == IDIOMS; POETRY
For discussion of nah sahii , see {175,1}.
I've talked about the larger question of Ghalib and 'meaningless' verses in {141,1}.
Note for grammar fans: The plural hai;N is used with 'meaning' not because the 'verses' are plural and have separate 'meanings'; in this case, I don't think that's even intended as a secondary sense. Urdu speakers and writers just normally use ma((nii with plural verbs, even if the meaning is clearly singular. Contrast this with the case of a;hvaal , which is the plural of ;haal but is treated as grammatically singular; it is discussed in {57,4}.
Hali:
One time Maulvi Abd ul-Qadir Rampuri, who was a great jester by temperament, and who had for some time been connected with the Fort of Delhi [=the Court], said to Mirza [Ghalib], 'I don’t understand one of your Urdu verses'. And at that moment he composed two lines of verse and recited them before Mirza:
pahle to ro;Gan-e gul bhai;Ns ke a;N;De se nikaal
phir davaa jitnii hai kul bhai;Ns ke a;N;De se nikaal
[First take the essence of the rose
out of the eggs of buffaloes--
And other drugs are there; take those
out of the eggs of buffaloes.]
Hearing this, Mirzaa was quite astonished, and said, 'Far be it from me-- this is not my verse!' Maulvi 'Abd ul-Qadir said, keeping up the joke, 'I myself have seen it in your divan! And if there's a divan here, I can show it to you right now.' Finally Mirza realized that in this guise the Maulvi was objecting to his work, and was insisting that there were verses like this in his divan.
Mirza has alluded to this kind of nit-picking here and there in his Urdu and Persian divans. In Urdu, at one place he says: {175,6}. The opening-verse of another ghazal is: {141,1}. (112)
==another translation: Russell and Islam, p. 40; the above translation of the verse is that of Russell and Islam