FWP:
SETS == BASKIH
MADNESS: {14,3}
TAMASHA: {8,1}
The clever positioning of z-baskih in the first line gives us the two choices 'to such an extent, since' and 'although'; as usual with Ghalib, both open rich possibilities in the second line:
= it's such a characteristic of madness to 'practice spectacle-viewing' that in my madness I begrudge even the momentary involuntary eye-blinks that deprive me of a millisecond of the spectacle, so to me the blinks are like slaps that I use to chasten myself for my brief inattention and to sharpen my alertness.
= it's such a characteristic of madness to 'practice spectacle-viewing' that like many madmen, I become fixated and entranced. I need to be slapped and made to come out of it, and my case is so extreme that my very eyelids become alarmed: they blink in order to slap me and awaken me from my trance and bring me back, embarrassed, to reality. (A much less interesting reading, in my view, but the one on which the commentators generally agree.)
= although it's a characteristic of madness to 'practice spectacle-viewing', even as I practice it I haven't entirely lost my grip on reason. I'm constantly blinking, and those blinks are like little slaps from myself to myself, to chastise myself and try to shock myself into returning to the real world.
Certainly siilii means a slap or a blow, and all the commentators insist that it's the only meaning that's invoked here. But I can't help but notice also that siilnaa means 'to become damp or moist', and siil means 'wetness, moisture' (see the definitions above). From siil to siilii is not a long step, and 'wetness, moisture' is of course exactly what is provided by blinking. I think there's an enjoyable latent wordplay in there that's felt by the reader, even though it may not be officially part of the surface meaning.
Somewhere in the general neighborhood-- though no doubt farther away-- there also lurks the siil that goes back to the Sanskrit shiila , and has the double sense of 'disposition' and 'good disposition'. A parallel: the English 'character' can be used either positively ('he has character') or neutrally ('he has a bad character'). And it turns out that in the case of siil there's actually an idiom well enough established to be in Platts: aa;Nkho;N me;N siil honaa means essentially 'to be well-behaved'. And in the present verse too we have a form of behavior in the eyes: bad behavior, shame, regret.
If these words hover around so closely that somebody like
me could notice and enjoy them, how could Ghalib and the original audience
not have done so?
Nazm:
To remain absorbed in the spectacle of the world is a sign of madness, and a nonsensical act. For this reason, at the time of looking at a spectacle, the eyelids' opening and closing is the falling of a moisture of shame. (232)
== Nazm page 232