Ghazal 314x, Verse 5

Asi:

Oh Creator of the springtime of the world, undoubtedly we are a sinner toward you, and certainly we are guilty toward you. For apart from you we have a longing for picking flowers or for the spectacle of the garden. We ought to have longed for nothing besides you.

== Asi, p. 159

Zamin:

That is, we looked at the spectacle of the garden, and longed for flower-picking. This we did wrongly, so that we became a sinner. In bahaar aafirinaa the final aa is a vocative marker. In Urdu now such a vocative is considered contrary to eloquence.

== Zamin, p. 227

Gyan Chand:

Oh Lord, we see the garden, and we also wish to pick the flowers. Oh Creator of the springtime, truly we are sinners. It's a superb verse-- how excellently he has presented the excuse! He has put all the blame on the Creator of the garden: 'Why did you create the garden and the springtime? Now if someone would want to look, and to pick flowers, is the sin his or yours?'.

== Gyan Chand, p. 256

FWP:

SETS == A,B; LIST
SPRINGTIME: {13,2}
TAMASHA: {8,1}

For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.

The first line consists of a verb-free Ghalibian 'list' (for more on these, see {4,4}); it thus remains quite uninterpretable.

Even when-- after a mushairah-performance delay, of course-- we're allowed to hear the second line, it doesn't really resolve the first line. The grammar makes it a flat statement ('we are a sinner'), and Zamin duly reads it that way. But Gyan Chand ignores that reading entirely, and praises the verse highly for asking an exclamatory rhetorical question ('are we a sinner?!') that transfers the blame to the (divine or human) 'spring-creator'.

But that first line is still the more potent one. Just consider the possibilities for a list like this, with items 'A, B':

=A and B are sequential parts of the same larger whole.

=A and B are contrasted in some way (e.g., one is good, one is bad).

=A and B are identical (two names for the same thing).

=A and B (or B and A) are cause and effect.

Of course some of these options are more obviously attractive than others. But all of them can generate intriguing possibilities. Even what seems at first to be the most implausible of all, the final possibility on the list (the 'longing for picking' causes the 'spectacle of the garden'), has considerable psychological plausibility-- in such contexts I always think of Kent's words to Lear (Act II, Scene 2),'Nothing almost sees miracles / But misery'.