bahaanah-juu))ii-e ra;hmat kamii;N-gah-e taqriib
vafaa-e ;hau.salah-o-ranj-e imti;haa;N tujh se
1) the excuse-seeking of mercy/kindness; the ambush-place of approach/access
2) the faithfulness of courage/spirit, and the affliction of the testing-- from you
bahaanah : 'Excuse, pretext, plea, pretence; shift, evasion, subterfuge, contrivance, feint, blind; affectation'. (Platts p.189)
taqriib : 'Giving access (to), causing to approach, bringing near; approaching; approximation, proximity; approach, access; commending, recommending, mentioning (anyone) to another before meeting; recommendation, mention; occasion, conjuncture; festive occasion, festival; ceremony, rite; cause, means; appearance, probability; pretence, motive'. (Platts p.330)
vafaa : 'Performing (or performance of) a promise, keeping an engagement; fulfilment; — observation of good faith, faithfulness, fidelity; sincerity; gratitude; — sufficing; a sufficiency; a completing or filling up; completion, conclusion, end'. (Platts p.1197)
;hau.salah : 'Stomach, maw; crop, craw; (fig.) capacity; desire, ambition; resolution; spirit, courage'. (Platts p.482)
That is, in difficulties you alone give the testing, and you alone also give the courage to endure the testing. And this is the excuse-seeking of your mercy/kindness-- that with the help of the courage given by you, a person would be successful in the testing and would be established as worthy of mercy/kindness.
You alone are giving the trouble of the testing, and are making our courage faithful/sufficient, and are keeping us company. This is your grace/beneficence. Your mercy/kindness is seeking an excuse, that through some approach/access it would cherish us.
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
As Gyan Chand notes in discussing {424x,1}, the addressee throughout this ghazal seems to be the Lord (or else a beloved so divinized that it's hard to tell the difference).
The first line has the verb-free structure of a 'list'-- simply 'item A, item B'. Are they to be equated, or compared, or contrasted? Are they descriptively or causally connected (and if so, which way)? Or are they simply two entries in a longer list? Under mushairah performance conditions, we of course have to wait for a time before we're allowed to hear the second line.
The second line too is verb-free: 'item C and item D, from you'; but it's not hard to conclude that both items come 'from you'. The commentators choose the obvious reading, by similarly taking the two items in the first line also to come 'from you'. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but other possibilities also exist. For example, what if item A describes the Lord's activity, and item B describes that of the speaker (the Lord wants merely to show mercy from on high, while the speaker is insisting on direct access to him)? Or what if the speaker is seeking an excuse to claim a special divine mercy, while the Lord is lurking in ambush, preparing to lure him into the necessary 'testing'? The second line might then be read almost as such an 'excuse' (the speaker claims that if he lacks the necessary courage/spirit for the 'testing', it's the Lord's fault for not giving it to him).
Compare {4,4}, an even more elaborate mix-and-match 'list' smorgasbord.
Asi:
Your mercy/kindness is available to everyone, but in truth it is seeking an excuse, and is lurking in the ambush-place of approach/access, to see whether some approach/access would come into view, so that it would do its work. You alone give strength and faithfulness to courage/spirit, and you alone give the affliction of the testing.
== Asi, p. 310