va;hshat nah khe;Nch qaatil ;hairat-nafas hai bismil
jab naalah ;xuu;N ho ;Gaafil taa;siir kyaa balaa hai
1) don't engage in wildness, oh slayer-- the wounded/slaughtered one is amazement-breathing
2) when a lament would be murdered/'blood', oh heedless one-- what harm/misfortune is its effect?!
va;hshat : 'Loneliness, solitariness, dreariness; — sadness, grief, care; — wildness, fierceness, ferocity, savageness; barbarity, barbarism; — timidity, fear, fright, dread, terror, horror; — distraction, madness'. (Platts p.1183)
;xuun honaa : 'A murder to be committed; to be murdered; — to be wasted, be squandered'. (Platts p.497)
balaa : 'Trial, affliction, misfortune, calamity, evil, ill; a person or thing accounted a trial, affliction, &c.; evil genius, evil spirit, devil, fiend; a wonderful or extraordinary person or thing; an awful or terrible person or thing; an insignificant, or vile, person or thing'. (Platts p.163)
Oh slayer, don't show wildness. Don't make the taunt that 'What effect will your lament have?!'. The slain one is becoming amazement-stricken. When his lament has ended, how will there be any effect?
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
On the special nature of ;hairat , see {51,9x}. If you find the word nafas confusing, see {15,6}.
The many possible senses of va;hshat (see the definition above) are evident in the way Zamin construes it as 'fear', while Gyan Chand imagines it as an inclination to 'taunt' the victim. The victim seems still to be somewhat alive; even though bismil officially means 'slaughtered', in the ghazal world it often means merely 'wounded' (as in {8,3}). In any case, he's in a state of 'amazement-breathing', which sounds like some kind of mystically transcendent Sufistic achievement.
This is where the 'kya effect' becomes so enjoyable. The commentators see the verse as reassuring the beloved-- 'You will get away with the murder, what effect can his feeble lament possibly have?!' (a negative rhetorical question). But the opposite reading is also possible: 'Someone in a mystical state like this-- what an effect his sublimated, other-worldly lament might have!' (an affirmative exclamation). This second reading is reinforced by the vocative ;Gaafil , which often has overtones of warning: the beloved should not show 'savagery, barbarity'. There could also be a third reading, a genuine question: 'A lament of this kind-- what effect might it have?'.
The verse also offers a matched set of all three possible internal rhymes.
Zamin:
To the murderer he says, 'Having committed the slaying, why do you fear? The slain one has become entirely amazement, he doesn't even have the strength to lament. So, what kind of an effect would the lament have, and what is there to fear?'
== Zamin, p. 408