hosh ai harzah-daraa tuhmat-e be-dardii chand
naalah dar-gard-e tamannaa-e a;sar pinhaa;N hai
1) alert yourself, oh nonsense-bell-- how long, the suspicion of unfeelingness?!
2) the lament, in the dust of the longing for effect, is hidden
harzah : 'Nonsense, twaddle; — trifles, bagatelles ... — harzah-gard , s.m. A gad-about, a gossip: — harza-gardii , s.f. Going about on trifling subjects, gadding about, gossiping'. (Platts p.1225)
daraa : 'A bell'. (Platts p.510)
tuhmat : 'Evil opinion, suspicion'. (Steingass p.339)
be-dardii : 'Freedom from pain; unfeelingness, inhumanity'. (Platts p.204)
chand : 'How much? how many? how often? how long?' (Platts p.444)
gard : 'Going round, revolving; traversing, travelling or wandering over, or through, or in (used as last member of compounds ... ; — s.f. Dust; — the globe; — fortune'. (Platts p.903)
He says, 'Oh maker of vain and ineffective laments, come to your senses! Instead of effect, on the lament layer upon layer of dust has gathered-- how would its effect be manifest?! Then what good is it if you keep on making ineffective laments and take upon your head the suspicion of unfeelingness?' The 'suspicion of unfeelingness' is in the sense that if in the heart there had been the pain of passion, then in the lament too there would have been effect. The speaker addresses his own inner spirit.
harzah-daraa = One who babbles meaninglessly. tuhmat-e bedardii = The suspicion that in my heart there is no pain and burning. Oh you hindrance, don't babble vainly! Don't cause me to be suspected of having a heart devoid of the pain of passion, since I don't lament! My lament is hidden in the dust of the longing for effect; that is, the reason I don't lament is that my lament has no effect. I am longing for an effect to be created. For the present, this useless longing has stopped my laments.
SETS == PETRIFIED PHRASES
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
The moment we hear harzah , we expect the next word to be gard (or possibly go ). For harzah-gard is an entirely established phrase; it gets its own entry in Platts (see the definition above). It's so established that someone like me knows to expect it; undoubtedly Ghalib would have been aware of such an expectation. Yet he shocks us: he gives us harzah-daraa , 'nonsense-bell', which itself is almost nonsensical. Hearing the first line leaves us baffled.
When-- after the obligatory mushairah-performance delay-- we are finally allowed to hear the second line, we realize that the missing gard has been smuggled in after all. It's on its own now, so that it means not 'going around' but 'dust' (see the definition above); but still, there it is. In this particular verse, in fact, it's impossible to find any other reason for the gard to be there: the verse has no imagery of deserts or sand-grains, no poetic 'proof' that a 'longing for effect' would be full of dust.
So the common insult harzah-gard is both there, and not there. It also, in its hovering half-presence, generates echoes: daraa , be dardii , dar , gard . Other than these small pleasures of wordplay, the verse has, as far as I can see, absolutely nothing else to offer.
Asi:
Oh nonsense-babbler, how long will you hold against me the suspicion of wakefulness? Leave off from it! My lament is concealed in the longing for effect; and the longing for effect is, so to speak, a dust-cloud that has kept my lament hidden.
== Asi, p. 307