naql kartaa huu;N use naamah-e a((maal me;N mai;N
kuchh nah kuchh roz-e azal tum ne likhaa hai to sahii
1) I copy/transcribe it into the 'register of deeds'
2) you have written something or other on the day of pre-eternity, indeed!
naql : 'Transporting, carrying from one place to another, removing; transportation; removal; translation; — transmission; ... — transcribing; copying'. (Platts p.1146)
a((maal : 'Actions, acts, deeds, doings: — a((maal-naamah , s.m. Register of one's doings or conduct; the register in which the deeds of men are supposed to be recorded'. (Platts p.61)
azal : 'Eternity without beginning (opp. to abad , q.v.); existence from eternity; beginning, source, origin'. (Platts p.45)
SETS == MUSHAIRAH
ISLAMIC: {10,2}
WRITING: {7,3}
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
On the idiomatic range of sahii expressions, see {9,4}.
Gyan Chand has given a good explanation.
As in so many mushairah verses, the first line is both piquant and pointedly incomplete: we are left to wonder that the 'it' might be. After the necessary interval full of approval and repetition, we are allowed to hear the second line-- and even then, not until the very end can we make sense of the verse. Only when we hear likhaa hai do we experience the sudden closural effect of full understanding.
This verse is unusual in addressing the Lord with the familiar tum ; almost always Ghalib uses the intimate tuu . Since the two words are metrically equivalent, the choice was not constrained by the meter.
Gyan Chand:
The determinists [jibiriyah] believe that the Lord has, from the beginning of eternity, written down everyone's fate/destiny. Ghalib says, 'I am molding what has been written into the form of deeds'. In this verse the mischievousness is that he has put on the Lord the responsibility for all his own sins.
== Gyan Chand, p. 521