===
0096,
6
===
 

{96,6}

yih ba;xt-e sabz dekho baa;G-e zamaanah me;N se
pazhmurdah gul bhii apnii dastaar tak nah pahu;Nchaa

1) look at this evil/'green' fortune-- from within the garden of the world/age
2) not even a withered rose arrived as far as my turban-sash

 

Notes:

pazhmurdah : 'Withered, faded, pallid, drooping, blighted, decayed; frozen, numbed'. (Platts p.261)

 

dastaar : 'A sash or fine muslin cloth wrapped round a turban'. (Platts p.516)

*Platts Dictionary Online*

S. R. Faruqi:

ba;xt-e sabz = ill-fortune

The use here of ba;xt-e sabz is very fine. The rest of the wordplay is clear.

He has expressed a similar theme, in the first divan itself, like this [{507,5}]:

pazhmurdah bahut hai gul-e gulzaar hamaaraa
sharmindah-e yak goshah-e dastaar nah hove

[the rose of our garden is very drooping/withered
may it not be shamed in a single corner of the turban-sash]

Momin has composed a good ghazal in this 'ground'. In one verse of it the 'rose' and the 'turban-sash' have also been included. But a 'mood' like Mir's is not there:

be-ba;xt rang-e ;xuubii kis kaam kaa kih mai;N to
thaa gul vale kisii kii dastaar tak nah pahu;Nchaa

[without fortune, of what use is the style of excellence-- for I
was a rose but didn't arrive at anyone's turban-sash

FWP:

SETS == WORDPLAY
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS == GROUND; THEME

The 'garden' wordplay, with the 'green' fortune not bestowing even a 'withered' rose, is also enjoyable. The idiomatic sense of 'green' as 'evil' is crucial here; how incomprehensible the verse would be without it! Yet idioms like this are the hardest to recover. Fortunately SRF has clarified things, so we're not (in this case) reduced to perplexity or conjecture.

Note for grammar fans: Here apnii has to be taken as short for merii apnii . There are plenty of precedents for this usage; Ghalibian examples can be found in G{15,12}. Here, merii would fit perfectly in the slot that apnii occupies-- so why did Mir not use it? Either it was a matter of indifference to him, or else there was some particular reason for preferring the one to the other. Maybe a subtle phonetic effect?