===
0096,
6
===

 

{96,6}

yih baḳht-e sabz dekho bāġh-e zamānah meñ se
pazhmurdah gul bhī apnī dastār tak nah pahuñchā

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)

 

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

S. R. Faruqi:

baḳht-e sabz = ill-fortune

The use here of baḳht-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 gulzār hamārā
sharmindah-e yak goshah-e dastār 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-baḳht rang-e ḳhūbī kis kām kā kih maiñ to
thā gul vale kisī kī dastār tak nah pahuñchā

[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 apnī has to be taken as short for merī apnī . There are plenty of precedents for this usage; Ghalibian examples can be found in G{15,12}. Here, merī would fit perfectly in the slot that apnī 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?

 

 
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