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reg-e ravāñ : 'Moving or shifting sand, quicksand; sand agitated as waves (by the wind)'. (Platts p.612)
muẓt̤arib : 'Agitated, perturbed, moved, disturbed, confounded, afflicted, distracted, anxious; tormented, chagrined'. (Platts p.1043)
FWP:
SETS
MOTIFS
NAMES == MAJNUN
TERMS == 'ELEGANCE IN ASSIGNING A CAUSE'; PROOFThis verse is also an example of 'elegance in assigning a cause': what people think to be a natural phenomenon (quicksand, wind-blown dunes) has in fact a very different explanation.
SRF makes a thoughtful point when he says that Mir's explanatory 'proof' has reduced the power of the metaphor. It does seem that if Mir had contrived to use reg-e ravāñ in the course of saying something about Majnun's restlessness and the desert's responsiveness to it, the verse would have been stronger. The explicit logical structure ('X is not the case, Y is the case') seems prosaic and unnecessarily didactic. Ghalib's two verses retain an air of mystery by making us work to figure out the relationships for ourselves.