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0386,
1
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{386,1}

achchhī lage hai tujh bin gul-gasht-e bāġh kis ko
ṣuḥbat rakhe guloñ se itnā dimāġh kis ko

1) a flower-stroll in the garden-- without you, to whom does it seem good?
2) that someone would keep company with roses-- who has that much of a mind/nose for it?

 

Notes:

gul-gasht : 'Walking in a garden; an evening walk; recreation; a pleasant place for walking or recreation (esp. one blooming with roses and other flowers)'. (Platts p.911)

 

dimāġh : 'The brain; head, mind, intellect; spirit; fancy, desire; ... — the organ of smell'. (Platts p.526)

S. R. Faruqi:

This verse is commonplace; it's been included in order to create the shape/aspect [ṣūrat] of a ghazal. Ghalib said it much better:

G{27,4}.

But Ghalib in his verse didn't use the word dimāġh as excellently as in Mir's verse. By mentioning gul , Mir has also included the aspect of dimāġh as meaning 'nose'. A detailed discussion of both these verses is in shiʿr ġhair-shiʿr aur naṡr . And indeed, there's certainly the fact that Ghalib basically adopted one of Mir's lines from the first divan [{468,3}]:

hameñ to bāġh kī taklīf se muʿāf rakho
kih sair-o-gasht nahīñ rasm ahl-e mātam kī

[consider us excused from the bother of the garden
for strolls and tours are not the custom of the people of mourning]

And indeed, Nasikh has made the theme entirely new, and has composed a peerless verse:

kyā shab-e mah-tāb meñ be-yār jāʾūñ bāġh ko
sāre pattoñ ko banā detī hai ḳhanjar chāndnī

[as if, on a moonlit night, I would go to the garden without the beloved!
the moonlight makes all the leaves into daggers]

See:

{693,1}.

FWP:

SETS == MULTIVALENT WORDS ( dimāġh )
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS

The use of dimāġh is perfect here; everybody knows that it means 'mind' and so on, but not everybody knows that it also means 'nose' (or, as Platts genteelly puts it in the definition above, 'the organ of smell'). Obviously, in the present verse both senses are fully activated, which gives the verse much of whatever charm it has. I would cite for comparison a different Ghalibian verse, which too is-- like SRF's example-- more punchy and effective than the present verse:

G{11,2}.

Another Mirian example: {1213,1}.

Note for grammar fans: In the second line, rakhe is a future subjunctive ('that someone would keep company...'). In the first line, lage might look the same, but it's not-- lage hai is an archaic form of (here) lagtī hai . And lage hai can't be read as present perfect, because here that would be lagī hai .

 

 
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