jo kih patthar saa jam ke bai;The hai;N
kab tire aastaa;N se u;Thtaa hai
[he who has, like a rock, sat fixedly down
when would he rise from your doorsill?]
Indeed, because of its affinity with the words jam , patthar , the word aastaa;N is not devoid of pleasure. But Mir's verse has various meanings. Consider these:
The first meaning is that the one who arose from your doorsill became a wanderer from door to door, after that he found no occasion to sit down (to rest). That is, you alone are the place of refuge for the lovers.
The second meaning is that whoever arose from your doorsill, people judged him to be unfaithful to you, and then they never let him establish himself; rather, they made him a wanderer forever.
The third meaning is that whoever arose from your doorsill remained standing ever afterwards; he received no permission to sit down.
In the light of these meanings, in bai;Thne kaun de hai there is, along with a negative rhetorical question, a generalized absoluteness. For example, we say, jo bha;Nvar me;N pha;Nsaa phir use nikaale kaun -- that is, it is impossible for a person trapped in a whirlpool to emerge.
The fourth meaning is that on your doorsill there's such a crowd of people that if anyone rises and goes away, then someone else takes his place, and the first person gets no second chance to sit down.
In any case, the person who rises from your doorsill is devoid of knowledge about his own dubious behavior and is established as a person deserving of contempt-- a person who himself took an axe to his own feet, and who now has no fixed dwelling-place.
Fundamentally, this theme is common and is devoid of complexity. Khvajah Ahsan ul-Din Bayan has expressed it with great 'mood' and intensity:
ham sar-gu;zisht kyaa kahe;N apnii kih mi;sl-e ;xaar
paa-maal ho ga))e tire daaman se chhuu;T kar
[how can we tell our life-story-- for like a thorn
we were trodden under foot, having been loosed from your garment-hem]
But Mir inserted various meanings into it, and thus changed its whole world. In his hands it has less 'mood', but more 'tumult-arousingness'.
