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mar rahnā : 'To die; to be dead; to lie dead'. (Platts p.1025)
ān : 'Time; moment, instant, second'. (Platts p.84)
ān : 'Course, way, manner, mode... ; way or manner of a belle or a coquette, gracefulness, grace, elegance, charm, blandishment (=adā ); affectation; bashfulness, modesty; conceit, pride; will, pleasure, wish'. (Platts p.84)
FWP:
SETS == DOUBLE ACTIVATION; KYA
MOTIFS == LIFE/DEATH
NAMES
TERMS == PARADOXThe excellent multivalence of kyā reinforces the paradox of which SRF speaks, for mushkil hai kyā can of course be read in three ways:
=is it difficult?
=how difficult it is!
=as if it's difficult!In the second line, the idiomatic 'to pass out of one's life' [jān se gużarnā] is a nice touch, because it evokes the Sufistic style of passing out of one's 'self' and thus becoming 'self-less' [be-ḳhvud]. It also has a flavor of volition, since gużarnā is a verb used in the ordinary course of life (with it one can 'pass by', 'pass over', 'pass through', 'surpass', etc.). The English idiom 'to pass away' isn't as vivid, so as usual I stuck with extreme literalness.
The attribution of sau sau deaths to ek ek ān has the additional pleasure of what I call 'double activation', since the two meanings of ān (see the definitions above) are both fully invoked in the verse. The sense of 'moment' is perfectly suited to a hyperbolic shortness of time, and the sense of 'coquetry' is perfectly suited to the hyperbolic potency of the beloved's charms.
Compare Ghalib's take on the same paradoxical life-in-death of the lover:
G{164,8}.