1352_03

{1352,3}

vujūb-o-imkāñ meñ kyā hai nisbat kih mīr bande kā pesh-e ṣāḥib
nahīñ hai honā ẓarūr kuchh to mujhe bhī honā hai kyā ẓarūr ab

1) in necessity and contingency, is there any such relationship?!-- thus, Mir, for a servant to be before a master
2) is not at all necessary, then even/also to me, how is existence necessary, now?!

Notes:

vujūb : 'Necessity, expediency, obligation, duty'. (Platts p.1182)

imkān : 'Possibility, practicability; power; contingent existence (in contradistinction to vujūb or necessary existence)'. (Platts p.82)

*Platts Dictionary Online*

S. R. Faruqi:

The qalandar-like carelessness in the tone of the previous verse [{1352,2}], has in this verse assumed the guise of an oratorical tone. The beloved exists by necessity, and the lover exists contingently. In other words, we can also say that lovers' existence may or may not be; the beloved's existence will remain. That is, beauty is a self-existent thing, it doesn't need any protector/guarantor.

If things are such that the beloved doesn't need the lover's existence, then how is it necessary that I would remain before my beloved? When my existence is only an add-on, then I'll go somewhere and do myself in. The beloved is self-existent, and will remain established even without the lover. Thus the lover's non-existence is in one way the lover's completion-- for in this way he separates his contingent life from the autonomy of beauty.

About the necessity of his own non-existence, and the non-necessity of his own existence, such an unemotional expression of opinion is a supreme art.

FWP:

SETS == BHI; KYA
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS

The bhī is clever in the second line, because it conveys the speaker's awareness that his existence is not at all necessary to the beloved; that being so, shouldn't it be unnecessary to 'even/also' himself as well?

Both lines are of course elegantly insha'iyah. In the first line the kyā turns the utterance into either a real question, or a kind of indignant, negative rhetorical question. In the second line the kyā seems to be of the same repudiative kind ('It's not necessary at all!'); though it might also be read as a genuine question ('Is it in fact necessary, or not?').

SRF calls the tone of this verse an 'unemotional' [ġhair-jażbātī] one. To me the two uses of kyā generate a great likelihood of at least some kind of emotion. I can imagine a range of tones in which such lines might be spoken. For more on such questions of tone, see {724,2}.