=== |
gul .sad-rang chaman me;N aa))e baad-e ;xizaa;N se bikhar bhii ga))e
((ishq-o-junuu;N kii bahaar ke ((aashiq miir-jii gul khaate hai;N hanuuz
1) roses came into the hundred-colored garden; through the autumn breeze, they also became scattered
2)
the lover of the springtime of passion and madness, Mir-ji, {cauterizes himself / 'eats roses'} now/still
gul khaanaa : 'To be cauterized; to cauterize oneself (a practice among lovers, who burn themselves with heated pieces of coin, &c., as a proof of their love)'. (Platts p.911)
FWP:
SETS == GESTURES; HANUZ; NEIGHBORS; WORDPLAY
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS == TUMULT-AROUSINGAccording to the first line, the roses came in the spring, and they left when blown away in the autumn breeze, apparently without a fuss; they simply did what roses do. The lover shows his 'passion and madness' by burning scars onto his body with heated coins (which are round and redly glowing like roses), an act called, literally, 'eating roses'. For more on this, see:
{1341,1}.
The sarcasm that SRF speaks of seems to be located in the contrast between the roses' behavior and that of the lover. While the roses died in silence when their time came, the lover flaunts his 'passion and madness' in a most elaborate, public, even theatrical way. And perhaps more to the point, he does this even after it's way too late for it to have any effect other than symbolic display, since the rose-beloveds are already dead. Is it proper for the lover to be so self-dramatizing, when the lost beloved was so silent and private? The verse invites us at least to ask the question, and to reflect on it.
The subject seems to be 'Mir' himself, whose behavior is seemingly being respectfully ('Mir-ji') described or reported by someone, possibly a neighbor or bystander. If the second line had had 'Mir' alone instead of 'Mir-ji', Mir could have been making a private, thoughtful observation about a certain group of 'lovers', whether or not he was among them; but it's awkward to think of him as privately addressing himself so respectfully. (And if Mir were saying this about himself alone, it would indeed sound pompous!)
In any case, Mir's act of self-cauterization remains an uninterpretable 'gesture'; the observer reports it, but leaves us to speculate about what exactly 'Mir' means by it, and why he is doing it so unseasonably, 'now/still' in the autumn.