1852_01

{1852,1}

āñkh lagī hai jab se us se āñkh lagī zinhār nahīñ
nīñd ātī hai dil-jamʿī meñ so to dil ko qarār nahīñ

1) ever since the eyes have become 'attached' to her, the eyes haven't at all closed/'attached' [to each other]-- beware!
2) sleep comes in heart-composure-- and so, the heart has no stability

Notes:

āñkh lagnā : ''The eyes to close'; to fall asleep, to doze; to have the eyes fixed on another (as an object of affection), to be enamoured (of)'. (Platts p.95)

zinhār : 'Care, caution; protection, defence, patronage; —intj. Take care! beware! mind !—adv. (followed by neg. nah ), By no means, on no account; never'. (Platts p.618)

qarār : 'Fixedness, fixity; permanence; consistency; stability, firmness, constancy; tenacity (of purpose); —rest, repose, quietness, quiet, peace, tranquillity; quietude, patient waiting, patience'. (Platts p.789)

*Platts Dictionary Online*

S. R. Faruqi:

The theme is nothing special, but he's used the idiom āñkh lagnā well, in two senses. Momin too has tried to do this, but in his verse there's artificiality, because he makes explicit the mention among the friends-- that the point is to give information, not to express the state of the heart:

āñkh nah lagne se shab aḥbāb ne
āñkh ke lag jāne kā charchā kiyā

[from the eyes not closing last night, the friends
spoke about the meeting of the eyes]

In the first line, shab is useless. Some people have read it as sab . But since aḥbāb itself is plural, to put 'all' with it is not very meaningful. Indeed, in Mir's verse the zila of nīñd and so to (in the sense of soto , 'sleepers') is unexpected and very interesting.

FWP:

SETS == IDIOMS
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS == IDIOM; ZILA

It's such a minor verse; the idiomatic pleasures are so cut-and-dried (except for the so to that SRF has pointed out). Probably SRF included it to make up the minimum of three verses that he likes to select from a single ghazal.