50_04x

{50,4x}

jaataa huu;N jidhar sab kii u;The hai udhar angusht
yak-dast jahaa;N mujh se bharaa hai magar angusht

1) whichever way I go, everyone's fingers point/'rise' that way
2) the entire/'whole-hand' world, toward/through me, is filled perhaps with fingers

Notes:

yak-dast : 'Entire; uniform, even (cloth); —homogeneous; —what can be lifted with one hand; —adv. Altogether'. (Platts p.1251)

u;The hai is an archaic form of u;Thtii hai .

u;Ngliyaa;N u;Thnaa : ''Fingers to rise'; to be notorious, to be the object of scorn or contempt ( = angusht-numaa honaa ). (Platts p.97; under a;Ngulii )

*Platts Dictionary Online*

Asi:

Nowadays my condition is such that wherever in the world I go, they all point their fingers at me; through me, so to speak, the whole world has turned away from me. My only remaining companion is a finger.

== Asi, p. 97

Zamin:

Perhaps the finger has not turned aside from me, for it keeps lifting in my direction, even though this lifting is hostile-- that is, to show/point a finger is 'to disgrace'. yak-qalam = entirely; it is a word of .zil((a with angusht .

== Zamin, p. 140

Gyan Chand:

Wherever I go, they all point/'lift' their fingers in my direction. The whole world has entirely turned against me. Only the fingers are paying attention to me, and people have all turned their faces away. Between yak-dast and angusht there is wordplay.

== Gyan Chand, p. 171

FWP:

SETS

For background see S. R. Faruqi's choices. This verse is NOT one of his choices; I have added it myself, partly because Ghalib chose it for inclusion in Gul-e ra'na (c.1828). For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.

This was the opening-verse of the original ghazal; the divan version has no opening-verse.

As Zamin and Gyan Chand note, the chief charm of the verse is the clever wordplay between yak-dast (see the definition above) and angusht . For discussion of expressions compounded with yak , see {11,1}.

There's also the enjoyable ambiguity of mujh se -- is the world full of fingers that are pointed at or 'toward' the speaker, or (more radically) is the world full of fingers 'through' or 'because of' him? The 'perhaps' adds to the subjectivity-- the speaker is not really sure about his conclusions. Since angusht could also be singular, the grammar even opens up the bizarre possibility that the world might have become one single gigantic space-filling finger.

The verse gives us no hint of how the speaker feels about his notoriety. Might he be somewhat proud of the universal attention he's receiving? (Or even of the cosmic effect he's having?)