FWP:
SETS == IDIOMS; MULTIVALENT WORDS ( har-chand ); POETRY
SPEAKING: {14,4}
ABOUT har-chand : There's an explicit, clear,
meaning possible here: 'although' in the logical sense ('although A, nevertheless
B'). But there's also a sense in which quantity and style of activity are
important, such that it seems to emphasize cumulativeness: 'no matter how
much', 'no matter how often', 'no matter how' (see the definition above). The ambiguities of har-chand thus parallel those of the more common baskih . Both mean 'although', but then baskih offers as alternatives 'since' and 'to such an extent', while har-chand offers 'however much' and 'as often as'. In Ghalib's verses, both senses
of har-chand seem fully available: {41,9x}; {62,5};
{62,7}; {119,3};
{133,4}; {143,2};
{148,6}; {167,6};
{196,3}; {196,4}.
This verse is a companion piece to the previous one, {59,6}, and much of what I want to say about it has been said there. Here too, the key word is guft-gū , 'conversation'. This is a verse about the persuasive strategies of rhetoric, not the nature-- much less the limitations-- of the ghazal.
Bekhud Dihlavi points out a clever touch: in the second line, the one that contains the refrain kahe baġhair , 'without saying', Ghalib has (surely deliberately) composed the line itself 'without saying' the extremely important word bāt . Instead of saying it, he's caused us to infer its presence from the grammar, and from our knowledge that it's often colloquially omitted in such situations. For more on the colloquial omission of bāt , see {59,2}.
Then, the excellently suitable idiom bāt ban'nā basically means 'for a plan/task/idea to come to fruition' (see the definition above), which works perfectly well in the second line. But bāt ban'nā can also literally mean 'for conversation/speech to develop', so that it echoes the concerns of the first line-- although there can be conversation, guft-gū , it depends on speech/conversation-- the cleverly missing but powerfully present, and obviously highly necessary, bāt .
On the structure of kahe baġhair ,
see {59,1}.
Nazm:
The meaning of this verse is like that of the previous one. (55)
== Nazm page 55