FWP:
SETS == FILL-IN;
KIH
FRIEND/ENEMY: {4,3}
LIGHTNING: {10,6}
For background see S. R. Faruqi's choices. For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.
Here is another of those endlessly recursive, undecideable 'friend/enemy' verses; for more on these, see {4,3}. The first line says that the relish of cruelty to an enemy is a magic spell that melds two hearts harmoniously into one. Thus there are probably three entities involved, all of them at this point unidentifiable; or conceivably there are only two such entities, if one of them is masochistically fond of receiving cruelty. We have to wait-- under mushairah performance conditions-- for the second line to bring us whatever clarification is on offer.
Then when we finally hear the second line, we realize that it's opaque even by Ghalibian standards. The little kih can mean either 'since' or 'while', each of which offers a different relationship to the first line. And then the vaj'h-e barq opens up a wide range of possibilities (see the definition above) -- something that causes lightning? something that looks like or resembles lightning? something that behaves according to the 'way' or 'method' of lightning? Whatever it is, it is hovering or floating, literally 'wing-fluttering', over the harvest.
So far, so good. Ghalib has quite a set of lightning-and-harvest verses; for a full list and discussion, see {10,6}. Since we know that tormenting an enemy is envisioned in the first line, we're quite prepared for something flickering like heat lightning around the harvest-ready fields, with a looming threat of violence. It would even make sense to compare the brooding threat of incipient lightning to some kind of ominously hovering bird of prey.
Yet the verse compares the lightning to an ominously hovering-- Moth! What's going on here? The Moth, after all, is famous for flying into a candle-flame and meeting a gloriously fiery death: if anything, he's more like the harvest than the lightning. Moths are also so tiny, that it's hard to think of one as a hovering image of menace, like a bat. Yet the grammar of the second line clearly likens the vaj'h-e barq to the hovering of a Moth over the harvest. In the ghazal world we never see the Moth flying over open fields; we always see him somewhere in a room, near a candle. (Outside flyers include the Nightingale, the Anqa, and the Huma, and the Ring-dove.) So what exactly is he doing there? Are we to take it that the presence of the vulnerable, fire-fascinated Moth somehow incites or evokes the lightning?
It's a moody and ominous line, in any case. Perhaps we should
think of a giant, supernaturally deadly Moth. (There is, after all, a movie monster
called Mothra.) In any case, it's possible to put the two lines together by
main force; Gyan Chand explores several possibilities. But they all feel a
bit unmotivated; the various possible kinds of connection
all remain tenuous. This nineteen-year-old poet experimented wildly and then
decided not to publish some of his more hyperbolic efforts; since we're fishing
verses out of his desk drawer, we can hardly complain about what we find there.
Asi:
The enemy's heart is full of the pleasure of oppressing me; from this there is concord and friendship, because the one in whose heart resides the pleasure of cruelly destroying my harvest like lightning-- that one is entranced and keeps hovering over my harvest and falling upon it as though s/he had been captivated, the way someone would wander who was restlessly in love with someone. What a fine thought it is-- praise be to God!
== Asi, p. 119