Ghazal 109, Verse 2x

Asi:

We have a kind of body that is not confined in the bondage of lust/desire, and we have a kind of heart that has entirely kept on going away from the tasks of the world.

== Asi, p. 170

Zamin:

In this opening-verse, apart from the refrain nothing at all is Urdu. The translation is that we have a kind of body that has not been ensnared in the bonds of lust/desire, and our heart is such that it has kept on going away from the work of the world. Perhaps the poet's intention would be that 'our body and spirit are both free from worldly relationships'. But the first line is active, and the second line is passive, because z kaar uftaadan means 'to become unable to act/work', not to become devoid of relationship. Thus the intention of aloofness toward worldly relationships is not achieved. And neither is there found a coerced renunciation of relationship, because tan dar nah daadan is an active verb. In this regard the verse can be called a defective creation.

== Zamin, p. 251

Gyan Chand:

We have/keep a body that is not captured in the bondage of lust/desire; we have/keep a heart that is not subject to worldly affairs.

== Gyan Chand, pp. 273-74

FWP:

SETS == A,B; PARALLELISM
BONDAGE: {1,5}

For background see S. R. Faruqi's choices. For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.

The two lines look parallel-- but are they? The first line could well be claiming a kind of virtuous behavior: the speaker keeps his body properly pure, suitably free of lust and desire. But when-- after, under mushairah performance conditions, a suitable delay-- we hear the second line, that word uuftaadah brings us up short.

For rather than seeming to describe a virtuous moral choice, the word uftaadah (see the definition above) strongly suggests a decline, a weakness, a state of 'fallenness' that is worse than some state that went before. So we have to go back and look at the first line in a new light. Perhaps lust/desire is itself part of the proper 'work of the world', something in which the speaker too would and even should normally participate. Perhaps the reason he no longer involves himself in it is not that he's superior to it, but that he's no longer capable of it (as in {41,1}).

Zamin is right that in this verse the degree not just of Persianized vocabulary but of unabashedly Persian grammatical forms is as high as it can possibly be, so that 'apart from the refrain nothing at all is Urdu'. But it's also true that the Persian grammatical verb forms and particles used in the verse were the kind that Ghalib's audience could be expected to know.