Ghazal 132, Verse 7

Nazm:

The word ;gaalib here has both meanings. (143)

== Nazm page 143

Bekhud Dihlavi:

Here, the pen-name has given an extraordinary pleasure. Two meanings have been born. As for the rest, the meaning is only, 'May the Lord show me the day when I would tell her my ardor for union, and would make a complaint about separation'. That is, may I somehow find an occasion to meet her. This is a peerless closing-verse that he has composed. (199)

Bekhud Mohani:

At the time when this prayer is presumably being made, the heart must be in an extraordinary state. Sometimes complaints of separation must come to his lips, and sometimes stories of the ardor of union. (265)

Arshi:

Compare {24,8}. (256)

FWP:

SETS == WORDPLAY
'UNION': {5,2}

What's in a name? Plenty, if it's a pen-name; simply a fine play on it is often enough to energize a verse. Here, the name/word ;Gaalib is placed with enjoyable precision. Positioned as it is, it feels so perfectly natural as a term of meditative self-address that only on a second reading does the literal meaning come to mind. And then we notice that it's equally well placed to mean 'dominant, prevailing' over the mind.

It will require the intervention of the Lord himself, to permit any of those all-too-powerful yearnings to find expression. And even then-- even when expressing to the Lord his wildest longings-- the lover imagines not union, but only the chance to speak to the beloved about his longing for it. He imagines a conversation with her: he would have two different things to talk about, both of them prepared in advance. He would tell her of his heartfelt longing for union, and make his complaint at not achieving it. Beyond this chance for conversation, even his imagination seems hardly to dare to go.