FWP:
SETS == MUSHAIRAH
First an irritating verse, then a minor verse-- and finally a striking verse, to wrap up the ghazal and remind us what kind of poet we're dealing with. The commentators pay no attention to the multivalence of yuu;N hii (see the definition above)-- and yet, how unobtrusively and perfectly it performs! Any and all of the meanings of yuu;N hii work perfectly, one by one or all together. For more on yuu;N , see {30,1}.
The first line thus provides us with three kinds of scruples: it's not good to cause pain casually; or, for no good reason; or, 'just like this (pain)'. In classic mushairah-verse style, the first line tantalizes us-- with all these heavy moral scruples, what dire words are being contemplated?-- and then leaves us dangling. Of course, under oral-performance conditions, we are left to dangle for as long as is conveniently possible.
Then even when we hear the second line, we don't really 'get' it until the very end; the 'punch-word' zindagaanii is withheld until the last possible moment, so that the wit and trickiness of the verse are perceived all at once. It's a wry and wonderful expression of a kind of doubled misery. In Urdu, wishing bad things on one's enemies is a commonplace of colloquial expression. Here, the speaker virtuously hesitates to do so-- alas, he says wistfully, he can't even do that. He wouldn't wish a life like his, with anything like his kind of pain, on even his worst enemy (who perhaps couldn't endure it for a moment). This final, 'just-like-mine' sense of yuu;N hii is only apparent after we hear the end of the second line, so that it comes with an extra jolt.
And if we also take his words literally, then his wishing
that his own life may be given away to an enemy would also be a form of wishing
for death; for the enemy is proverbially 'in search of' the victim's life.
Nazm:
The word yuu;N hii in place of 'without reason' [be-vaj'h] is in the idiom. (189)
== Nazm page 189