FWP:
SETS == GESTURES; KYA
SOUND EFFECTS: {26,7}
That plain, forceful, physical, almost chicken-scratching word kurednaa indeed seems to be at the center of the verse. The commentators read it as describing a search for something that might be lying there amidst the ashes-- something like a scorched, blackened, shrivelled heart. But kurednaa has another sense as well (see the definition above): that of poking up a fire, of stirring up embers-- of perhaps seeking to rekindle old passions. And it has a final sense of groping around in something, exploring it-- a sense that is elegantly echoed in just-juu . On the versatility of jo , see {12,2}.
Needless to say, all those senses work well with the protean question just-juu kyaa hai . The range of meaning here is even greater-- in fact, it's truly remarkable. Here are some possible readings:
='What or whom are you searching for?'
='What is the meaning of the 'search' itself?' (In a situation of such total devastation and impossibility, can there even be such a thing?)
='It's not as if this is a search-- this is hardly a search!' (It's something else entirely-- cruelty? attempted torture? idle curiosity? passing nostalgia?)
='What a search it is!' (How extraordinary, or quixotic, or doomed, or admirable, or infuriating, etc.)
Moreover, these questions are real, and arresting, and quite compelling once you start thinking about them; in all their inshaa))iyah glory they open up a whole range of possibilities. They open them all up-- and, needless to say, don't shut any of them down.
All the words beginning with jiim create a nice kind of sound effect, and culminate of course in just-juu . There's also a kind of rushed sense in which jalaa hai jism jahaa;N dil bhii sounds as if what has burned is 'the body, the world, the heart too'. Of course we go back and retrospectively redo our reading of jahaa;N , but the first time through, there's almost have the sense of a cosmic conflagration.
Compare the radical nature of the destruction in {5,2}; and the 'digging/investigation' in {13,7}. But above all the present verse reminds me of {17,8}: it could very well embody the 'repentance of that quick-repenter'.
We know of course that Ghalib greatly admired Bedil. In a discussion on the Urdulist (Nov. 2015), Kamal Abdali observed that the present verse was often considered to be influenced by Bedil's only known Urdu verse:
soz-e nihaa;N me;N kab kaa vuh ;xaak ho chukaa hai
ab dil
ko ;Dhuu;N;Dte ho ab dil kahaa;N hai ham me;N
[it's been ages since it has become dust in an inner burning
now you seek for the heart-- now where in us is
the heart?]
For those interested in further Bedil-and-Ghalib research, he recommended the papers in this *volume edited by Shaukat Mahmud*.
Nazm:
Among Urdu-knowers there are very few people who can look at a book on rhetoric [balaa;Gat] and understand it; rather, they themselves have decreed some faults of poetry according to their own taste, the foundation of which is on wordplay [jugat].... Such nit-picking people will certainly say about this verse of the author's, 'Is it a chicken, that it pecks at [kurednaa] the ground?'
The meaning of the verse is that from the burning of grief I have burned and become ashes. The heart too will have burned up. The practice of stealing hearts has put in your mind the illusion that the heart will not have burned, and it ought to be searched out and taken away for burning. And this theme is unreal from start to finish, and is not one of the normal actions; for this reason it's unpleasurable. In verse, something that has passed away gives more pleasure. (201)
== Nazm page 201