FWP:
SETS == GENERATORS; IDIOMS; SUBJECT?; WORDPLAY
Since this verse is built up completely from interlocking idioms, I want to tread carefully, because I'm very aware of my limitations as a non-native speaker, and because the consensus of native-speaker opinion that this is a simple verse is pretty clear, and is against me. But then, the general 'natural poetry' desire over the whole past century of Urdu critical tradition-- to find 'the' meaning of a verse and then stick to it rather than complicating it-- is so strong and entrenched that I've been fighting it for years, and I'm not going to stop now. So I do maintain that this verse is not simple and clear but remarkably multivalent, and that its clever use of seemingly everyday idioms is just one more example of Ghalib's usual trickery. I maintain that Ghalib deliberately drops us into a thicket of meanings-- and, as usual, leaves us there to flail around.
Reading (1a) in an expanded form becomes aap jitnaa chaahiye , achchho;N ko chaahiye (as much as you might desire/wish-- as in chaahe;N -- please desire/want good ones). This reading looks grammatically straightforward, and some of the commentators seem to prefer it. But it's actually not an open-and-shut case, because chaahiye , though structurally the polite imperative of chaahnaa , is in practice never used as such. That's why it's free to mean, with a verb, 'ought to' [mujhe kaam karnaa chaahiye]; or with a noun, 'need' [mujhe ro;Tii chaahiye]. This repurposing also makes semantic sense, since in practice one never says 'please want some cookies', but 'please take some cookies' or the like, because of the primal truth that (as my philosophy professor used to put it) 'you can do what you want, but you can't want what you want'. If somebody says to you chaa))e chaahiye , you'll interpret it not as 'please want tea' (with a polite imperative verb), but as 'do you need/want tea?'-- as shorthand for kyaa aap ko chaa))e chaahiye .
Reading (1b) in an expanded form becomes aap ko jitnaa chaahiye , achchho;N ko chaahiye (however much you need/want [something?], you need/want good/beautiful ones). This reading relies on the common use of chaahiye with a noun as 'to need'.
Reading (1c) in an expanded form: achchho;N ko jitnaa chaahiye , utnaa hii chaahiye (however much good/beautiful ones need/want, that's how much they need/want). This reading relies on the same common use of chaahiye as (1b), except that it takes the 'good/beautiful ones' as those to whom the need is ascribed.
The second line uses the straightforward verb chaahnaa . In reading (2a), if 'this one' (with a plural of respect) or 'these ones' would want, then-- another idiomatic use of chaahiye appears: literally, 'then what is needed?'; and colloquially, something like 'what could be better?' or 'what more could one want' or or 'nothing more is required' or 'that's the end of the matter'. (For the multiple possibilities of an idiomatic phrase like this, see Platts's analysis of kyaa nah chaahiye above.) But of course, this (possibly) happy description could equally well apply to the situation of the good/beautiful ones, rather than to that of the lover. Reading (2b) takes the plural subject (we? they? you?) as omitted, and 'this' as the object that is wanted.
This whole verse is a wonderful play on the almost untranslatable
idiomatic versatility of chaahiye , 'to need/want', which takes
ko ;and chaahnaa , 'to want/desire/wish',
which is straightforward except for having been stripped of its polite imperative.
No matter what we do with the first line, it comes out colloquial-feeling
but still rather oracular, and maddeningly hard to pin down. The native speakers
who have confidently explained it to me, like the commentators, go for some
combination or conflation of (1a) and (1b), coupled with an agreed-upon simple
reading of the second line as describing a happy ending for the lover. Yet
I don't see how they can so confidently rule out (1c); after all, if we saw
achchho;N ko kyaa chaahiye then everybody would know
it meant 'what do good ones need/want?' And really, how different from is
this from (1c)? And how can they reject the variant readings of the second
line in which no 'happy ending' is envisioned? For the ambiguity of
the grammar makes it perfectly possible that the phrase may apply to the
satisfaction of the good ones, not to that of the lover; the whole verse may
well be a wry meditation on the powers of the cruel, selfish, indifferent
'good ones'.
Nazm:
That is, if one would want [chaahe] something in the world, then one would want the good ones. And if they themselves would want, then right then the goal is attained. Then any other blessing can either come or not come [chaahe aur ko))ii ni((mat ho chaahe nah ho]. (210)
== Nazm page 210