The sky in an ant's egg: Ghalib's structural poetics
by Frances W. Pritchett, Columbia University
It's a very special pleasure and honor to help inaugurate the Journal of Urdu Studies. For such an auspicious occasion, I want to offer a report on some results of the past twenty years of my work. This work has centered on the creation of a very large website of study materials about South Asia, including maps, images, a timeline, texts in translation, and many resources for students of Urdu and Hindi. Closest to my heart, however, are the two parts of that website that consist of commentaries on the work of the two greatest poets of classical Urdu ghazal, Mir ('A Garden of Kashmir') and above all Ghalib ('A Desertful of Roses').
If you are reading this article in the printed Journal of Urdu Studies, I do most sincerely apologize for all the clunky notes full of URL's. If at all possible, please go to *the Journal's website* [[INSERT HYPERLINK]] and use the online version instead. Since my projects on Ghalib and Mir were 'born digital', they can best be accessed in electronic form.
When I first started working on 'A Desertful of Roses', I thought that much of the work would consist of choosing the best of the hundred-odd commentaries on Ghalib's ghazals, translating suitable excerpts, and finally adding a few small touches of my own. I soon found out, however, that the commentaries generally aspired only to be explanatory prose paraphrases: they equipped each verse with a single relatively clear meaning, and then moved on to the next. Their typical introductory remark was 'He says that...'. This methodology, along with the probable reasons for it, I ended up discussing in 'The Meaning of the Meaningless Verses' (2005).
The analytical void left by the abdication of the commentators meant that for the most part I was dauntingly, but also thrillingly, on my own. (The invaluable work of my ustad and collaborator Shamsur Rahman Faruqi dealt only with selected verses, not with all the ghazals in the whole divan [diivaan].) So I began to go through the divan, scrutinizing each verse as rigorously as possible. What features could I find that were common to a number of verses? How to capture the effects that I felt in the verses? Above all, how to correlate my perceptions with grammatical and structural aspects of the verses themselves? As a teacher, I wanted to discover poetic devices that were teachable--objectively demonstrable, exportable, portable--and could be used in analyzing other verses.
And I also particularly sought devices that would enhance the reader's enjoyment of a verse, that would justify their own existence by offering increased pleasure. I was not interested in terminology for the sake of terminology. If we recognize in an English poem an instance of 'metonymy' or 'synecdoche' or 'chiasmus', we do not change our understanding of the poem, or enjoy it more; the same is true for such rhetorical terminology in Urdu. Persian and Urdu handbooks of poetics tend to consider 'poetry' in all its genres as a single large category, so they naturally are not attuned to the unusual opportunities and constraints of the single ghazal verse [shi((r].
Over time, I found that there seemed to be two large structural categories into which a great many of Ghalib's verses fell. I will call these 'twists' and 'tangles'-- partly for fun, and partly because they really do not have any useful names within the Persian/Urdu poetic tradition.
I --TEMPORAL 'TWISTS'
The first category, 'twists', consists of verses that rely on temporal sequence. Initially the reader or hearer is somehow confused, or misled, or put into suspense; then finally the verse clarifies everything in a single, sudden, punchy revelation. As one of the best early commentators, Nazm Tabataba'i, has well put it, 'After ambiguity, disclosure is more delicious' [ib'haam ke ba((d inkishaaf la;zii;z-tar hotaa hai] ({98,11}).
The initial confusion or misdirection or suspense-creation is performed largely in the first line, with the clarifying revelation provided as late as possible in the second line. Sometimes there is enjambment, so that the utterance is left incomplete as long as possible. Ideally, for maximal effect, there is a 'punch-word' that includes the 'rhyme' [qaafiyah], so that the line becomes fully interpretable only at the last possible moment, resulting in a simultaneous convergence of meaning, rhyme, and 'refrain' [radiif] that has a tremendous, often almost explosive, closural force.
In the oral-presentation poetics of the traditional ghazal performance session or 'mushairah' [mushaa((irah], the poet would recite the first line, and then pause. The audience members--patrons, pupils, and other poets--would then make a great show of admiration, often repeating the line themselves, or calling out for the poet to repeat it. Only after this polite chorus of approval had died down would the poet recite the first line again, followed at once by the second line (after which courtesy required a further show of admiration from the audience).
Thus the classical ghazal poets knew that there would be a measurable period of time when the audience had access to the first line but not the second. At a mushairah, this time might be a minute or so long; even for readers, the time interval would not be nonexistent, and the readers' knowledge of mushairah conventions would enable them to imaginatively experience the break before the second line. What skilful poet, working with fifteen or twenty words, would turn down the opportunity provided by the temporal break between the lines? It may seem paradoxical that the way to make a tiny poem feel bigger is to chop it in half; but of course then the two even tinier halves can play tricks with each other that would otherwise be impossible.
What I now call 'twist' verses, I initially called 'mushairah verses' because of their obviously brilliant suitability to mushairah performance conditions. I also thought of them as '1,2' verses, for their reliance on temporal sequence and a final culminating punch. In 'A Desertful of Roses' I have provided many links to such 'mushairah verses'; anyone who knows Ghalib will realize that they are abundantly present in the divan. Thus it is all the more striking that no real category for such verses exists either in traditional Persian/Urdu poetics or in the hundred-odd commentaries on Ghalib.
The nearest conceptual term that could at all be applied to such verses is 'iham' [iihaam], which literally means 'deceiving, misleading'. The term has had a long history in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu poetics, with a core meaning of something like a double-entendre. Mir's definition in his early canonical tazkirah [ta;zkirah] or anthology, 'Fine Points about the Poets' [nikaat ul-shu((araa] (1752), is strikingly specific: he defines 'iham' as the use of 'a word fundamental to the verse, and that word should have two meanings, one obvious and one remote, and the poet should intend the remote meaning, not the obvious one'; this concept is part of Mir's typology of the ghazal, which I have discussed elsewhere. Mir's definition is thus very narrow, and would generate a verse that would be something like a riddle. Elsewhere in his tazkirah, Mir indeed uses 'iham' as a label for small poems that are basically versified riddles.
Mir's definition of 'iham' is so strict that I haven't found a single verse in Ghalib's divan that really fits it. There are numerous verses that play on words with double meanings (as for example saudaa , meaning both 'madness' and 'merchandise'; or kaam , meaning both 'work' and 'desire'), or sometimes even more multifarious meanings (as with taab or jauhar ). However, such verses never rule out an expected meaning and replace it with an unexpected one; they always play in one way or another with both. Ghalib doesn't, formally speaking, create riddles. In the Ghalibian commentarial tradition, the term 'iham' has been used quite loosely, for various kinds of double-meaning wordplay. Nobody ever uses the term in a structural way, to apply to the whole verse. So my category of temporally-based 'twist' verse or 'mushairah verse' remains outside the domain of traditional poetic terminology.
Consider a few examples of such 'twist' verses. In the very famous {6,3}, the first line is simply an uninterpretable list of three unrelated items:
buu-e gul naalah-e dil duud-e chiraa;G-e ma;hfil
jo tirii bazm se niklaa so pareshaa;N niklaa1) scent of the rose, lament of the heart, smoke of the lamp of the gathering
2) whatever emerged from your gathering, emerged disordered/agitated
The 'punch-word' pareshaa;N contains the rhyme, and has such a perfect range of meanings that it energizes the whole verse.
By contrast, in {19,7} the first line has an interpretable meaning, but the assertion is so odd that it leaves the reader perplexed:
hai ab is ma((muure me;N qa;h:t-e ;Gam-e ulfat asad
ham ne yih maanaa kih dillii me;N rahe khaave;Nge kyaa1) there is now in this town a dearth/famine of the grief of love, Asad
2) we agreed to remain/live in Delhi--what will we eat?!
But what does it mean for a town to experience something like a 'dearth/famine of grief'? Only at the very end of the second line does the 'punch-word' khaave;Nge , which contains the rhyme, suddenly make everything clear by inducing us to make a conceptual leap: in Urdu one does not 'feel' grief, one 'eats' grief [;Gam khaanaa]. Now, in retrospect, the first line makes a warped kind of sense, as part of the mad lover's concern about his sustenance. How enjoyable it would have been to put this together mentally, on the fly, at a mushairah!
And finally, here's an intriguingly complex case, {120,6}:
hu))aa charchaa jo mere paa;Nv kii zanjiir ban'ne kaa
kiyaa betaab kaa;N me;N junbish-e jauhar ne aahan ko1) when there was discussion of chains being made for my feet
2) the trembling of temper-lines, in the kaa;N , made restless the iron
The word jauhar has a remarkably wide range of meanings, but here the most relevant is 'the diversified wavy marks, streaks, or grain of a well-tempered sword'. These small scratches or lines may well evoke, once we have heard kaa;N me;N as (the Indic) 'in the ear', the tiny vibrating cilia that enable hearing--the hearing of the 'discussion' reported in the first line. Only when we reach the very end of the second line, in which the 'punch-word' aahan , 'iron', includes the rhyme, do we retrospectively realize that kaa;N me;N may also mean (the Persian) 'in the mine'. (Even if we tried to guess where the verse was going, we might think of a sword, but we'd never come up with 'iron'.) Both these readings, 'ear' and 'mine', yield rather strange images (see the discussion on the website), but certainly they are both meant to be present. And they both rely for their full effect on the verse's '1,2' structure, its sequential and temporal 'twist' that enables it to culminate, unexpectably, in 'iron'.
II -- MULTIVALENT 'TANGLES'
The other category of verses that looms very large in the divan does perhaps have a sort of general rubric within the tradition. Ghalib famously said in a letter to Taftah in 1862 that poetry was ma((nii-aafiriinii , 'meaning-creation', not the 'measuring out of rhymes' [qaafiyah-paimaa))ii]. The richness, depth, inexhaustibility, etc. of his verses, is exactly what he is often praised for (while he's also universally recognized as a very 'difficult' poet). It's easy to have a broad notion about a term like this: 'meaning-creation' might well refer to the creation of more than one meaning through a single utterance. But still--structurally speaking, how is the trick done? How can a tiny poem of fifteen or twenty words be made so meaningful, so 'full of meaning(s)', that it feels much larger, or even in some cases almost infinite?
Once again, as in the case of 'twist' verses, part of the answer lies in the splitting of the small poem into two even smaller lines. The relationship between these two lines can then be varied in complex ways. In the case of 'twist' verses, the relationship is temporal and depends on 'before' and 'after' stages of perception. In the case of 'tangle' verses, the relationship offers not temporal closure, but just the reverse. 'Tangle' verses create some form of unresolvable multiplicity, with meanings bundled or tangled together such that it's impossible to choose among them on anything more than the arbitrary basis of personal preference. Far from offering any kind of closure, they are structured so as to deny it entirely.
The creation of such 'tangle' verses is facilited not only by the verse's division into two lines, but by another feature as well: its lack of context. Within a longer poem (that is to say, almost any other poem on the face of the earth), the interpretation of any line is largely governed both by the content of the lines that have come before it, and by our expectation about the lines that will be coming after it. But if the whole poem is only fifteen or twenty words long, no such constraints exist, and the horizon is wide open--the unbounded horizon of the ghazal universe, with its extravagant, paradoxical views in all directions, and its wild metaphoric freedom.
'A,B' relationships
In the creation of 'tangle' verses, one structural device is particularly conspicuous: there many verses in which each line is semantically quite independent, so that the relationship between the two lines is left for us to decide. Is one line a cause, and the other an effect (and if so, which way around)? Is one line an important statement, and the other a mere illustration of it (and if so, which way around)? Are the lines two ways of describing the same situation? Do the two lines offer comparative depictions of two different situations (and if so, do they show similarities, or contrasts)? Might the two lines have different speakers? And so on.
On the website I've called such line-shuffling verses 'A,B' verses; I meant to show their contrast with '1,2' ('mushairah') verses, and also to give them a minimalist name that would not prejudge them or foreclose any later thoughts. I still have a vivid memory of the first such verse that I ever recognized, on that long-ago first pass-through of the divan; it was {27,1}:
gilah hai shauq ko dil me;N bhii tangii-e jaa kaa
guhar me;N ma;hv hu))aa i.z:tiraab daryaa kaa1) ardor complains, even/also in the heart, of narrowness of place
2) in a pearl became absorbed/annihilated the restlessness of the sea
This verse was an 'A,B' case so striking, with line relationships so obviously multivalent and unresolvable, that at first I thought it was in a class by itself--until I realized how many other verses were in the same class. Then I also realized that nobody among the commentators had ever pointed out that there was such a class; I felt both exasperated and delighted. (In this connection I later enjoyed Hali's remarks about {57,7}, in which Ghalib seems to guide him toward an additional 'A,B' reading of the first line; though Hali seems to consider this a rare and special case.) On the website I have provided links to, and discussions of, many such 'A,B' verses.
The 'kya effect'
Another very large category of 'tangle' verses makes use of what I call the 'kya effect'-- again, for want of a better name. Let me choose a particularly vivid and witty example, {209,11}:
safiinah jab kih kinaare pah aa lagaa ;Gaalib
;xudaa se kyaa sitam-o-jaur-e naa;xudaa kahiye1) when/since the ship has come and docked at the shore, Ghalib
2a) will you tell the Lord about the cruelty and oppression of the captain?
2b) as if you will tell the Lord about the cruelty and oppression of the captain!
2c) how you will tell the Lord about the cruelty and oppression of the captain!
Thanks to the versatility of kyaa , the second line can be a genuine question, as in (2a)--will you do this, or won't you? Or it can be an indignant repudiation of the very possibility, as in (2b)--once the journey is safely over, what's the point of recrimination! Or it can be a resounding affirmation, as in (2c)--now that you're safe on land, you can safely report the full horror of the voyage! The idiomatic, exclamatory effect of kyaa makes (2b) and (2c) fully as available as the 'official' interrogative reading, (2a). And--by no coincidence, of course--all three readings work excellently with the first line.
Let's just pause to note that in the case of this verse, all three (very typical) commentators whom I have chosen for the website endorse only the reading (2b), apparently because it offers a virtuous, religiously sound sentiment; they show no awareness of any other possibilities. But how sadly impoverished the verse would be, without the three entangled possibilities jostling together in the reader's mind, all responding so piquantly to the first line!
Many such 'kya effect' verses are linked, and discussed, on the website. Similar though less versatile use is also made of kahaa;N , of kab , and of other interrogatives.
Other grammatical flexibilities
The creation of such unresolvable 'tangle' verses is also made easier by certain features of Urdu grammar. Word order is much less important in Urdu than in English. Thus to assert that 'A is B' is also to assert, equally, that 'B is A'. I call this bidirectional relationship 'symmetry', and it too is an excellent tool for creating multivalence. Conveniently, in Urdu there is no inversion to signal the interrogative (unlike 'it is' versus 'is it?' in English). In idiomatic usage, the subject of a verb can be omitted--which can be made to open up a field for choice. And above all, in the world of the classical ghazal there was no English-style punctuation. (Most modern editors impose their own personal choice of English punctuation marks on the ghazal verses they edit; this editorially outrageous behavior, though well-meant, has implications that are depressing to contemplate.)
Many other multivalent words and particles are similarly used to generate additional readings within these tiny verses. I'm not sure they should be called 'structural' in the larger sense, but within the verse they are often structural in a more local sense. They are also ubiquitous. Most obvious among them is the izafat [i.zaafat]: 'the X of Y' is quite complex enough in itself ( kitaab-e dil might be 'the book that is owned by the heart', 'the book about the heart', 'the book that is the heart', and so on). But when multiple izafats are used--and Ghalib is very fond of multiple izafats--one must also choose between 'the (X of Y) of Z' and 'the X of (Y of Z)'. One final versatility of the izafat is that through care with the meter it can be made optional, so that it might or might not be present--and the classical ghazal poets very often omitted izafat markers in any case. From the Indic side, the kaa / ke / kii possessive has almost as broad a range as the izafat (though it cannot be made optional, and its shifting forms often help to pin down its relationships).
Another form of grammatical flexibility is the use of what I call--truly these things are hard to name!--'midpoints'. These are words or phrases that can be read either with one clause (usually the one before) or with another clause (usually the one after). They are most often, but not always, adverbial. Ghalib makes good use of such 'midpoints', but their real champion is Mir. Here is an unusual and particularly mischievous Ghalibian example, {131,1}:
masjid ke zer-e saayah ;xaraabaat chaahiye
bho;N paas aa;Nkh qiblah-e ;haajaat chaahiye1) under the shelter of the mosque, a wine-house is needed
2) near the brow an eye, supplier/'Qiblah' of necessities, is needed
The phrase qiblah-e ;haajaat can describe the 'eye' (which, as a wine-house, is a 'supplier of necessities'); or else it can be a vocative, addressed apparently to God--and most rakishly so, since the verse makes it clear that the arch of the mosque is to the wine-house as the eyebrow is to the eye.
These obvious devices for creating multivalence are all linked (along with others) on the 'Sets' page, and discussed on the website; along with them I have also noted and illustrated many smaller, narrower, but most convenient little tools that are often used to create ramifying branches of meaning:
aur as 'and' or 'more' or 'other'
ek as 'single', 'particular', 'unique', or 'excellent'
baskih as 'although' or 'to such an extent' or 'since'
bhii as 'even' or 'also'
phir as 'then' or 'again'
jo as 'since', 'if', 'when'
kih as 'such that' or 'or' or a general clause introducer
magar as 'but' or 'perhaps'
hanuuz as 'now' or 'still'
hii as 'only' or 'emphatically'
As a final, supreme example of a 'tangle' verse (which is also, most elegantly, a 'twist verse'), consider {32,1}, which well deserves its exceptional fame; it might be the most multivalent verse in the divan. It uses only short and simple words; it can be enjoyed by an elementary-level student. But where do its possibilities end? Those given in the translations are by no means exhaustive:
nah thaa kuchh to ;xudaa thaa kuchh nah hotaa to ;xudaa hotaa
;Duboyaa mujh ko hone ne nah hotaa mai;N to kyaa hotaa1a) when there was nothing, then God was; if nothing was, then God would be
1b) when I was nothing, then God was; if I were nothing, then God would be
1c) when I was nothing, then I was God; if I were nothing, then I would be God2a) 'being' drowned me; if I were not I, then what would I be?
2b) 'being' drowned me; if I were not, then what would I be?
2c) 'being' drowned me; if I were not I, then what would be?
2d) 'being' drowned me; if I were not, then what would be?
2e) 'being' drowned me; if I were not I, then so what?
2f) 'being' drowned me; if I were not, then so what?
Within its seeming simplicity this verse incorporates a variety of devices. (1) Grammatical flexibilities: In both lines, clever use is made of the possible colloquial omission of the subject. The first line consists of one 'when-then' and one 'if-then' sentence, for a total of four clauses; the second line contains in its latter half one 'if-then' sentence containing two clauses. In any or all of those six clauses, the subject, which is masculine singular in every case, could also be a colloquially-omitted 'I' [mai;N]. (2) 'Mushairah-verse' structure: after a series of obscure, unresolvably abstract statements, the 'punch-word' kyaa appears at the very end of the second line and contains the rhyme, so that the final brief kyaa hotaa has intense closural (and also, in this case, closure-refusing) force. (3) The 'kya effect', in full glory as the culmination of the verse. (4) The 'revitalized idiom' effect (to be discussed below): kyaa hotaa is an idiomatic expression somewhat like 'so what?', and can also be read literally. (5) Repetition, used to create rhythmic sound effects. For more on this truly mind-bending verse, see the discussion on the website.
III -- THE LARGER CONTEXT
Of course, use of this repertoire of structural devices or tools is no guarantee of quality; the same tool-kit is available to all the poets. These tools are not sufficient to make a Ghalib--but they are certainly necessary. They provide the framework that supports many of Ghalib's most complex imaginative effects; knowledge of them enables us to perceive and enjoy classical ghazal verses with as much sophistication as possible.
I would claim for all these devices a kind of irreversability: once you've seen them, you can't un-see them. Once you've seen how often Ghalib uses, for example, kyaa for multivalence, you become interpretively sensitized to it. Any particular occurrence of kyaa may be straightforward, but in the context of the particular verse it may also offer two possible readings, or three, or even sometimes four. You check to see, by looking at whether more than one of the kyaa possibilities will work meaningfully with the other line, and within the verse as a whole. And if a commentator writes 'He says that...' and gives a single reading, you wonder how he can so confidently affirm that one possibility and reject the others. (To give the commentators their due, they are often more helpful than they realize: sometimes two or three of them will each assert a different single meaning, so that together they inadvertently prove the verse's multivalence.)
Verses with 'twists' and 'tangles' are of course far from the only kinds that Ghalib has on offer. In his divan there are many verses that rely chiefly on thematic or semantic content; there are also verses with wonderfully harmonious ravaanii , 'flowingness', as well as many other kinds of rhythmic effects including repetition (as we have seen above) and parallelism. A most helpful over-all inventory of traditional terminology for the kinds of effects that ghazal verses can create is provided by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi in the introductory parts of his magnificent four-volume work on Mir, 'Tumultuous verses' [shi((r-e shor-angez].
Always and everywhere, there are staggering amounts of wordplay. Most verses have some of it, and some verses are absolutely loaded down with verbal affinities of one kind or another. One special kind of wordplay is particularly Ghalibian (and Mirian): it's the use of idioms or proverbial expressions in a way that invokes both their common idiomatic sense and their literal, dictionary meanings. The divan includes a great many verses based on such revitalized idioms; we have seen one example above. Here's another, particularly clear instance, {11,2}:
mu;habbat thii chaman se lekin ab yih be-dimaa;Gii hai
kih mauj-e buu-e gul se naak me;N aataa hai dam meraa1) I loved the garden--but now, there is this [much] irritation--
2) that from a wave of rose-scent, {I am harassed / 'the breath comes into my nose'}
Not only is naak me;N dam aanaa is an idiomatic expression meaning 'to be greatly worried or harassed', but as icing on the wordplay-cake, a tertiary meaning of dimaa;G is 'nose'.
Ghalib also has a sharp wit and a thoroughly enjoyable sense of humor--not that you'd ever know it from the dirge-like way Jagjit sings his ghazals, or from the still common 'natural poetry' tendency to insist on his verses as expressing real-life sufferings. He asks cleverly faux-naïf questions, or makes claims so grandiosely over-the-top that they can't help but be amusing. Here's the overtly funny, extremely popular {116,3} (it's a 'twist' verse, with an uninterpretable first line):
raat ke vaqt mai piye saath raqiib ko liye
aave vuh yaa;N ;xudaa kare par nah kare ;xudaa kih yuu;N1) at night, having drunk wine, having taken the Rival along--
2) that she would come here, may the Lord grant; but may the Lord not grant-- like this!
I could readily go on and on, describing and illustrating many of Ghalib's smaller-scale, more specific rhetorical devices and tools, but since this material is already available on the (constantly updated) website of 'A Desertful of Roses', I will control myself. In any case, I'm confident that in identifying temporal 'twists' and unresolvable 'tangles' I've found and tagged what are by far the two biggest structural whales in the Ghalibian sea. Semantically speaking, I have found only one real fish, not huge but very conspicuous: Ghalib's emphatic insistence in his verses that using only one's own resources, even if they are inferior, is preferable to the humiliation of borrowing others' resources, even if thy are superior. On the website I have linked and discussed a number of these 'independence' verses.
So since nobody can resist the chance to quote verses, let me end this report with one of my very favorites, {138,1}, a notable 'tangle' of meanings:
kyaa tang ham sitam-zadagaa;N kaa jahaan hai
jis me;N kih ek bai.zah-e mor aasmaan hai1a) how narrow is the world of us oppressed ones!
1b) is the world of us oppressed ones narrow?
1c) what-- as if the world of us oppressed ones is narrow!2a) in which a single/particular/unique/excellent ant's egg is the sky
2b) in which the sky is a single/particular/unique/excellent ant's egg
The first line creates the 'kya effect', while the second line takes advantage of 'symmetry' (if A=B then B=A), and also invokes the special powers of ek , a surprisingly versatile little word that can mean, among other things, 'single', or 'particular', or 'unique', or 'excellent'. The obvious reading, preferred by the commentators, combines (1a) and (2a) to create a conventional lament: 'Alas, how narrow is the world of us oppressed lovers, in which the sky is (the size of) a single ant's egg!'
But of course, the verse also offers a number of altogether more extravagant possible readings. Two of these are particular favorites of mine. If we combine (1c) with (2a), we get the complaint, 'What--as if the world of us oppressed ones is narrow! Why, that's not the case at all--in fact we have a whole, excellent ant's egg as our sky! Who could possibly ask for more?'. If we combine (1c) with (2b), we get the complaint, 'What--as if the world of us oppressed ones is narrow! Why, that's not the case at all. Our world is vast! Why, in our world, the sky itself is no more than a single ant's egg!'
How better to encapsulate the poetics of the Ghalibian 'tangle' verse, and the Ghalibian world in general? Its sky is made out of an ant's egg; but once you're inside it, the sky itself is seen to be a trifle, a mere ant's egg. I expect to keep working on Ghalib for the rest of my life. I hope to make another report in due course, and to include in it discussion of Ghalib's early unpublished verses.