Ghazal 244x, Verse 7

Asi:

Oh heedless heart, watchfulness is necessary. There is no despair of glory/appearance, because even the crevice-work of your wall acts as a seeing eye. In this way, my wait is not despairing of glory/appearance.

== Asi, pp.82-83

Zamin:

nigaraanii ;Gaafil is hortatory-- that is, 'Oh heedless one, watchfulness!'. The clumsiness of the construction is obvious.

== Zamin, p. 107

Gyan Chand:

The meaning of the verse is, oh beloved who is heedless of watchfulness, my heart is not despairing of a sight of you. No matter how much you try to hide yourself from us, the crevice-work in your walls is for us the eye of hope-- that is, an eye that has hope of seeing a glory/appearance.

In the above commentary, in the second line 'crevice-work' is the subject, and 'eye of hope' is the predicate nominative. If their construction is reversed, so that the prose of the line would be 'the eye of hope is the crevice-work of your walls', then the meaning of the verse will become more subtle/enjoyable-- that 'our eye of hope will sometimes keep looking at you'; thus it is, so to speak, the crevice-work of your walls.

== Gyan Chand, pp.153-154

FWP:

SETS == SYMMETRY
EYES {3,1}
JALVAH: {7,4}
WARNINGS: {15,15}

For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.

On the nature of a rauzan , see {64,4}.

Since crevice-work for ventilation is usually placed high up toward the ceiling, what someone inside a darkish room would see would be the sky, which would look white by contrast-- white, of course, like an eyeball. Such crevice-work would thus present a number of white-looking openings, like many iterations of the lover's vigilant 'eye of hope'. Compare the similar likening of the crevice-work to eyeballs in {111,4}.

Asi thinks the injunction of 'watchfulness' is addressed to the speaker's own heart. But it could also be addressed to the beloved, as a warning that her privacy is in danger of being violated; this reading would have the advantage of establishing the same addressee for both lines.

It's encouraging to see Gyan Chand carefully making an argument for what I call 'symmetry'. His point is that it makes a difference whether the second line is about the lover's eyes, which are analogized to crevice-work as in (2a), or about the beloved's crevice-work, which is analogized to the lover's eyes as in (2b). As usual, we're left to decide for ourselves.