nah puuchh ;haal shab-o-roz hijr kaa ;Gaalib
;xayaal-e zulf-o-ru;x-e dost .sub;h-o-shaam rahaa
1) don't ask about the condition of the night and day of separation, Ghalib!
2a) the thought of the curls and face of the friend/beloved, dawn and evening, remained
2b) the thought of the 'curls' and 'face' of the friend/beloved remained 'dawn' and 'evening'
;xayaal : 'Thought, opinion, surmise, suspicion, conception, idea, notion, fancy, imagination, conceit. whim, chimera; consideration; regard, deference; apprehension; care, concern'. (Platts p.498)
To give for the curls and face the simile of night and day is the point; and this simile has reached the stage of shopwornness [ibti;zaal].
The affinity of night and evening is with the curls, and the comparison of day and dawn is with the face. Ghalib, don't ask about the condition of the night and day of separation! Dawn and evening, the thought of her curls and face remained.
SETS == INEXPRESSIBILITY
CURLS: {14,6}
NIGHT/DAY: {1,2}
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
The similes are obvious; indeed, as Zamin disdainfully observes, they are 'shopworn'. But the commentators don't push the possibilities far enough toward extravagance. They confine themselves to the very limited pleasures of interpretation (2a).
But what about the far more piquant (2b)? This interpretation takes the 'metaphorical' equations literally, and then makes use of an Arabo-Persian rhetorical device called 'collecting and scattering' (or in the Greek tradition, 'chiasmus'): 'A and B, are B and A', curls and face are dawn and evening. And in the ghazal world, they really can be so! Consider my favorite example, {62,8}, in which the lover's burning scar not only is commonly mistaken for the sun, but may actually be the sun-- or at least, all the sun there is.
In the present verse, the first line has already warned us that we're exploring the lover's state of separation, and that it's beyond all description. And it has set up that inconspicuous, conventional-looking reference to his 'night and day'. Then, of course, we learn that he has no night and day at all, except for her curls and her face. Or rather, except for 'the thought of' her curls and her face. How does that ;xayaal (see the definition above) affect, or determine, his night and day? As so often, it's left for us to decide.
Compare also the more limited use of such night-and-day possibilities in {208,1}.
Asi:
Oh Ghalib, how can it even be asked [kyaa puuchhtaa hai] how, in separation, my nights and days passed! The truth is that the thought of her curls and her cheeks remained with me night and day. To give as a simile for the face, 'dawn', and for the curls, 'evening', is an established thing.
== Asi, p. 88