aahang-e ((adam naalah bah kuhsaar giruu hai
hastii me;N nahii;N sho;xii-e iijaad-e .sadaa hech
1) the melody of nonexistence is a lament echoed back from the mountain/foothills
2) in existence there's not the mischievousness of the creation of a voice/echo-- it's nothing!
aahang : 'Sound, concord, melody; one of the Persian tunes or modulations in music'. (Platts p.111)
iijaad : 'Creation, production; invention, contrivance'. (Platts p.112}
.sadaa : 'Echo; sound, noise; voice, tone, cry, call'. (Platts p.743)
hech : 'Not any, none, no; nothing; — worthless, good-for-nothing; — shallow, superficial; — a mere trifle; — adv. Never; at no rate, on no account at all'. (Platts p.1244)
hech : 'Nothing; a mere trifle; lost, annihilated; never, at no rate, on no account at all'. (Steingass p.1520)
SETS
EXISTENCE/NONEXISTENCE: {5,3}
MUSIC: {10,3}
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
When the first line tells us that the 'melody of nonexistence' is derivative and unoriginal, a mere 'echo' of a lament, we expect to hear something contrasting and more affirmative about 'existence'-- that the lover's cri de coeur is the source of the echoing cosmic lament, or something along those lines. And in fact we usually do; Ghalib is fond of showing the superiority of humans over 'nonexistence', as in {5,3}.
But not this time! In this uniquely and radically negative ghazal, we learn that 'existence' is actually even worse off-- nonexistence has a mere derivative echo of a lament, but existence seems to have no voice or sound. It is not lively and 'mischievous' enough to create a melody. It is, alas 'nothing' at all.
Gyan Chand:
This is the echo from the mountain. He has called the raga of nonexistence merely the echo of a single lament, which is no established thing. In existence too, there is no freshness of the voice; that is, here too everything is stale. Such an existence is 'nothing'. In this place any meaning of hech can be taken.
== Gyan Chand, p. 190