Ghazal 428x, Verse 7

Asi:

Expressing what he has witnessed, he says that 'Those birds who wander away, and forget their own nests-- if nothing else, then from afar their voice most certainly keeps coming. But since my 'bird of color' has flown away, there has been no information about it, nor can its voice be heard. I wish that just for once I would see a method for the return of my 'color', and that the poor thing would come back to its homeland.'

== Asi, p. 314

Zamin:

He says that gone-away 'color' does not come back, but it's an amusing thing that one is hearing the warbling of birds who have lost the nest. From this the common [Persian] saying that 'gone-away color does not return' [rang-e raftah bar namiigardad] is proved wrong. The poet is taking their voice to be the gone-away color.

== Zamin, p. 456

Gyan Chand:

Ghalib always gives for gone-away color the simile of a bird. In this verse he says that the voice is coming, of the birds who had flown away from the nest. Probably they are coming back. It's an extraordinary spectacle-- that flown-away color would come back! He has given for the birds the simile of pallid/'flown away' color [rang-e pariidah].

[Some texts, including Asi's, have tamaashaa-e instead of tamaashaa hai .] The manuscript reading of tamaashaa hai is later, and thus preferable. From it emerges only the meaning that I have given.

== Gyan Chand, p. 487

FWP:

SETS == A,B; GESTURES; SUBJECT?
TAMASHA: {8,1}

For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.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

The first line reports a 'gesture', an uninterpreted action: that the apparently collective voice of 'birds who have lost the nest' ('nest-lost birds' was too clunky even for me) comes to be heard by the speaker. We do not know why the birds are calling out, or what mood they are expressing. Thus the possibilities of 'connection' between the lines are left to our own imagination-- helped by the remarkable range of meaning provided by rang (see the definition above). Here are a few possibilities :

=The speaker is surprised and/or amused that the birds would raise their voice in complaint, lamenting the loss of the nest (through lightning, or some other disaster? through their own heedlessness?). It's as if they think that former 'color' (the joys of the nest) would be recoverable! Compare the similar treatment of lost joy in {64,3}.

=The speaker is surprised to hear the birds calling and warbling, even though they have lost the nest. Might they actually believe that they could still, against the odds, find 'color' and joy in life?

=Birds are always destined to leave the nest, when they grow up and take to the skies; the nest is then abandoned and 'lost'. The birds still call and warble, even without access to their 'home'. Their behavior is exemplary-- if we do not similarly let go of the past, then our behavior would be an absurd and pathetic 'spectacle'

=The birds are (like) the 'bird of color' that has 'flown away' from the speaker's pallid face. How strange it is that he would still hear them calling! Is he mad enough to believe that they might actually return? This is Gyan Chand's reading. Compare {220,4x}.

There's also the enjoyable wordplay between 'spectacle' and rang as a 'theater, stage, entertainment'.