;xaraabii : 'Ruin, destruction, desolation; badness, corruption, depravity; noxiousness, ill, evil, mischief, perdition; misery, trouble, affliction; difficulty, perplexity'. (Platts p.488)
nama:t : 'Likeness, similitude; manner, mode, way, custom'. (Platts p.1154)
ta((miir : 'Building, constructing; construction, structure; rebuilding; repairing'. (Platts p.327)
.saiyaad-e kamii;N-;xaanah-e ta((miir = that Hunter who would lurk in an ambush-place in order to capture 'construction'. When one would make a fountain, then along with this a flood of water too will come into existence. The same is true of my construction: along with the making of a building, a flood is created to sweep away its foundation. Thus I am like a fountain: along with my construction, ruination has become inescapable.
SETS == MIDPOINTS
BONDAGE: {1,5}
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
Who, or what, is 'like a fountain'? Gyan Chand takes it to be the speaker himself, which is certainly possible. But surely it's more piquant (and more imaginatively plausible) for the flood to be like a fountain. When one is doing a project of 'construction', an attractive, cooling fountain might well be included in the work. Yet somehow, to build a fountain is also to invite, or invoke, or evoke, a flood. Or at least, that's the case for someone as irretrievably ill-fated as the speaker.
Gyan Chand breaks up the i.zaafat series in the second line as 'a (Hunter in an ambush-place) of construction'-- that is, a Hunter who lies in wait to make a prey of 'construction'. But surely it's more suggestive to read 'a Hunter in (the ambush-place of construction)'. For 'construction' would make an excellent ambush-place, because a busy, bustling, multifarious work-site might well enable an intruder to remain unnoticed-- and also because it's much easier to imagine 'construction' as a work-site than as a hunted animal.
Zamin cites {10,6}, the locus classicus for the highly Ghalibian idea that 'construction' itself somehow contains a particular form of ruin. But then he makes an intriguing criticism of both verses: that they do not provide any poetic 'proof' of why this should be so. Technically speaking, he may be right (especially about {10,6}). But somehow the lack of 'proof' doesn't damage the verses-- it doesn't diminish their assertive, evocative power, or their ability to haunt the imagination. The moral must surely be that there's more than one way to skin a cat-- or to construct a potent verse.
Note for grammar fans: In the refrain, the aave appears where we would expect something like ho jaa))e . This is a translation of a Persian usage ( aamadan means both 'to come' and 'to become'). It was not current in Urdu, but when did that ever stop Ghalib from doing as he pleased?
Zamin:
The theme is the same as that of {10,6}. That is, the movement that is the cause of the construction of the living body-- exactly that is the cause of its ruination. But the image is detached [ucha;Tnaa] in that verse, and in this one too. Because the fountain's being a cause of the ruin of construction (a Hunter in the ambush-place of construction) is as devoid of proof as is the farmer's hot blood being the essence of the lightning of the harvest.
== Zamin, p. 453