gar yaas sar nah khe;Nche tangii ((ajab fa.zaa hai
vus((at-gah-e tamannaa yak baam-o-.sad havaa hai
1) if despair would not raise its head, distress/'narrowness' is a strange/astonishing spaciousness
2) the amplitude-place of longing is, 'one roof and a hundred breezes'
tangii : 'Straitness, narrowness, tightness, closeness; scantiness, scarcity, distress, difficulty, want, poverty'. (Platts p.340)
((ajab : 'Wonderful, marvellous, astonishing, amazing, miraculous, strange, extraordinary, rare; droll, &c.'. (Platts p.759)
fa.zaa : 'Width, spaciousness, openness, extensiveness (of ground, &c.); an open area, a court, a yard; a spacious tract, a wide expanse of land, a plain'. (Platts p.782)
vus((at : 'Latitude; amplitude; spaciousness; capacity; space, extent; space covered, area; dimensions; bulk; — convenience, ease; opportunity, leisure'. (Platts p.1192)
baam : 'Terrace or roof of a house; upper story; — morning, dawn'. (Platts p.126)
sar kashiidan = to raise the head, to be apparent. tangii = not to be favorable to the circumstances; for example, 'narrowness' of livelihood. In the spaciousness of 'narrowness' there is great pleasure/relish-- provided that despair does not enter into it. In the state of poverty people can stroll around the spacious field of longing. This is a kind of roof on which hundreds of kinds of breezes keep blowing. In the imagination, hundreds of longings are possible; thus if there would be some kind of 'narrowness', in it is a pleasing aspect.
SETS == LIST
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
Compare {361x,7} and {360x,6} (two instances), which feature the same 'one X and a hundred Y' structure. The structure is equally ambiguous here: if there's 'one roof and a hundred breezes', Zamin finds that undesirable (high winds are dangerous), while Gyan Chand finds it desirable (cool breezes enhance the roof). Moreover, baam also means 'dawn', a time associated with a cool breeze; and havaa also means 'desire', an emotion associated with 'longing'. So there are plenty of options available for the small 'list' structure 'one X and a hundred Y'.
This undecidability is appropriate to the seeming paradox on which the verse rests: that 'narrowness' can be 'spaciousness' (of a special or extraordinary kind). The condition is that despair should not 'raise its head' and thus put an end to the 'amplitude-place of longing' with its imaginative filaments of hope that reach outward in so many directions.
Zamin:
That is, if a person would not be the prey of despair, and would remain content, then in 'narrowness' there is great spaciousness; he must only understand that he should focus on what is useful/appropriate, not on other things. In contrast to this, desire/lust for the world and for more, which we can construe as 'the amplitude-place of longing'-- it resembles a single chamber with a hundred winds blowing on it.
== Zamin, p. 408