Ghazal 379x, Verse 1

Zamin:

The first line is a 'trodden-underfoot theme', but the meaning of the second line-- perhaps it would be able to come down from the world on high! It's possible that in Mirza's mind might have been this: 'Compared to your hennaed feet, the springtime of the garden would be fit to be trodden underfoot'. But what does the harmoniousness of the mirror have to do with this?

== Zamin, p. 449

Gyan Chand:

;hinaa baa;Ndhnaa or ;hinaa bastan = to apply henna. These are especially for women. For men, they say ;hinaa maaliidan . Oh beloved, if you would put henna on your feet, and someone would give for it the simile of a garden, then it will be a very obvious idea. To declare it to be a mirror is much more suitable.

== Gyan Chand, p. 470

FWP:

SETS == DISRUPTION; IDIOM; MULTIVALENT WORDS ( be-takalluf ); POETRY
HENNA: {18,4}
MIRROR: {8,3}

For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.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

This verse offers a delightfully conflated network of literary wordplay. In the first line we learn that a garden would be a shopworn, conventional-- literally, 'trodden-underfoot'-- theme. We either learn this in a be-takalluf way ('frankly, candidly'), or else the image of the garden is used in an undesirably be-takalluf way (unadorned, 'without ceremony'). In any case, we expect the second line to bring us further poetic imagery. It does not disappoint.

For the second line makes elegant use of baa;Ndhnaa , 'to bind'-- which is used for the applying of henna (as Gyan Chand notes) and also for the creation of a line of poetry, since the words are 'bound' into proper metrical places. (For an example of this latter usage, see {29,6x}.) If the beloved would apply henna to the soles of her feet, then to simply call the effect a 'garden' would be unworthy and old-hat. Rather, a mirror would be more mauzuu;N -- more harmonious and appropriate, in general terms; and/or more rhythmically well-measured, in poetic terms.

Only when we've heard the second line-- after, under mushairah performance conditions, a suitable delay-- do we realize what a treat is offered by pesh-e paa uftaadah in the first line. As usual, Ghalib has used the expression not only in its idiomatic sense of 'shopworn, conventional', but also in its dictionary meaning-- for the beloved would apply henna not merely to her feet, but specifically to the 'soles' of her feet.

Zamin asks, with understandable irritation, what the mirror is doing there. Gyan Chand suggests that the mirror should replace the garden, as a more suitable poetic image for the beloved's hennaed feet. But then, why is the mirror a particularly 'well-measured' image for the beloved's feet? Since the mirror is the most ubiquitous of Ghalibian images, with sufficiently tortuous ingenuity we could surely come up with some reason or other.

But I maintain that Ghalib is doing his special trick of disrupting his own metaphors. The verse is full of poetic terms: pesh-e paa uftaadah, ma.zmuu;N , baa;Ndhnaa , mauzuu;N . The 'hinge' is baa;Ndhe , which can work with either the composition of a verse, or the application of henna. What the mirror does is break us out of the poetic world into the real (?) world of the beloved's self-adornment. If she's putting henna on the soles of her feet, the most 'harmonious', fitting, desirable thing to have at hand (sorry, sorry!) is not some fancy poetic image, but a good old mirror. The mirror pivots the verse from one domain into another (as in, 'She wore a defiant smile, and a blue sweater'). Ghalib's disruptive power is a sharp, edgy effect of his creativity.