Ghazal 383x, Verse 5

Zamin:

That is, as long as a bird wouldn't fly, he is in wellbeing-- so to speak, unopened wings and feathers are the wealty/property of wellbeing. And when he flies-- all at once he's become a vagabond/wanderer and is ensnared in tension. A kind of tension about which we can say nothing. The gist is that as long as a person is content, and accepts his existing condition, he is at ease. But when he would open the wings of greed/lust and desire, and fly in the air of longings, all at once he's ensnared in a whole worldful of difficulties.

== Zamin, p. 429

Gyan Chand:

In flying, vagabondage is done, and there is tension and anxiety. Rest/ease is found only in not opening the wings and feathers. Remain sitting at home, in wellbeing.

== Gyan Chand, p. 439

FWP:

SETS == INEXPRESSIBILITY

For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.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

In this verse, the speaker presents himself as a bird; for other such verses, see {126,5}. And there's something the bird cannot convey to us in words (except by exclaiming at his inability to convey it): the struggle, the 'pulling-tugging', of the vagabondage, the wanderingness, of flight. And indeed that 'flight' sounds painful-- always on the move, a solitary wanderer, torn by conflicting desires, condemned to stress and confusion. Under mushairah performance conditions, we have to wait for a bit before we're allowed to hear the second line. But a good anticipatory guess would be that the line might offer some example or illustration of the bird's sufferings-- the price he pays for flying.

Instead, the second line abandons the exclamatory, insha))iyah mode in favor of a flat, didactic statement: wellbeing/contentment is the wealth or 'capital' of unopened wings and feathers. Zamin and Gyan Chand take this statement at face value: they both maintain that the verse valorizes 'wellbeing/contentment' over flight. This reading also has the support of many Sufistic anecdotes about the virtue of accepting God's will rather than striving to change one's fate.

But surely we can't fail to recognize another, quite opposite possibility as well. For a bird who never opens his wings, never flies-- what kind of a bird is that? Isn't it a 'bird' who has fallen below his true nature, who has lost his very essence? Compare {68,9x}, in which the idea of 'pulling out from a bird's wing the aspect of flight' is used as a metaphor for something not only impossible but also outrageous. On this reading, the bird disdainfully questions the value of a 'wellbeing' or 'contentment' that can only be acquired by abandoning his true nature.

This kind of radical ambiguity is so classically Ghalibian! Compare {232,3}, in which the bird claims (wistfully? sarcastically? sincerely?) that life in a 'corner of the cage' is really much safer and more comfortable than life in the dangerous world outside. Then there is the supremely ambiguous {234,6}-- what does it mean if the caged bird would gather straw for a nest?