junuun-e farqat-e yaaraan-e raftah hai ;Gaalib
bah saan-e dasht dil-e pur-;Gubaar rakhte hai;N
1) there is the madness of the separation of gone-away friends/beloveds, Ghalib
2) with the likeness of a desert, we have/'keep' a heart full of dust/vexation
saan : 'Likeness, similitude'. (Platts p.628)
;Gubaar : 'Dust; clouds of dust; a dust-storm; vapour, fog, mist, mistiness; impurity, foulness; (met.) vexation, soreness, ill-feeling, rancour, spite; affliction, grief; perplexity'. (Platts p.769)
In place of junuun he could have said 'melancholy' [malaal]; through the wordplay with 'desert', he has said 'madness'. From this the meaning of 'an excess of melancholy' has also been created, since an excess of melancholy is a cause of madness.
In the heart particularly, dust is the sign of a longing for conversation. How many of our friends have been separated from us! We feel the grief and madness of their absence. The way a wasteland/jungle remains filled with dust, in the same way our heart too has become filled with the grief of separation.
SETS
DESERT: {3,1}
MADNESS: {14,3}
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
The word in the powerful, closural, rhyme-word position is ;Gubaar , with the literal meaning of 'dust' and an extensive array of metaphorical meanings (see the definition above). In an outer, physical sense, the desert with its endless, desolate expanses-- a suitable evocation of loneliness and loss-- is by definition the domain of sand and 'dust'. But in an inner, emotional sense, the idea of a heart being covered with dust is a very common trope in Persian and Urdu ghazal, and is derived from the even more basic metaphorical equation of the heart with a (metal) mirror. For discussion of heart-as-mirror imagery, see {128,1}.
Asi:
Oh Ghalib, the separation from gone-away friends has made us mad and insane. And our heart is like a wasteland/jungle in which there would be dust. In exactly this way, our heart too has become filled with the dust of sorrow and melancholy.
== Asi, p. 180