Ghazal 349x, Verse 1

Asi:

Whatever trouble you are enduring with regard to the friendship and connection of 'this and that', I and you, one thing and another, consider it heedlessness of your purpose. And don't at all accept the inappropriate trouble of coming and going. Rather, if ardor would make you 'heavy-headed', then about this heavy-headedness consider that the camel-litter of a dream of your feet has come. That is, consider it a dream of your feet, and imagine that your feet are in search of dream/sleep and rest, and want to stop you from this absurd l onging.

== Asi, p. 212

Zamin:

That is, the trouble of the ardor for worldly relationships is a veil for mystical knowledge. If the ardor for the connections between 'this and that' would make you 'heavy-headed', then you ought to consider that your 'foot of searching' [paa-e :talab] has gone to sleep in the road to mystical knowledge, and with regard to this the ardor for relationships has become a cradle of heedlessness. This seems to be the intention in the poet's mind; the words are not helpful for that meaning. Because of the constraint of the meter, instead of 'cradle' he has said 'camel-litter'.

== Zamin, p. 314

Gyan Chand:

sar-garaa;N = anxious, agitated. ;xvaab-e paa = the feet having gone to sleep. ma;hmil-e ;xvaab-e paa = that camel-litter of which the foot would be asleep-- that is, which would not be able to advance onward. The purpose of the life of heart-less ones is to meet with the True Beloved. To fall into the morass of relationships is heedlessness toward the purpose of life. Through the ardor of passion, the hope/expectation is that the lover would be carried away toward the beloved. If anyone's ardor would become heedless of this duty and create anxiety/agitation, then it is like a halted camel-litter, which is repugnant to the practice of passion.

== Gyan Chand, p. 327

FWP:

SETS
DREAMS: {3,3}
SOUND EFFECTS: {26,7}

For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.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

This ghazal and the preceding one, {348x}, are ham-:tar;h -- that is, in terms of the formal requirements of the ghazal, they are identical. Yet how different they sound, and feel! The present one goes way beyond those formal requirements by creating the maximum possible internal rhyme. It's the kind of long 'foot A / foot B // foot A / foot B' meter (in this case, = - - = / - = - = // = - - = / - = - = ) that creates a quasi-caesura in the middle of every line. Thus every verse has the metrical form of four symmetrical half-lines. In this ghazal, every possible internal rhyme has been created. Thus in each verse the four half-lines rhyme abab (the opening verse), cccb, dddb, and so on. (By contrast, {348x} has the usual form aa, ba, ca, and so on.)

The fact that Ghalib created these two ham-:tar;h ghazals, and made them so strikingly different in metrical terms (and in other ways as well) shows his great metrical control, and also his ability to use it imaginatively. In many ghazals, occasional instances of internal rhyme appear. Only in the case of these two 'formally identical' ghazals has he turned it off and on like a faucet-- from no internal rhyme in one, to the maximum possible internal rhyme in the other.

On the possible nature of a ma;hmil , see {147,7x}.

Zamin speaks of the 'foot of searching'. Persian and Urdu poetry is full of abstract 'foot of' expressions; for a discussion and examples, see {152,3}. More particularly relevant to the present verse is another case of feet that have 'gone to sleep'-- see {194,7x}.

What exactly is a 'camel-litter of the sleep/dream of the foot'? The flexibility of the i.zaafat makes it hard to tell. If we assume that the foot has 'gone to sleep', does the foot also then dream of riding in a camel-litter? Is such a camel-litter a good thing, since it would permit one (or one's gone-to-sleep feet) to travel more conveniently? Or is such a camel-litter a bad thing, since it would be one more instance of the worldly connections that make the traveler heedless of the true purpose of life?

Our judgment about the nature of the camel-litter also depends on what it is that the addressee should consider to be such a 'camel-litter'. In a verse so extremely abstract, it's hard to decide. Grammatically, the most obvious candidate is 'ardor' (it would move the traveler along, desirably, even if his feet had gone to sleep); but semantically a case could also be made for 'trouble', 'connection', or 'heedlessness' (they would all act as distractions from one's true purpose, just as a camel-litter would distract one undesirably from the simplicity of walking).