;hairat agar ;xiraam hai kaar-e nigah tamaam hai
gar kaf-e dast baam hai aa))ine ko havaa samajh
1) if amazement is a pace/walk, the action/work of the gaze is finished
2) if the fist of the hand is a roof, consider the mirror [to be] a breeze
;xiraam : 'Pace, gait, walk, march; stately gait, graceful walk; strut'. (Platts p.488)
baam : 'Terrace or roof of a house; upper story'. (Platts p.126)
What unbalanced/'unequal'[;Gair-mutavaazin] similes they are! Some person, holding a mirror in his hand, is looking into it. The gaze, moving along in the mirror, has arrived at the halting-place of amazement. When it would become amazed and remain there, then what eye-play [na:zar-baazii] would there be? So to speak, the gaze would be finished off [kaam tamaam honaa]. The simile is like this: someone is strolling on the roof, in the breeze. The hand is the roof. The mirror held in it is the breeze. The amazement of the gaze is the pace/walk.
SETS
GAZE: {10,12}
MIRROR: {8,3}
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
For discussion of the extensive internal rhyme within this verse, see {349x,1}.
On the special nature of ;hairat , see {51,9x}.
Asi omits this verse from his commentary, and Zamin has nothing special to say. Gyan Chand, unusually, is quite critical of its 'unbalanced' similes, but then he makes a gallant try at explaining them. I assume that Faruqi not only understood but even admired it, since he marked it as one of his recommendations.
But I simply cannot wrap my head around it. I don't get it. I'll have to take a pass on this one.
Zamin:
That is, the first lesson of longing is the story of our and your weakness-- neither are you anything, nor are we anything. So to speak, however many words/ideas are related to us and to you, they are all essentially oblivion and nonexistence. [Zamin brackets {349x,2}, {349x,3}, {349x,4} and offers this commentary on them all as a group.]
== Zamin, p. 314