Verse 41826aarbhii nahii;N


G3

1
without passion a lifetime can't pass-- and here
2
strength/endurance is not proportional even/also to the delight/relish of trouble/affliction

taaqat>> : 'Ability to accomplish, capability; ability, power, energy, force, strength; ability to endure, power of endurance, endurance, patience'.
'Greatness, dignity, honour, rank, power; importance, consequence; worth, merit; estimation, appreciation, account; value, price; —measure; degree; quantity; magnitude; bulk, size; portion, part; —whatever is fixed or ordained of God, divine providence, fate, destiny'.
'Pleasure, delight, enjoyment; sweetness, deliciousness; taste, flavour, relish, savour'.
'Sickness, disorder, disease, infirmity; trouble, affliction; injury, outrage'.

References
Arshi, Imtiyaz Ali Ghazal# 100
Raza, Kalidas Gupta 364-65
Hamid Ali Khan Open Image

That phrase is not only a piquant yoking of opposites, but also a wonderfully palindrome-like construction, offering us first and then , two sound-sequences that are not only internally symmetrical but also echo each other remarkably. No wonder Ghalib used the phrase again and again. Other verses in which it appears: 53,10 ; 60,6 ; 92,3 . This one is a real 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' verse. If the lover doesn't have passion, the sheer day-to-day-ness of a lifetime can't be endured. If he does have passion, its torments will kill him. Either way, his goose is cooked. Another, and even bleaker, statement of such a dilemma appears in 20,7 : although grief is fatal, nobody with a heart can escape it: the difference is only between being killed by either the 'grief of passion', or else by the grief of 'dailiness / livelihood / the world' []. The effect is to make passion sound like a life-occupying device of great efficiency: it offers the lover everything he could need to keep boredom and the quotidian at bay. He has delight, he has torment-- and long before they have time to pall, he'll be dead, because he's too weak to endure that much pleasure/pain, and so his worries about how to pass his life will become moot. His only regret, as he leaves us a few last thoughts, is that he couldn't hold out a little longer and enjoy a bit more of the before it finally did him in. graphics/painpleasure.jpg