Verse 11816ilkaa
G2
1
entirely pledged/mortgaged to passion-- and helpless against the intimacy/affection of life
2
I worship lightning-- and regret/lament the harvest/result
'Pledging, pawning; a thing deposited as a pledge, a pledge, a pawn; a mortgage, a sum lent on mortgage'.
'Remediless, helpless; irremediable, unavoidable'.
'Familiarity, intimacy; attachment, affection, friendship'.
'To feel regret, sorrow, &c., to regret; to grieve, sorrow, or sigh (for, or because of), to lament, bemoan; to take to heart; to express sorrow or regret (for); to feel or to express pity (for)'.
'Product, produce, outcome, what is cleared, what remains (of anything), result, issue, ultimate consequence; inference, deduction, corollary; produce or net produce (of land, or of anything that is a source of revenue), revenue; —acquiring, acquisition, advantage, profit, gain, good; sum, sum and substance, substance, purport, import, object'.
| References | |
|---|---|
| Arshi, Imtiyaz Ali | Ghazal# 16 |
| Raza, Kalidas Gupta | 151 |
| Nuskhah-e-Hamidiyah | 59-60 |
| Asi, Abdul Bari | 64 |
| Gyan Chand | 95-97 |
| Hamid Ali Khan | Open Image |
Urdu text: Vajid 1902 {12}
The first line describes the speaker's helplessly paradoxical double allegiance: he feels two entirely incompatible loyalties.
Then in the second line, the nature of his dilemma is explained, or at least illustrated. The speaker either worships lightning, but still grieves for the 'harvest, produce' that is destroyed by its fire; or else he worships lightning, and yet regrets the (more general) 'outcome, result' of his worship. The word has both generalized positive meanings ('profit, gain'), and abstract and neutral ones ('outcome, corollary, result'); it also specifically refers to the 'produce of land' (see the wide-ranging definition above) in a way most convenient for the present verse, with its evocation of crop-destroying lightning.
For the classic verse about the intimate relationship among lightning, harvest, and human desire, see 10,6 . And in 155,1 , Ghalib himself explains the 'lightning of the harvest'.
For another, more complex, exploration of the vocabulary of 'pledging', see 228,10 .
graphics/lightningfield.jpg