Verse 41816aamujhe


G3

1
{since / to such an extent} you do unveilings/immodesties in the garden
2
shame has begun to come to me, from the scent of the rose

'Appearing unveiled, immodesty, indecency, shamelessness'.
'Shame, sense of shame, modesty; pudency; shyness, bashfulness'.

References
Arshi, Imtiyaz Ali Ghazal# 141
Raza, Kalidas Gupta 227-28
Nuskhah-e-Hamidiyah 194-195
Asi, Abdul Bari 221-222
Gyan Chand 336-339
Hamid Ali Khan Open Image

Ghalib has cleverly left it up to us to supply the causal logic by which the first line gives rise to the second one. Most fundamentally, we have to decide whether the speaker feels shame because of similarities between the wanton beloved and the wanton rose-scent; or because of differences between the (theoretically at least) secluded beloved and the wanton rose-scent; or simply because the rose-scent is a wandering tale-bearer who will too easily reveal too many secrets. The commentators have laid out a number of possibilities, and I don't have any others to add. What I especially enjoy is the suggestive, provocative energy of -- it's so much more lascivious-sounding than the more commonplace . It suggests a variety of wanton actions, perhaps of many different kinds, perhaps repeated many times; it invites us to fantasize. For more on such pluralized abstractions, see 1,2 . graphics/voluptuousrose.jpg