Verse 81833aatme;N aave


G13

1
if it would not be a despoiler/ruiner of honor, the lust for gold
2
why would the beloved-who-is-the-rose come from the garden into the bazaar?

is an archaic form of ( GRAMMAR )

References
Arshi, Imtiyaz Ali Ghazal# 206
Raza, Kalidas Gupta 383
Hamid Ali Khan Open Image

The whole verse is , and carefully keeps its parameters as broad as possible. Its best effects are founded on two enjoyable bits of verbal affinity: that pollen is called 'gold of the rose', and that a prostitute is called a 'bazaar' [] woman. In the first line, it's impossible to say who feels the 'lust for gold', and whose honor is being destroyed; and by no coincidence, in the second line it's impossible to say whether the rose-beloved's 'coming into the bazaar' is a free choice or the result of duress. In addition, the unusual ' of identity' (in which A 'of' B means 'A who is B') radically identifies the rose itself as a (human?) beloved, thus keeping all our options open. Here are the main possibilities: =The rose itself has a lust for gold, grounded in the affinity between gold [] and pollen []. Pollen is golden, so the rose may desire it for that reason. But pollen appears only when the rose is fully blooming, which is the time when it is brought to market; so the rose has prepared the conditions for its own sale in the marketplace. =Humans in general have a lust for gold, so they brutally rip the richly blooming rose from its honorable home in the garden and sell it in the marketplace; thus they destroy their own honor and/or that of the rose. =Beloveds have a lust for gold (and other worldly enticements), and this ultimately induces them to sell their honor and move from the privacy of a 'garden' to the public marketplace. There are also some nice sound echoes: and and and . Compare Mir 's own elegant treatment of this theme: M 96,8 . Might it not have influenced Ghalib's? graphics/flowerseller.jpg