The two Bekhuds seem to take the verse as a straightforward depiction of an episode between lover and beloved. But then they differ with each other on its nature, with Bekhud Dihlavi seeing it as a triumph for the lover, and Bekhud Mohani seeing it as another in a string of failures and betrayals. So it doesn't seem to be that straightforward after all. To me it's reminiscent of 22,6 , in which it's not clear whether the lover's fate is to be at the center of an unprecedented turmoil of sorrow and affliction-- or at the center of nothing at all. Here too, there's a hot rumor that Ghalib is to be-- what? torn apart? beaten up? abused and humiliated? Literally, that his 'pieces will fly'. What or who will cause this? Will it be physically painful, or even fatal, or merely socially humiliating? Needless to say, we're left to wonder. (This is one of the very rare cases in which Ghalib uses an idiom only in its colloquial sense, not in its dictionary sense as well.) Then in the second line, all that we learn is that the speaker went to see, but . (On the double worldly-mystical possibilities of , see 8,1 .) And the speaker might well be Ghalib himself (we 'too' went, or 'even' we went), expressing his (genuine? tongue-in-cheek?) regret at the loss of such a 'spectacle'. Which of course leaves plenty of further questions. Did the whole thing (worldly or mystical) not happen-- Ghalib's 'pieces' were not 'made to fly'? Or did it happen, but in some anticlimactic way not worth seeing, so that there was none of the big 'spectacle' the disappointed gawkers had been hoping for? Or was there simply nothing at all in public view, no event whatsoever for the gawkers to observe? Ghalib could have been torn to pieces in private, or silently, or invisibly. After all, isn't that what happens to the lover all the time anyway? graphics/hotnews.jpg