Ghalib humein na chhed ke phir josh-e-ashq se,
Baithe hain hum tahayya-e-toofaan kiye hue.
[By Mirza Ghalib]
Ghalib, tease us not again with the flood of tears,
We sit with a determination to rival the storms.
[Translated by Siyaah]
josh-e-ashq: literally josh means 'to boil', ashq=tears. There is no exact expression to capture the effect in English. "Flood of tears" has a similar idea.
tahayya-e-toofaan: tahayya=determination. One could interpret it either as a determination to face storms, or a determination as strong as that of storms - I have tried to capture both ideas with 'to rival the storms'
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
The ghazal from which you have picked this sher was the first ghazal of Ghalib i ever read with an intent to read ghalib. A collection of good urdu poems by several poets was done by a certain Ms Nasim Mukri. The book was lying in my house around the place and one afternoon when i was pretty jobless, i picked it up and said to myself 'ok let's see whats so great about Mr. Ghalib'. this was the first poem i read and it was a case of instant love.
"phir pursish-e-jaraahat-e-dil ko chala hai ishq, saamaan-e-sad hazaar namakdaa.n kiye hue"
Nice one. Thanks for sharing...
Illusionist: It's one of my Ghalib favorites for sure- I first encountered it by listening to the version by Iqbal bano which really does justice to it...
Tap: glad you liked it. I rarely attempt to translate Ghalib here, and even then it is only one couplet at a time. A man's got to know his limitations!
Naseem Mukri whom you mention is the daughter of film comedian Mukri. She has authored several books of poetry
Would you please name the Ghazal, I'm not able to find it.
Post a Comment