Mir says:

Dii aag rang-e-gul ne waaN ai sabaa chaman ko
YaaN ham jale qafas meiN sun haal aashiyaaN ka

Rang-e-gul – colour/style of rose, waaN – wahaaN, sabaa – morning-breeze, chaman – garden, yaaN – here, qafas – cage, aashiyaaN – nest

It would be a sin to translate this, so I would just provide the literal, for-the-sake translation done by Frances Pritchett:

There, the color/style of the rose set fire, oh spring-breeze, to the garden
Here, we ‘burned’ in the cage, having heard the condition/state of the nest

Do not ask ‘why’ after reading the couplet; instead, ask ‘what.’ It is not for us to know ‘why’ the rang-e-gul has set fire to the chaman/garden (at least not initially); I say this because these are ever-lasting metaphors and their effect can exist even if you do not understand why they are performing their actions. So, now ask, what is happening?

There is a bird inside a cage (qafas), and the morning wind (sabaa) has come to visit. The bird says to the wind: “colour/style of rose (rang-e-gul) was destroying/setting fire to (aag dena) the garden (chaman) and here, I was ‘burning’ in the cage (qafas) having heard the condition (haal) of the nest (aashiyaaN).”

I would not consider this any less than a story. You do not agree? It works well with the definition and the six elements of tragedies given by Aristotle:

Tragedy – a process of imitating an action which has serious implications, is complete, and possesses magnitude; by means of language which has been made sensuously attractive, with each of its varieties found separately in the parts; enacted by the persons themselves and not presented through narrative; through a course of pity and fear completing the purification (catharsis) of such emotions.

Overlooking the physical aspects of the definition, we can see that the couplet:

1. has serious implications (raises pity and fear in a general and psychological sense) – the captivity, helplessness of the bird, the burning of her nest and garden and her ‘burning’ desire to be there validates this
2. might not be complete story in the sense of having a beginning, middle and an end, but it implicates towards all of those since it is a dialogue from a character
3. language is sensuously attractive (without a doubt) and relevant as well
4. though this is not enacted by people, but when you read it, you are the one enacting it, and the powerful use of language enables effect even if you read it in a toneless manner
5. this couplet catharsises the reader in a way that it manifests a very common thought of inability in a fluid manner

Aristotle gives these six elements of a tragedy:

1. Plot – see how the couplet unfolds:
   This meter has a quasi-caesura break at the middle. Think of this break as a stress or a breath taken after “ne” in the first and “meiN” in the second line. So, when we recite this couplet in a flow, it is divided in four perfect parts (or as tragedy would have it, acts).

1. The first part: dii aag rang-e-gul ne. It introduces a character (rang-e-gul) and tells us of its actions. We do not get to know much, but we get a somewhat idea as to where we’re heading and it does not seem like a good place.
2. The second part: waaN ai sabaa chaman ko, the word waaN (wahaaN) tells us that the character who is speaking this dialogue is far from the scary action in the first line. This should be a good thing, right? Yes, we think that so far. In this part the character being spoken to (sabaa) is introduced, and we are told that the villain (rang-e-gul) is setting fire to the garden. What relation does the speaker have with the garden? We don’t know. We just know that he/she is in a safer place.
3. The third part: yaaN ham jale qafas meiN, we finally get to know where the speaker is: in a cage. This union of yahaaN (yaaN) and wahaaN is a simple way of speaking, for example, “wahaaN pe tum maze kar rahe ho yahaaN mere exam chal rahe hai.” We also get to know that our speaker is ‘burning.’ We thought the speaker would be happy, given that he/she is not in the burning garden. Why is this happening?
4. The fourth part: sun haal aashiyaaN ka, this part gives us the reason to the last part and enough to predict. The speaker is ‘burning’ because he/she heard the condition of the nest; quite possibly their own nest. It is implied that the nest is in the garden, and who lives in a nest? That’s right. A bird.
   That was a roller coaster ride of feelings.

Aristotle also believes for plot to be the most important element, and as you can see here, in mere 19 words a story has been unfolded in perhaps a cathartic way.

2. Characters – bird is the tragic hero, morning breeze is a sort of middleman, rang-e-gul is the villain.
3. Diction/verbal expression – the dialogue is implicating, layered, idiomatic, colloquial and fluid. The idiom of aag dena, metaphor of rang-e-gul, the simple yet powerful waaN, the duality of jale, the falling of the “l” in “haal” on “aashiyaaN” can be appreciated in detail, alas: “had we but world enough and time.”
4. Spectacle/visual adornment – in context of a tragedy these are decorations of the stage, and they are intended to bring the audience closer to the scene of the play. Though the couplet is not a play, the imageries or the spectacles created by it are unparalleled. A play on the stage would find it difficult to convey scenery like this through decoration.
5. Thought – this is the mental pattern of the characters over the course and we can see how the speaker’s way of speaking (if not his thoughts) goes through different shades of thought.
6. Song – the couplet flows like water and a sher is part of a song if not one in itself.

I hope a convincing case has been made. Now, is this my whole argument that a sher is a story? But, what if I tell you that there is a lot more to it?

As any speaker of Hindi-Urdu would know “jalna” is relevant for jealousy as well. We never really paid attention to the captivity aspect in our tragic hero’s life, right? Let’s take the “jale” in second line this new view.

Now, the lament becomes about the captive bird’s condition and not about the garden or the nest. The bird has become jealous hearing the state of her (burning) nest. Why? Perhaps because anything is better than this captivity or watching her garden and nest burn helplessly. 

You can probably recall the scene from The Dark Knight Rises where Bane takes the broken Batman to the underground prison and forces him to watch his city ‘burn;’ before Batman gets his courage back he asks the prisoners to kill him, even if for pleasure. This reading of the couplet is much more sadistic and highlighted a different level of tragedy.

Shamsur Rahman Faruqi provides an interpretation where he considers the fire to be metaphorical. Instead he says the rose has lit up the garden with its illumination, but because the speaker is not there the nest is dark.

It is interesting to treat it as a metaphorical fire, and it provides with these ideas:

1. The speaker has become jealous/envious having heard the illumined, decorated condition of the nest.
2. The speaker is glowing/radiating out of happiness as the good news of the illumined, decorated nest has reached.

If you have made it this far, then you have successfully participated in a 1,214 word long discussion on a sher of 19 words. And believe me I can probably bring out a few more ash’aar (plural of sher) that can prove the same things. But what is my point exactly? Because it is clear that a sher is not just a story. So what is it or more like what do I think it is?

This couplet – like many other couplets – is an essence (or as Sanskrit would have it: saar) common to various stories. Merriam-Webster defines essence as:

“the permanent as contrasted with the accidental element of being.”

So, in this couplet, the essence of various stories relevant to the characters remains captured like the bird. This characteristic of “various” comes through the use of rich words; for example, the word rang is Persian, and you would lose your mind if you see the various meanings given to it in Urdu and Persian dictionaries, however, here I have selected a few that I have found relevant from Platts and Steingass:

“Colour, imposture, playfulness, pleasure, condition, manner, dishonour, grief/pain, desire, game at dice, possessor, blood, an old patched garment, like/resembling, beauty/bloom.”

You can easily come up with entirely different tragedies or something else if you make use of these meanings in the couplet.

Personally, I do not focus on these back-stories, rather I enjoy the rushing effect that the sher has, I believe for it to be the primary pleasure. But, I do believe these stories are necessary to the birth of sher. It is well known that the meaning of the word ghazal was to talk to women. However, over the time only talk has remained. And as it was said earlier, this couplet is a proper dialogue with speaker, subject and addressee.

So, the poet stands in the centre of imagination or certain situation (which is not of any reader’s business) and is able to capture the essence of the story in such a way that it has an instant effect on the reader/listener and it can also provide for the reconstruction of various such situations or imaginations.

Here is a rather funny example:

There is a story about the two poets Jurat – who was blind – and Insha where the former was immersed in his thoughts. Insha came and asked, “where are you lost?”
Jur’at said, “nothing, I have a line, but cannot think of the other to complete the couplet.”
To this Insha asked Jurat to tell him the line so that he could help, but the blind poet remarked that the latter will instead make a couplet of his own (this is insulting indeed). But, Insha requested again and then Jurat told him the line:
us zulf pe phabtii shab-e-diijuur kii suujhii
This could perhaps translate to, “on that hair the decoration of the dark night was made apparent.” So, Insha – to help his friend – provided with a second line immediately:
andhe ko andhere meiN baDii duur kii suujhii
In response to this, blind Jurat picked up his stick and tried to catch Insha and for enough time the poor bloke kept trying.

Our focus is the second line, which Insha immediately composed. He had already said that he would help with the second line and after that he was even teased/accused/insulted by his friend – this is the situation in which the poet of this line stands. And the second line that he composed immediately is the essence of the situation that remains relevant and satisfies both the first line as well as Insha’s desire to tease Jurat back. So basically, when Insha composed this couplet he worked as two different speakers: one for the first line and second for his own personal agenda. These things that I specified in useless detail about this couplet subconsciously enable us to take instant pleasure as we hear the entire anecdote; this can be supported with a little experiment, that is, recite this whole couplet to one person without telling the anecdote and then to another after telling the anecdote and you will see that the latter will have a greater pleasure. This is perhaps because the speaker of the couplet has a duality that is only activated with this situation that he was in.

Before reaching near conclusion, I can say that a ghazal poet takes forms of various characters sher after sher: he becomes a drunkard, madman, lover, saint, bird, ghost, omnipresent narrator, etc. in a mere sequence of breaths. This makes me perceive the ghazal world as a never-ending, all-mood, stage-less play (this raam-kahaani) where the characters are only in control of their dialogues and the writer of the plot is fate. So, here are a few couplets at last that strengthen this idea of mine:

Mir says:

gham-e-zamaana se FaariG hai maaya-baaKHtagaaN
qimaar-KHaana-e-aaFaaq meiN hai haar hii jeet

Translation:

Those that played and lost their wealth are free from grief of the world
In the gamble-club of horizons, to lose is to win

This gives the view of a down-trodden tragedy hero who opens to his audience (the world) this depressing revelation.

Ghalib says:

muNh na khulne par ye aalam hai ki dekhaa hii nahii
zulf se badh kar naqaab us shoKH ke muNh par khulaa

This is a couplet telling an entire story just as well. I will attempt to explain it next time.

waaN khud-aaraai ko tha motii pirone ka KHayaal
yaaN hujuum-e-ashq meiN taar-e-nigah naa-yaab tha
yaaN sar-e-pur-shor be-KHwaabi se tha deewaar-juu
waaN wo farq-e-naaz mahv-e-baalish-e-kam-KHwaab tha
waaN hujuum-e-naGma-haa-e-saaz-e-ishrat tha ‘Asad’
naaKHun-e-Gam yaaN sar-e-taar-e-nafas mizraab tha – Ghalib

Translation:

There, Self-Adornment had the thought of stringing pearls
In the rush of tears the string of gaze was un-findable here
Here, the noisy head was seeking a wall out of sleeplessness
That summit of coquetry was absorbed in pillows of silk there
There was the rush of songs of instrument of joy ‘Asad’
The nail of grief, on the string of breath was a plectrum here

This seems like a complete song where an overly-emotional lover laments about his helplessness and loss of love.

Couplets like these show us how important mat sahl hameiN jaano is in Mir’s infamous, prophetic sher:

mat sahl hameiN jaano phirta hai Falak barsoN
tab khaak ke parde se insaan nikalte hai

Translation:

Do not consider us simple.. the sky revolves for ages
Then from the veil of dust.. human beings emerge

The first four harmless words establish a dialogue between innumerable characters of which you are a part as well.

At last, Intizar Hussain said that Mir appears like a great novelist. I have only tried to prove it.

---