There are presently three commentaries on the corpus of the verses that Ghalib did not include in his authorised divaan: Abdul Bari Asi’s Mukammal Sharh-e Kalam-e Ghalib (n.d.:1930?), Gyan Chand Jain’s Tafseer-e Ghalib (1971) and S. M. Zamin Kantoori’s Sharh-e Divaan-e Ghalib (2012). In this column I will present she’rs that are arguably amongst the best of Ghalib’s compositions but have not received the attention they deserve because they were not a part of his divaan. I will translate the she’r into English because my aim is to open up Ghalib’s poetry to a wider readership. Translation in itself is an interpretation. My analysis will summarise the noteworthy points of the commentators who have preceded me, followed by my own comments.

This matla’ is of ghazal number 112 from the Nuskha-e Hamidiyya, edited by Hamid Ahmad Khan (1969). It was composed before 1821:

Crazed with waiting I roam the arid wilderness of the mind In solitary anticipation; The gazelle’s eye is a white speck In the distance

Vahshat stands for craziness, solitude, loneliness, fear, terror, timidity, wildness, unwillingness to face the world; Intizar avarah for restless waiting, crazed by waiting; dasht for wilderness, desert; ghazal for gazelle, deer; and chashm-e ghazal for eyes of a gazelle.

The readings of the she’r are: Asi: My state of solitude (a’lam-e vahshat) and waiting has made me roam the valley of thoughts; and now my state is such that the eye of the gazelle that is wild (vahshi mijaz) appears like a white spot in the distance. In short, I am far from the gazelle and my state of vahshat is quite different from the gazelle. Jain: Waiting for the beautiful beloved has put me in a restless state. My mind’s eye is wandering. The deer’s eye is known to be wild and scared but I have run so far in the valley of imagination that the deer’s eye is just a white spot.

Kantoori: Like a disappointed lover I roam in the wilderness of imagination; just as a hunter runs after a gazelle upon seeing a glimpse of the white of its eye. This is an extraordinary she’r with layers of meaning and evocative imagery. Kantoori’s reading is appealing in that it paints a poignant picture of a disappointed lover. The gazelle is the beloved.

I prefer to go further with the dasht-e khiyal motif. The gazelle runs fast but the speaker of the poem has outdistanced the gazelle in the valley of imagination [dasht-e khiyal], so much so that only the whites of the eyes can be made out. The poetic conceit is that the gazelle runs away because it is vahshi, or wild, scared, shy, unsociable, untamed etcetera. The whites of the eyes become prominent when one rolls the eyes, a sign of distress or vahshat, madness if you will. Thus the gazelle and the speaker are both terrified, bewildered vahshat zadah creatures. The speaker is running in the world of ideas. Ghalib, the master poet, has juxtaposed the two images, of thoughts running wild and the gazelle running wild.

The speaker’s world is so utterly lonely that only the whiteness of the gazelle’s eye can be seen glimmering in the distance.

Safedi marna also means to see a spark at a distance. It can be compared to the spark of a new idea. Intizar avarah is a powerful new expression.The exact meaning of vahshat’s polysemy is difficult to capture in English. Its poetic potential is mined fully by Ghalib and ghazal poetry in general. While I appreciate Asi’s observation that solitude has made the mind wander, it is difficult to follow the rest of his explanation. Jain’s reading is closer to the actual text. In my view, the she’r is a perfect image of loneliness and the tension of waiting.

The writer is assistant professor of Urdu and South Asian literature at the University of Virginia