The intensity of your whiteness absorbed the colour from the reflection of your black tresses; O cruel beloved, your dark complexion, has a delicate radiance

Josh-e-safa stands for intensity of whiteness; a’za for body parts; rach jana for being fully absorbed, as with permeation; siyah fami for darkness of complexion.

This is an exceptionally beautiful she’r. It is witty and skillfully constructed with a new mazmun and a unique ta’lil. (Ta’lil means to provide a ‘poetic’ and unlikely reason or justification for an otherwise unremarkable fact.) The mazmun of the dark-skinned beloved is not unknown in Urdu poetry, especially in the poetry of the 16th to the 18th centuries. It has been reformulated here with typical Ghalibian flair and love of abstraction.

Observe the following intricacies: the poet does not explicitly say that the beloved is dark-complexioned; instead he suggests that the josh or the excessive fervor of her whiteness caused it to absorb the dark colour of her lovely tresses. Josh men ana, or josh dena literally means “to bubble” as a heated liquid. But as a noun it also means excessiveness, multitude, and extravagant abundance. Josh contains the implicit image of “dyeing” which involves hot, bubbling colour.

Notice also that Ghalib speaks of aks. Here it means reflection. Thus there is the hint of illusion. She may not have actually become dark but it appeared to be so. Usually one associates jalvah or radiance with light. The radiance or glow of a dark complexion is alluded to in the second line. The radiance of siyah fami, says Ghalib, has a special aura of nazakat.

The writer teaches in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia. She is currently writing a commentary on the *mustarad kalam of Ghalib.*