Ghalib knew exactly
The follies of man
Yeah! No less his own
This sick habit to stumble
Over path’s every other touchstone
in the hard cobbled street of life
Human incorrigibility besides
Beyond the obvious, so the dash,
He dug into depths of
Human fallacy’s inveterate flight
Ever ending in the inevitable crash.

His was indeed high art
His sheer strength of gist
His masterly hold
Over slippery word
Its elusive nuances’ flying mane
Oh! His unfailing insight
The finest fragrances
He could catch, butterflies like
Into nets of his fluid verse
Far into philosophies
He could delve, thanks
To his Vedic-ed native earth
Probe could he fine too
A river’s meandering run
The stars’ scintillating stride
The winds’ airy hurry
Fathoms of mind’s exalted depths
But ah! His earthly milieu
His meager men, faulting women
The inadequacies of his life
And those of his time
Save for the one indeed
In need the friend Brahmin!

Ghalib searched into human wile
Diving deep into its murky waters
Even so he hauled pearls
Radiating human bliss and guile
That shine as well today, cured
Over century of elements and weathers!

Pain of unrequited love
The woe of work’s lack
The relentlessness of change
The seasons’ ceaseless cycle
Those thousand chagrins concealed
Upon tongue of silenced reticence
The faculty of studied equanimity
Flowing into subtle indifference
Yet ever so impassive
Then, like leaping flames
Recourse to occasional jibe
At powers that be, litanies
Addressed to faltering fate
Life’s ironies!
And Ghalib’s equal repartees!

His muse’s dreams
More real than real life
His premonitions, his prophesies
His wholesome aphorism, Nietzsche like
Keyed in such gorgeous Ghazal
Turned sheer golden in genre Sehgal.

What has withered with time?
Not one word, not one line
Of his super insight’s clairvoyance.

It holds like a natural law
As good today as it once was.

But is it Ghalib greatness
Or is it our own delinquency’s let?

Haven’t we advanced?
Was time’s step then frozen?
Or is it after all man’s ill-fate
Falling to recurring gall?
Ever lost in life’s labyrinths
Those of Maya
Yet again and again
Caught in his follies’ cobwebs
His tormented soul’s grain.

That the odd one would
Crazed, hail even today

O heart!
Move on to a place
None inhabits
To a home wall-less
Yet of doors shorn
Where by illness
Is none to nurse
And by death
None to mourn!

Ghalib lives in the very veins
Of this continuing suffering’s pains.