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.
