COLUMN MY HEART AND GHALIB - II.

'Constriction' is a multivalent word. It holds in its depths a slew of emotions. It is like a tight knot of feelings inside your heart/chest, or a squeezing in your arteries that signals a warning - a red flag that you must see, stop or suffer.

Did I believe that the heart and not the mind is the centre of emotions? Perhaps not. What makes the heart race, what makes it sink? Desire and dread.

Gar yas sar na kheenche tangee ajab fizaa hai

Vusat gah-i-tamanna yak baam-o sad havaa hai

[If despondency not arise, stricture has a wonderful ambience/ The vastness of desire is like a hundred breezes that blow across a single terrace]

Ghalib plays wonderfully on constriction, or tangee, in this masterful verse - a verse he chose not to publish. Note the deft employment of tangee, one of Ghalib's favourite words because of its multivalence. Here, too, it implies both scarcity and narrowness. Ajab fizaa [wonderful ambience] works with both meanings and adds a sense of mystery.

The second line complements the first perfectly. Desire is boundless even if the protagonist is confined or restrained in a narrow space or circumstance. The contrastive agreement between yak [one] and sad [hundred], and between tangee [narrowness] and vusat [spaciousness] makes the ajab fizaa.

Yak baam and sad havaa are joined with a vaao, but it is not a simple vaao-i-atf. It is, in fact, vaao-i-tasbeehee. That is, it creates two situations: yak baam is equivalent to a hundred breezes. And yak baam is the same as a hundred breezes.

A new idea is broached by the suggestion that disappointment can curb or sour the imaginings of desire. Yaas is a situation when one gives up hoping, certain of never achieving the desired objective. Tamanna, on the other hand, has possibilities of realisation. The word havaa becomes most interesting in the context of tamanna. If we read it to mean 'desire', then the narrator seems to tell us that myriad desires can be generated or made active by just observing from a terrace.

I got carried away by Ghalib's clever deployment of tangee. Here's another Ghalib verse on constriction:

Tangee-i-dil ka gila kya yeh voh kaafir dil hai

Keh agar tang na hota tau pareshan hota

[No use complaining of this sinner heart's constriction/ If it wasn't constricted, it would be restless]

There is a scintillating play on tangee and pareshani here. The heart is deemed to be restless. Thankfully, constriction limits its restlessness somewhat!

The nurse had asked me to...