بات نکلے گی تو پھر دور تلک جائے گی Baat Niklegi To Phir Door Talak Jayegi — Once Word Gets Out, It Will Travel

Once word gets out, it will travel a long way. People will ask, for no good reason, what the cause of the sadness is.

Baat is the smallest possible word for it: a matter, a thing said, a something. He never gives it a name here or anywhere else in the poem. And be-vajh, without reason, is aimed at the askers rather than the sadness. They have no business asking. That will not stop them.

بات baat

a matter; a thing said; the smallest word for it

بے وجہ be-vajh

without reason, with no cause to

سبب sabab

the cause of something

They will ask you this as well: why are you so distressed, and why do you keep away from anything that sparkles?

The second question is the more invasive one, because it is about parties. Gurezan is the word for somebody actively avoiding a thing, so what has been noticed is not her mood but her diary. She has stopped turning up, and people have counted.

پریشاں pareshan

distressed; in its older sense, scattered

گریزاں gurezan

shying away from, keeping clear of

Fingers will lift towards your dried-out hair. And eyes will take one quick look back over the years that have gone.

Ungli uthna, for a finger to be raised, is the standard phrase for a public accusation, so the pointing is not idle. Then the second line does the arithmetic everybody in the room is doing silently: they look at the hair, then at how long it has been, and draw the line between the two themselves.

انگلی اٹھنا ungli uthna

for a finger to be raised; to be publicly accused

There will be several pointed remarks about your bangles. And jokes made about your shaking hands.

Bangles carry a whole set of meanings in this culture, about marriage and about being cared for, so a remark about them is never only about jewellery. Fiqra kasna is to make a jibe at somebody, and the verb kasna, to tighten, is what you do to a screw. Both lines are in the passive. Nobody is named as the speaker, which is exactly how this sort of talk works.

طنز tanz

sarcasm, a pointed remark

فقرہ کسنا fiqra kasna

to make a jibe at somebody

Then they will say she takes offence even in the middle of laughing. And that these days Ruhi is missing her prayers as well.

The first line is the sharpest piece of watching in the poem. Somebody has observed her laughing and worked out that she is not enjoying it. Then a name arrives, the only one anywhere in the poem, and with it the last thing left to comment on. Qaza is a prayer missed and still owed, so it is a debt as much as a lapse. When the gossip has got as far as her prayers, there is nothing further in.

خفا khafa

displeased, offended

قضا qaza

a prayer missed at its time and still owed

People are cruel. They will find a reproach in every single thing. And somewhere in the middle of the chatter they will bring my name into it too.

Baaton baaton mein means in the course of ordinary conversation, casually, as though it had just come up. That is the danger being described. Not an interrogation, which anybody could brace for, but his name arriving in the middle of small talk, with no warning and nowhere to look.

طعنہ taana

a reproach, a barbed remark

ذکر zikr

mention of somebody

Do not let a single thing they say get through to you. Or they will read the whole of it off your face.

This is where the poem stops predicting and starts giving orders, and the order is impossible. Asar and taassur come from the same root, which puts the feeling and the look on the face one syllable apart. He is asking her not to feel it, because he knows she cannot stop it showing.

اثر asar

effect; the mark a thing leaves on you

تاثر taassur

the impression on a face, an expression

Whatever happens, do not ask them anything. Do not say one word about me to them.

The last instruction and the most expensive one. She is being asked to give up the only two things that would have helped: finding out, and saying his name aloud to somebody. Both lines end on the same two words, un se, to them, so the whole prohibition turns on who is in the room rather than on what is true.

سوالات savalaat

questions, the plural of sawal

Once word gets out, it will travel a long way.

The first line again, alone this time, with nothing following it. Coming after eight passages of exactly how far and in whose mouths, it is no longer a warning. It is a description of something already under way, and the poem stops rather than finishes, which is the only honest ending available to it.