چھاپ تلک سب چھینی رے موسے نیناں ملائی کے Chhap Tilak Sab Chheeni Re Mose Naina Milaike — You Took My Mark And My Name, Just By Meeting My Eyes

I made myself up carefully and went to my beloved. Then I saw his face — and forgot my own.

This is the doha, sung before the song proper starts, to say what the song is about. Chhavi means image or likeness, the face you put together to be seen. The word comes twice: the face she built, and the face she found. The second one erases the first. Everything the rest of the song describes has already happened here, in two lines.

چھوی chhavi

image, likeness, the look of a face

پی pi

beloved, husband — a Braj word, everyday rather than literary

You took my stamp and my tilak, all of it, just by meeting my eyes. And with one word you laid me low, just by meeting my eyes.

A chhap is a stamp or seal, and a tilak is the mark on the forehead. Between them they were the signs on your body that told a stranger which community you came from. Losing them is not losing jewellery, it is losing your answer to who you are. And the whole robbery is done with eye contact. No hand, not a word from him.

چھاپ chhap

a stamp or seal; a mark showing what you belong to

تلک tilak

the mark worn on the forehead

نیناں nainan

eyes — Braj, where Urdu would say aankhen

ادھم adham

lowly, brought down low

I would give myself up for you, my dyer. You dyed me in a colour like your own, just by meeting my eyes.

A rangrez is a cloth-dyer. Dyeing is the old, standard image for what a master does to a disciple: the cloth does not choose the colour, and once it is dyed it cannot go back to what it was. Apni si is where the weight sits. She has not been dyed some new shade. She has been dyed his.

بل بل جانا bal-bal jana

to give yourself up for someone; complete devotion, said as a blessing

رنگ ریز rang-rez

a dyer of cloth

رنگ rang

colour — and the whole state a thing puts you in

You made me drink the wine from love's own still, and left me drunk — just by meeting my eyes.

A bhati is the furnace a village distiller works over. So love here is not a feeling, it is a working still with a fire under it. Wine in this kind of poetry usually turns up dressed in Persian: taverns, goblets, a cup-bearer. Khusrau puts it in local words instead. A furnace, and somebody handing you a drink.

پریم prem

love — the Braj word, not the Persian ishq

بھٹی bhati

the furnace liquor is distilled over

مدوا madva

wine, liquor

متواری matvari

drunk, reeling — said of a woman

Fair arms, green bangles. He caught my arm and kept hold of it — just by meeting my eyes.

The only line in the song with a picture in it, and the picture is ordinary. Pale arms, green glass bangles, a young woman dressed up. Green bangles are what a married woman wears, so the detail is already pointing at the last verse. Then somebody takes hold of the arm they are on.

بیّاں baiyan

arms — Braj

چوڑیاں choodiyan

bangles

پکڑ دھرنا pakad dharna

to catch hold of something and keep holding it

Khusrau would give himself up for Nizam. He made me a bride with a living husband — just by meeting my eyes.

Both names in one line, which is how Khusrau signs off. Suhagan is an exact word: a woman whose husband is alive. The opposite of a widow, and about the luckiest thing you can call someone. He uses it for what his teacher did to him, and he never steps out of the woman's voice to say it. Not even while writing his own name.

سہاگن suhagan

a married woman whose husband is living

کینھیں kinhin

made, did — Braj, where Urdu would say kiya