کالی کالی زلفوں کے پھندے نہ ڈالو Kaali Kaali Zulfon Ke Phande Na Daalo — Don't Lay Those Snares Of Black Hair

Don't lay those black snares of your hair for us. Let us live, you beautiful people.

The burden of the qawwali, and the line every group in the room will be singing back by the second hour. Phanda is the snare a trapper sets, so the hair is not being described, it is being accused. And the address is plural. He is not talking to one person. He is talking to the entire category of the good-looking, the way you would complain about the weather.

زلف zulf

a lock of hair; in this poetry, the whole apparatus of attraction

پھندا phanda

a snare, a noose; the loop a hunter leaves for an animal

حسن والے husn vaale

the beautiful ones, people who have beauty

People make mistakes when they lose their temper like this. Close the distance instead. Don't let it turn into an argument.

Not a grand opening. A domestic one. Two people are mid-quarrel and one of them is trying to talk the other down, and baat badhana is exactly what English means by letting a thing escalate. Starting a qawwali here, at the level of an ordinary row, is what makes the flights later on land.

طیش taish

a flare of temper, hot anger

فاصلہ faasla

distance, the gap between people

Those looks, those signals, those little turns of manner. God help us. Stop pouring wine like that in the middle of the street.

Ada has no clean English word. It is the particular way a person does a thing, the manner that cannot be copied. Here the glances and the gestures are reclassified as liquor, and lutana means to squander, to scatter, to throw money at a crowd. He does not object to the beauty. He objects to how freely it gets handed out in the street.

ادا ada

manner, the particular grace with which someone does something

توبہ tauba

repentance; used aloud the way English uses 'God help us'

سرِ عام sar-e-aam

in the open, in front of everybody

لٹانا lutana

to squander, to scatter freely

Evening gets lovelier the deeper it goes. So leave the shadow of your hair where it is, across your face.

The one couplet that asks for the opposite of everything around it. Everywhere else he wants the hair tied back and out of the way. Here he wants it left exactly as it fell, because the face half in shadow is the better hour. The argument is made through weather rather than about the beloved at all.

سایۂ زلف saya-e-zulf

the shadow cast by hair

حسیں haseen

beautiful

Leave us alone. We have been tormented enough already. We are carrying more wounds on this chest than you know about.

Zakhm khana is to eat a wound, which is the language of taking a blow rather than receiving one. And the wounds are on the chest, meaning he stood facing whatever did it. Nothing here was accidental.

چھیڑنا chhedna

to tease, to provoke, to keep poking at

ستانا satana

to torment, to give someone a hard time

You are a tormentor. We can see that perfectly well. We know exactly what those manners of yours are for.

Sitam-gar is a maker of cruelty, a word built like a trade name, the way zar-gar is a goldsmith. It turns the beloved into a professional. The couplet is the moment the tone hardens, and everything after it is said by somebody who has worked out how the trick is done and is still standing in the queue.

ستم گر sitam-gar

one who deals in cruelty; built like the name of a trade

پہچاننا pahchanna

to recognise, to see through

You play a crooked game. You bring cruelty down on people. You tangle them up in the con that love is.

Dagha-baaz is a cheat, someone who plays at treachery the way a gambler plays at cards. Uljhana is to tangle, and it is the same verb a fisherman would use about a net. The complaint has moved from the hair to the character.

دغا باز dagha-baaz

a cheat, a double-dealer

فریب fareb

deception, a con

الجھانا uljhana

to tangle up, to entangle

Congratulations on your colourful story. Keep it. Congratulations on your youth as well. That is yours too.

Mubarak is what you say at a wedding. Said twice, in this position, it becomes the politest way in the language to walk out of a room. There is no curse in it. It wishes them well, at a distance it has just finished measuring.

رنگیں rangeen

colourful; also racy, full of pleasure

مبارک mubarak

blessed; the ordinary word for congratulations

What is there to say about getting caught in the chain of that hair? My heart is out of its mind. And what can you say to a madman?

Chains are what you put on the mad, and this poetry knows it. The hair is a chain, the heart is a lunatic, and the second line asks the question every family of a lover has asked. Reasoning with him is not on the table.

زنجیر zanjeer

chain, fetter

دیوانہ deewana

mad, possessed; the standard word for a lover

Keep hold of that pink shawl of yours. And stop laughing at us with those drunk eyes.

Sharabi is a drinker, a drunkard, so calling the eyes drunk makes them the ones who have been at the wine rather than the ones causing it. The pink of the aanchal is the only colour in a poem otherwise made of black hair and shadow.

آنچل aanchal

the loose end of a dupatta or sari, drawn across the shoulder

شرابی sharabi

drunk; a drinker

They lift their eyes and lightning comes down. Whichever manner they happen to have, it turns out to be the end of the world.

Qayamat is the Day of Judgement, and Urdu uses it the way English uses devastating, so casually that the original force has worn off. Setting it against bijli in the line above brings the weather back into it. The lightning falls, the sky splits, and the cause is somebody looking up.

بجلی bijli

lightning

قیامت qayamat

the Day of Judgement; loosely, a catastrophe

The instant you moved that veil off your face, you turned everyone with a heart in them into a public spectacle.

Tamasha is a show, a scene, the thing a crowd gathers around. So the humiliation is not private. Ahl-e-dil, the people of the heart, is a compliment in Sufi usage, meaning those capable of feeling. Here it is precisely the ones who can feel who end up making fools of themselves.

اہلِ دل ahl-e-dil

people of the heart; those who feel things

تماشا tamasha

a spectacle, a scene people gather to watch

Get that scattered hair of yours under control, or else. We have a habit of kissing anything that insolent.

Pareshan now means worried, and its older sense is scattered or dishevelled, so a poem about loose hair keeps sounding anxious. The joke of the threat runs on a tiny charge: the hair is accused of insolence, made responsible for its own behaviour, so that kissing it becomes a disciplinary measure.

پریشاں pareshan

scattered, dishevelled; in modern use, worried

گستاخ gustakh

insolent, impertinent, forward

The beloved's own foot has got tangled in that long hair. There you are: the hunter has walked straight into his own net.

The hunting words that have been circling all night finally arrive together. Daam is a net or trap, sayyaad is the hunter, and this is the only couplet where the person setting the snares gets caught in one. The tone is not triumph. It is the flat satisfaction of somebody who has been saying this would happen.

زلفِ دراز zulf-e-daraz

long hair

دام daam

a net or snare, the kind spread for birds

صیاد sayyaad

the hunter, the fowler

We know what you actually are. What you practise behind the curtain of love is hate. Go and toss those manners around somewhere else.

And the veil is doing double duty. Parda is the cloth and it is also the pretence, so love is the screen the other thing is worked behind. Uchhalna is to toss something up, the way a juggler does, or the way a word gets thrown around until it means nothing.

حقیقت haqeeqat

reality, the truth of what something is

پردہ parda

a curtain or veil; also a pretence, a cover

اچھالنا uchhalna

to toss up, to fling about

This smiling of yours may yet finish us off. Manners fit for an unbeliever, a way of walking through the world fit for a tyrant.

The signature couplet, and the poet's name is the pun the whole piece has been building toward. Fana means annihilation, and in Sufi usage it is the self dissolving into God, which is the thing a seeker wants most. So the smile that finishes him is also the smile that completes him, and the poem gets to be devotional and flirtatious in the same word without ever committing to either.

فنا fana

annihilation; in Sufi usage, the dissolving of the self into God

کافرانہ kafirana

in the manner of an unbeliever

ظالمانہ zalimana

in the manner of a tyrant, cruelly