کجرا رے Kajra Re — The Kohl, Oh the Kohl

He looked at me like that, that cruel one, at the crossroads. I laid my heart on the point of a knife. My peace and my everything are ruined. Take your look away, you cruel one. Your own city's people are being destroyed.

The song opens in the middle of the damage and reports it like news. Chauk, the crossroads, is where the glance happened, and the heart is placed on the point of a knife, chaku ki nok pe, which is where glances put hearts in this tradition. Chain bain is the doubled word for peace, comfort in both its forms, and ujda, uprooted, is the word for a village emptied. The last line turns the complaint outward: the whole city is being ruined by those eyes, and the joke is that the ruin is exactly what the song enjoys.

ظالم zaalim

cruel one, tyrant; said half fondly of the beloved

چوک chauk

a crossroads, the open square of a market

کلیجہ kaleja

the liver; what English would call the heart

Come, so that my stretch is not broken. Kohl, oh kohl: your dark dark eyes.

The refrain gives the song its true address. It is sung to the kajra itself, to the kohl, not to the man wearing it. Angdai is the stretch of the body on waking, the one comfortable moment of the day, and the song asks that it not be broken. The eyes are kaare kaare, dark dark, in the doubled adjective of the folk song, and the refrain is the reason the complaint exists: the kohl is worth being ruined by.

انگڑائی angdai

the long stretch of a body waking up

کجرا kajra

kohl, the black line drawn along the eye

Your promises, written in surma, arrive in the language of the eyes. Your lips leave their mark, tied like a keepsake, on my handkerchiefs. Your words carry the scent of qimaam. Even your coming is the heatwave of summer.

The passage moves from the eyes to the rest of the beloved. Surma, the powdered kohl, becomes the ink of promises, and the promises arrive through the eyes, which is how the best promises arrive. Rumal, the handkerchief, is the keepsake of the love tradition, and the beloved's lips tie themselves onto it as a memento. The scent of qimaam, the sweet perfume of spiced betel, is the scent of the bazaar itself, and loo, the summer heatwave, is the song's way of saying that even his arrival burns.

سرمہ surma

kohl ground from antimony

رومال rumaal

a handkerchief

قوام qimaam

a scented tobacco paste eaten in paan

لو loo

the hot dry wind of high summer

The eyes perform wonders: they ask your soul personal questions. They do not even lift the lashes, they keep the curtain in mind. My grief hides from no one. Pain only counts as pain when it no longer stings.

The verse gives the eyes their character. They interrogate, and the interrogation is personal, in the English word the song uses because it means what it says. The lashes that never lift are a courtesy and a weapon at once: they keep the parda, the curtain, and the parda is also the boundary that lets the eyes ask anything. The last couplet is Gulzar at his most compact. Grief that announces itself is bearable. The real pain is the one that no longer pricks, because it has settled in.

پردہ parda

a curtain; the seclusion women are kept in

چبھنا chubhna

to prick, to sting

Your eyes, your eyes, your eyes sting us. Kohl, oh kohl, my dark dark eyes. The meeting with you was in old Delhi, and I left the keepsake in Delhi. Remembering the one in the black blanket, they swear oaths on your dark dark eyes, and they give blessings to your dark dark eyes. My life is sad, my lips are thirsty. Come, come, come.

The passage moves the whole affair to old Delhi and gives it the city's weight. Kali kamli waale, the one in the black blanket, is the Sufi saint of Delhi, Hazrat Nizamuddin, and the song swears on the beloved's eyes the way one swears on the saint. The eyes have moved from the bazaar to the shrine. The last couplet drops the playfulness entirely: jaan udaas, lips thirsty, and the threefold aaja re, the same call the wandering lover of the qawwali keeps making. The song ends on a request, not a complaint.

ڈسنا dasna

to sting or bite, the way a snake does

نشانی nishaani

a keepsake, a token left behind

کالی کملی والے kali kamli waale

the one in the black blanket: the Prophet