کسی کی مسکراہٹوں پہ ہو نثار Kisi Ki Muskurahaton Pe Ho Nisaar — Spend Yourself on Someone's Smiles

Be spent on somebody's smiles. If somebody's pain can be found, take it on loan. Let there be love in your heart for somebody's sake. This is what living is called.

The refrain is the song's thesis, and it is stated in three acts of giving. Nisaar, to be spent, is the word of total sacrifice, the lover's currency. Udhaar, the loan, is the word of the marketplace, and the pain taken on loan is the song's strangest gift: the willingness to carry another's suffering as a debt. The last line, jeena isi ka naam hai, is the definition, and the definition is the title, which means the whole song is the explanation of its own refrain.

نثار nisaar

scattered as an offering; spent completely on somebody

ادھار udhaar

a loan, something taken on credit

Granted, we are beggars from our pockets. Still, friends, we are the rich of the heart.

The passage is the song's confession and its answer in two lines. Faqir, the beggar, is the word of the pocket, and ameer, the rich man, is the word of the heart, and the rhyme makes the two states one man. The passage is the whole ethic of the song in miniature: the wealth that matters is measured in what is given, and the beggar who gives is the richest man in the room.

فقیر faqir

a beggar, one with nothing

امیر ameer

rich, well off

The life that is spent for love, the life that burns for the spring: those are the lives. Whether anyone else believes or not, we at least hold the faith. This is what living is called.

The passage defines living by its two great expenditures, mitna and jalna, to be erased and to burn, and both verbs are given their object, pyaar and bahaar, love and spring. The passage's turn is in the fourth line, kisi ko ho na ho hamein toh aitbaar: the belief is held regardless of the world's confirmation. Aitbaar, the trust, is the passage's word for what the whole song runs on, and it is the one thing the song refuses to loan out.

مٹنا mitna

to be rubbed out, to be spent to nothing

اعتبار aitbaar

trust; taking somebody at their word

The bond between heart and heart is the bond of trust, and the name of love is alive through us. Even in death, we will be remembered by someone. We will smile in someone's tears. And the flower will say to every bud, again and again: this is what living is called.

The passage is the song's largest definition, and it reaches past the grave. The claim is the tradition's boldest, that the name of love is kept alive by its believers, and the death that follows is softened into a presence: remembered by someone, smiling in someone's tears. The last image returns the whole song to the garden, the flower teaching the bud, bar baar, again and again, the one sentence the song has been teaching all along. The teacher and the pupil are both flowers, which is the song's way of saying the lesson is natural.

رشتہ rishta

a bond, a relation between people