وقت نے کیا کیا حسین ستم Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam — What A Beautiful Cruelty Time Worked On Us

Kaifi Azmi

1919– 2002

Geet

A man walks out of a building into the rain and remembers the woman he built his life on, who is not there anymore. The film is Kaagaz Ke Phool, and the man playing it is Guru Dutt, whose own story the film was not quite about and almost exactly was. He had made Pyaasa two years earlier and the industry had repaid him by closing around him. This song runs on that.

Kaifi Azmi wrote the words, S.D. Burman set them, and Geeta Dutt sang them in 1959, the year the film went down and took Guru Dutt's directing career with it. Three passages ahead, and all of them say one quiet thing: both of them changed, and the change happened in plain sight.

01 — waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam

وقت نے کیا کیا حسین ستم
تم رہے نہ تم ہم رہے نہ ہم

वक़्त ने किया क्या हसीन सितम
तुम रहे ना तुम हम रहे ना हम

waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam
tum rahe na tum ham rahe na ham

What a beautiful cruelty time worked on us. You did not stay you, and I did not stay me.

The whole song is in these two lines. Haseen sitam, beautiful cruelty, is normally a decorative oxymoron, and here it is the plot: the change was slow, and everyone could see it, and nobody could stop it. The second line is a subtraction. Each person is missing from their own sentence by the end of it.

حسین haseen: beautiful
ستم sitam: cruelty, oppression; the thing done to you

02 — be-qaraar dil is tarah mile

بے قرار دل اس طرح ملے
جس طرح کبھی ہم جدا نہ تھے
تم بھی کھو گئے ہم بھی کھو گئے
ایک راہ پر چل کے دو قدم

बे-क़रार दिल इस तरह मिले
जिस तरह कभी हम जुदा न थे
तुम भी खो गए हम भी खो गए
एक राह पर चल के दो क़दम

be-qaraar dil is tarah mile
jis tarah kabhi ham juda na the
tum bhi kho gaye ham bhi kho gaye
ek raah par chal ke do qadam

Our impatient hearts met in such a way that it seemed we had never been apart. And then you got lost, and I got lost, two steps into the same road.

Four lines, and the disaster is tucked inside the happiness. Bekaraar is the technical word for a heart that cannot sit still, and the meeting is granted fully, without a reservation. Then the same sentence turns. Two people, one road, two steps, and both of them gone. The poem never says how. It does not know either.

بے قرار be-qaraar: restless; literally, without stillness
جدا juda: separate, apart

03 — jaenge kahan sujhata nahin

جائیں گے کہاں سوجھتا نہیں
چل پڑے مگر راستہ نہیں
کیا تلاش ہے کچھ پتہ نہیں
بن رہے دل خواب دم بدم

जाएँगे कहाँ सूझता नहीं
चल पड़े मगर रास्ता नहीं
क्या तलाश है कुछ पता नहीं
बुन रहे दिल ख़्वाब दम-ब-दम

jaenge kahan sujhata nahin
chal pade magar rasta nahin
kya talash hai kuchh pata nahin
bun rahe dil khwab dam-ba-dam

Where we will go, I cannot see. We have set out, but there is no road. What we are searching for, no one knows. The heart keeps weaving dreams, breath by breath.

Three questions in a row, and none of them answered, and then the heart quietly gets on with its work anyway. Dam-ba-dam means breath by breath, so the weaving is constant, not occasional. The poem's last word on the matter is that the heart does it anyway, which is both the sadness and the staying alive.

تلاش talash: a search
دم بدم dam-ba-dam: breath by breath; constantly

Reading it whole

This is a poem about watching the person you used to be get replaced by the person you became, and being unable to point at the moment it happened. Haseen sitam is the engine of it. Sitam is cruelty, the thing done to you. Haseen is beautiful. Put together they make an oxymoron that film songs had already worn thin by 1959, and here it is doing real work: the ending was lovely, and it was a crime, and the two of those were the same event.

The first passage states the case in two lines. You did not stay you, I did not stay me. Then the meeting: our impatient hearts met in such a way that it seemed we had never been apart. The poem grants the whole happiness in two lines. And in the next breath both of them are lost, two steps into the same road. Nobody else appears in this poem. No rival, no family, no misunderstanding. Just two people walking together and ceasing to be themselves.

The last passage is the one that earns the song its place in the film. Where to go, nobody knows. We have set out, but there is no road. What are we searching for, no idea. The heart is weaving dreams, dam-ba-dam, breath by breath. That is the most honest part of the song. The search is real and its object is unknown, and the dreams keep getting woven anyway. It is not despair. It is walking.

Guru Dutt filmed it on himself, and the film failed, and the song kept its own life. Geeta Dutt's recording is the one everyone means, and Saregama's reissue is the version most people have heard. It is still the first thing anyone reaches for when they talk about Kaagaz Ke Phool, and the credit that survived the film is Kaifi Azmi's.

Recordings

Geeta Dutt

From the 1959 film Kaagaz Ke Phool, composed by S.D. Burman. Saregama's reissue.

Text and rights

Devanagari text supplied and checked by a reader who knows the language. The Urdu script and the transliteration follow that reading.

From the 1959 film Kaagaz Ke Phool, composed by S.D. Burman. The song is sometimes credited to Sahir Ludhianvi, who wrote the rest of the film; the credit on the record is Kaifi Azmi's.

The refrain returns between passages in the recording, more often than it is printed here.

Kaifi Azmi died in 2002, so this song is still in copyright. It is quoted here as the subject of Harf's own criticism: the translation, the reading of each passage and the essay around them are original work written for this page. If you hold the rights and would like something changed, tell us on Instagram.