وہ لمحے Woh Lamhe — Those Moments

Those moments, those conversations: nobody knows what kind of nights they were, what rains. Those soaked, soaked memories. Those soaked, soaked memories.

The passage is the memory's frame, and the frame is all the song will hold. Lamhe and baatein, moments and conversations, are pointed at and never described, and the only description offered is the weather, raatein, barsaatein, nights, rains. The refrain, bheegi bheegi yaadein, soaked soaked memories, is the passage's whole content: the memory is wet, and the doubling makes the wetness a state of being, not an accident.

لمحہ lamhe

moments

برسات barsaatein

the rains, the monsoon

Neither I know, nor you know: what season is this? Nobody knows. From somewhere this air came, and it brought the sun of the griefs with it. We became angry, we became parted.

The passage is the song's mystery and its one disclosure. The season is unnamed by both parties, mausam, and the air that brought it is given the song's one image: ghumon ki dhoop, the sunshine made of griefs. The last line is where the pointing stops, khafa ho gaye hum, juda ho gaye hum, we became angry, we became parted, and the two verbs are the entire story. The anger and the parting are stated without cause, which is the memory's way of protecting what caused them.

فضا fiza

the air, the weather of a place

خفا khafa

displeased, out of sorts with somebody

جدا juda

parted, set apart

Those moments, those conversations: nobody knows what kind of nights they were, what rains. Those soaked, soaked memories. Those soaked, soaked memories.

The closing passage returns the song to its frame, verbatim, and the return is the song's final statement. The one disclosure of the middle passage, the parting, has been made, and the song's answer to it is the pointing again: those moments, those conversations, nobody knows. The memory ends where it began, wet and unexplained, and the repetition is the form of a grief that cannot be told twice and cannot be told once.