یہ جو ہلکا ہلکا سرور ہے Ye Jo Halka Halka Suroor Hai — This Faint Intoxication

This faint warmth going through me is your eyes' fault. Your love and your wanting taught me to drink. That unsteady look of yours turned me into a drunk.

The case is laid out and closed in six short lines, and the key word is qusoor, which is fault in the legal sense, a charge rather than a complaint. Bahki bahki is the giveaway. Bahakna is to stray, to slip off the path, to say something you should not have. So the eyes were already drunk before he was, and the whole poem is really about catching it from them.

سرور suroor

the pleasant early lift of drink, before intoxication proper

قصور qusoor

fault, offence; what you would be charged with

بہکی بہکی bahki bahki

straying, unsteady, wandering off the straight line

What wine? What hangover? All of this is your generosity. What kind of look did you pour it with, that I have lost track of my own self?

Navazish is a courtly word for a favour granted from above, the sort a patron does a poet. Using it here makes the beloved a benefactor and the ruin a gift. Khabar means news, so losing khabar of yourself is losing the bulletin about your own whereabouts.

خمار khumar

the heaviness after drink; a hangover, or the languor of it

نوازش navazish

a kindness or favour, granted the way a patron grants one

خبر khabar

news, information; awareness of something

The whole world is drunk, and so is the order that runs it. The vat is drunk, the flask, the pitcher, the cup. Day drunk, night drunk, dawn drunk, evening drunk.

Eleven uses of one word in three lines. The first line takes the biggest thing available, the world and its government. The second shrinks to the four vessels wine passes through on its way to a mouth. The third opens back out to the whole clock. Nothing is being argued. The word is simply applied to everything in reach until the room agrees.

مست mast

intoxicated, and also carefree, rapt, beyond caring

نظام nizam

the order or system that governs a thing

خم khum

the large vat wine is kept in

سبو subu

a pitcher or jug

Saqi, your tavern stocks every kind there is. Including a small measure of the one held in the cup of those eyes.

A drinks order, delivered with a completely straight face. He surveys the shelves, grants that the selection is excellent, and asks for the one thing not on them. Paimana is a measure as much as a cup, which is why an eye can be one.

میخانہ maikhana

the wine house, the tavern

پیمانہ paimana

a measure; the cup that holds one

I see exactly what you are doing, saqi. The eyes do the work. The cup takes the credit.

The line the whole piece is built to reach, and it fits into eight words of Urdu. Ishva-gari is coquetry practised as a craft, with the -gari ending that makes it a trade. Kaam karti hai nazar, naam hai paimane ka. Work and name set against each other, one syllable apart, and the accusation is not seduction but taking a false byline.

عشوہ گری ishva-gari

coquetry practised as a skill; flirtation as a trade

نظر nazar

the gaze, a look

Your love is my life. I don't know how to pray and I don't know how to make the ablutions. But when you appear in front of me, I find I have gone into prostration. Whatever pleases you pleases me.

Two admissions and a confession, and the confession is the dangerous one. He has no ritual training at all, and the body performs the deepest act of Muslim worship on its own when the beloved walks in. Sajda is not a metaphor here. It is forehead on the ground, the posture owed to God alone.

نماز namaz

the five daily prayers

وضو vuzu

the washing performed before prayer

سجدہ sajda

prostration; forehead to the ground in prayer

This is what my madness can do. Anywhere I have put my head down, I have built a Kaaba on the spot.

The boldest thing in the piece, and it is stated as an engineering fact. Mojiza is a miracle of the kind prophets perform, not a wonder in general. So the claim is that obsession has prophetic power, and that direction in prayer follows the lover rather than the map. Every mosque in the world faces one building. He says the building follows him.

جنوں junoon

madness, possession; in this poetry, love taken past reason

معجزہ mojiza

a miracle of the sort a prophet performs

کعبہ kaaba

the house at Mecca every prayer is turned toward

First I set the dagger down in front of them. Then the liver. Then the heart. Then the head.

The order is the whole couplet. Weapon first, so the choice is theirs, and then the inventory, laid out one item at a time with the same verb four times over. Kaleja, the liver, is where Urdu puts endurance rather than feeling, so he offers what can bear pain before he offers what can feel it.

خنجر khanjar

a dagger

کلیجہ kaleja

the liver; in Urdu the seat of endurance and courage

Who will you torment once I'm gone? How much more of me is there left to erase? Where are you going to go to fire your arrows?

Three questions asked on the beloved's behalf, which is a stranger kind of tenderness than anything in the love poetry around it. He has stopped worrying about himself and started worrying about their diary. The arrows are the standard eyelashes and glances of the ghazal, and here they are equipment that will need a new range.

مٹانا mitana

to erase, to wipe out

Take the misfortunes of my friendship on yourself. Raise your hands and bless me. After all, it made a murderer of you.

Balaayen lena is a real gesture, not an image: you pass your hands over someone's head and take their troubles onto your own, and mothers do it to children. Asking the beloved to perform it, with hands raised as though at prayer, and then offering thanks for the career he has handed them, closes the piece exactly where it opened. All of it is their doing, and he is grateful.

بلائیں لینا balaayen lena

to pass your hands over someone and take their misfortunes on yourself

دعا dua

a prayer, a blessing asked for someone

قاتل qatil

a killer; in this poetry, the beloved's job title