Mirza Ghalib - revisited: Na tha kuch to khuda tha…Na hota kuch to khuda hota

न था कुछ तो ख़ुदा था, कुछ न होता तो ख़ुदा होता,
डुबोया मुझको होने ने न मैं होता तो क्या होता !

Mirza has written these lines pretty much carefully summarizing almost all the teachings of his life in these two lines. What a beautiful line to begin with! - When there was nothing there was God. We start our lives in this fashion only, empty handed. But, God is present even at that moment and so does my faith in him. And even though there would have been nothing, my faith in you would not have shaken. Your ominous presence would have always been with me. But, oh God! my aspirations, my ambitions, my wishes were the reasons why I distanced from you. "Duboya mujh ko hone ne" - In pursuit of my ambition of becoming something, I forgot you and became ally to so much worldly sins. I regret for being unfaithful to you. But then, I wonder that if I wouldn't have tried what would I have been? Does it hardly matter whether I achieve my goals or not till the time I had your companionship, my faith in you? My existence was because of you and these silly goals don't mean anything in front of your belongingness. This is classic dilemma faced by all of us in this world. We try to find the balance between white and dark, virtues and vices and then at one point of time we try to introspect what have we gained out of this pursuit.


हुआ जब गम से यूँ बेहिश तो गम क्या सर के कटने का,
ना होता गर जुदा तन से तो जहानु पर धरा होता!

This second sher sounds slightly offtrack with earlier one but, thinking deeply one can understand that it is in continuation with the same pain that we observed in earlier sher. Now that I have become so friendly with pain and misery, why should I worry about sacrificing myself in your service. In any case, even though I won't be beheaded now, my life is already in your service since eternity. So, how does it matter now whether death comes to me nor not. Doesn't it complete a full circle of life? Probably Mirza Saheb wants to say that I have lived enough and known that there is no good in life. So, even though I die now, it won't be painful now because I am just returning what was already yours. Beautiful, isn't?

हुई मुद्दत कि 'ग़ालिब' मर गया पर याद आता है,
वो हर इक बात पर कहना कि यूँ होता तो क्या होता !

And finally the gazal concludes with the another pearls of wisdom. Take a leap ahead in time and think that I have died long ago and people yet talk about me. And what do they talk? Simple - what they observed - My constant pursuit for my goals, my ambitions. Like we usually do in our lives - if things would have happened in this way, that manner we would have been better. We are rarely satisfied with the way things go in life and constantly keep saying "yun hota to kya hota".

Amazing shayari by Mirza Ghalib.