— Divan-e-Ghalib, from the ghazal "koi ummeed bar nahin aati"
About this quote
देवनागरी
काबा किस मुँह से जाओगे ‘ग़ालिब’
शर्म तुम को मगर नहीं आती
English
With what face will you go to the Kaaba, Ghalib? And yet — you feel no shame.
What it means
Ghalib prosecutes himself and grins through the verdict. The self-accusation is real, the shamelessness is real, and the honesty about both is the whole charm — no preacher ever confessed so winningly.
The whole couplet turns on one small word: magar. The first line sets up a reckoning that any preacher would finish with remorse — and the second line reports, flatly, that the remorse never arrived. It is an observation, not a plea. Notice too that kis munh se is street-level idiom, the phrase an elder uses on a wastrel nephew; setting that domestic scolding against the Kaaba shrinks the cosmic audit to a family quarrel. The common misreading is to hear an outside voice accusing the poet. The name in the line is his own: the mouth doing the accusing and the face that feels no shame belong to the same man, which is why nobody wins the argument.
What it teaches you
Learn to tell self-knowledge apart from performed contrition — in yourself first. Naming a fault feels like the beginning of fixing it, and it usually isn’t. The next time you catch yourself confessing something, ask a plain question before you speak: do I intend to stop? If yes, skip the confession and change the behaviour. If no, say the thing without the apology attached, the way Ghalib does — an honest I keep doing this costs you something, while a well-turned apology you have no intention of honouring quietly spends other people’s trust.
अर्थ और सीख
काबा जाने का मुँह नहीं, पर शर्म भी नहीं आती — ख़ुद पर मुक़दमा और ख़ुद ही मुस्कुराती हुई गवाही। ऐसी बेबाक ईमानदारी ही ग़ालिब है।
अपनी कमज़ोरी मान लेना और उसे छोड़ देना दो अलग बातें हैं। ग़लती कबूल करने से पहले ख़ुद से पूछिए कि इरादा सुधरने का है या सिर्फ़ कहने का — अगर नहीं, तो माफ़ी का नाटक करने से बेहतर है सच सीधा कह देना।
Where it comes from
An authentic couplet from the Divan-e-Ghalib, the collected Urdu ghazals of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797–1869), from the ghazal beginning “koi ummeed bar nahin aati”. Transliteration and English rendering are our own.
