— Divan-e-Ghalib, from the ghazal "bas-ki dushwar hai"
About this quote
देवनागरी
बस-कि दुश्वार है हर काम का आसाँ होना
आदमी को भी मयस्सर नहीं इंसाँ होना
English
Nothing difficult becomes easy of itself — even man does not easily become human.
What it means
The distinction is between aadmi (a man by birth) and insaan (a human by character). Being born human is free; becoming humane is the labour of a lifetime — Ghalib compresses that ethics into one line.
The couplet is built as a law and then its hardest instance, and the hinge is the small word bhi: man is being added to the list of things that do not come easy, slipped in as one more item. Mayassar is the word used of provisions and of fortune — something granted, in supply — so becoming human is framed not as a task one fails at but as a thing that is rarely even available. That is sharper than it sounds when the line is quoted as a slogan about ‘being a good human being’. Ghalib is not encouraging the effort; he is recording how seldom it arrives.
What it teaches you
Character is not a trait you have, it is a set of repetitions, so locate one place today where decency costs you something and nothing comes back — the person who cannot help you later, the queue you could jump, the junior nobody is watching you treat. That is the rep. Behaviour toward people who can return the favour tells you nothing, which is why it is a poor place to look for evidence about yourself.
अर्थ और सीख
आदमी पैदा होना आसान है, इंसान बनना मुश्किल। जन्म से मिली मनुष्यता और कमाई हुई इंसानियत का फ़र्क़ — एक मिसरे में पूरा दर्शन।
इंसानियत पैदाइशी ख़ूबी नहीं, रोज़ की मशक़्क़त है। दिन में एक ऐसी जगह चुनिए जहाँ शरीफ़ रहने की कुछ कीमत लगती हो और बदले में कुछ न मिले — वहीं आपका असली हाल खुलता है, उनके साथ नहीं जो आपके काम आ सकते हैं।
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 “bas-ki dushwar hai”. Transliteration and English rendering are our own.
