— from the ghazal beginning “ab to ghabra ke ye kahte hain ke mar jaayenge”, Sheikh Ibrahim Zauq (1789–1854)
About this quote
देवनागरी
अब तो घबरा के ये कहते हैं कि मर जाएँगे
मर के भी चैन न पाया तो किधर जाएँगे
اردو
اب تو گھبرا کے یہ کہتے ہیں کہ مر جائیں گے
مر کے بھی چین نہ پایا تو کدھر جائیں گے
English
In desperation they now say they will simply die. But if even death brings no peace — where will they go then?
What it means
The first line is what people actually say when they have run out of options. The second takes the threat seriously enough to follow it one step further, and finds nothing there. Zauq gets his effect by treating a figure of speech as a plan and asking what comes after it.
What it teaches you
The method here is worth copying. When someone announces an exit — quitting, walking out, ending it — take the sentence literally for one more step and ask what is on the other side of it. Applied to yourself, that question exposes that the threat was never a plan. Applied to someone else, it is the opposite of dismissing them: you become the only person in the room treating what they said as real, which is usually what was wanted.
अर्थ और सीख
परेशान होकर कहते हैं कि मर जाएँगे — मगर अगर मरने के बाद भी चैन न मिला तो फिर कहाँ जाएँगे? शिकायत को उसके अंजाम तक ले जाने का यह अंदाज़ ज़ौक़ का कमाल है।
जब कोई — या ख़ुद आप — कहे कि ‘बस, अब ख़त्म’, तो बात को हँसी में उड़ाने के बजाय एक क़दम आगे पूछिए: उसके बाद क्या? अक्सर वहाँ कोई जवाब नहीं होता, और यही सवाल संभाल लेता है।
Where it comes from
Verified against the collected work of Sheikh Ibrahim Zauq (1789–1854) on Urdu Wikisource, in the poem beginning اب تو گھبرا کے یہ کہتے ہیں کہ مر جائیں گے (source). Devanagari transliteration and English rendering are our own.
