— from the ghazal beginning “chupke chupke raat din aansu bahaana yaad hai”, Hasrat Mohani (1875–1951)
About this quote
देवनागरी
चुपके चुपके रात दिन आँसू बहाना याद है
हम को अब तक आशिक़ी का वो ज़माना याद है
اردو
چپکے چپکے رات دن آنسو بہانا یاد ہے
ہم کو اب تک عاشقی کا وہ زمانا یاد ہے
English
I remember weeping quietly, night and day. I remember, even now, that season of being in love.
What it means
Hasrat Mohani was a freedom fighter who was jailed repeatedly and is credited with coining the slogan Inquilab Zindabad — an unlikely biography for the most tender ghazal in the language. The verse became a standard through Ghulam Ali’s rendering, used in the 1982 film Nikaah.
What it teaches you
Read the tense carefully: every claim here is in the register of remembering — yaad hai, twice. The weeping was hidden and endless at the time, and only from a distance does it register as a zamaana, a whole season worth keeping. That should change how you treat feeling you are currently hiding. The grief you are holding quietly right now is not dead time to be got through and deleted; it is very likely the part of this year you will later be able to name. Two things follow. Do not measure the worth of an inner life by whether anyone witnessed it — Hasrat’s tears were chupke chupke and they still made the poem. And do not assume the people around you whose public lives look hard, political, or unsentimental have no such interior; the same man who wrote this carried a very different reputation in public.
अर्थ और सीख
चुपके-चुपके आँसू बहाने का वो ज़माना अब तक याद है। हसरत मोहानी आज़ादी के लड़ाके थे और ‘इंक़लाब ज़िंदाबाद’ का नारा उन्हीं का माना जाता है — और यह सबसे नाज़ुक ग़ज़ल भी उन्हीं की है।
जो दुख आप चुपचाप सह रहे हैं, वह बेकार बीता समय नहीं — आगे चलकर वही वह मौसम बनता है जिसे आप याद रखेंगे। और किसी के सख़्त, सार्वजनिक चेहरे से यह न मान लीजिए कि उसके भीतर ऐसी नरमी नहीं है।
Where it comes from
Verified against the collected work of Hasrat Mohani (1875–1951) on Urdu Wikisource, in the poem beginning چپکے چپکے رات دن آنسو بہانا یاد ہے (source). Devanagari transliteration and English rendering are our own.
