— Rumi (1207-1273); a popular modern English rendering, not a literal translation
About this quote
हिन्दी में
मैं पंछियों की तरह गाना चाहता हूँ — इस फ़िक्र के बिना कि कौन सुन रहा है और कौन क्या सोचेगा।
What it means
Notice that the line is a wish, not a report. I want to sing — the speaker is not describing a state he has reached; he is naming a condition he does not yet have. That small grammatical fact is why the sentence survives while a hundred confident declarations about not caring do not. Anyone who had actually stopped caring would have no occasion to say this.
The two worries are also kept separate, and they are not the same worry. Who hears is about reach — whether anyone is there at all. What they think is about verdict. Most people who claim to have given up the second are still counting the first, and the line quietly refuses to let those be collapsed into one act of letting go.
What it teaches you
Measure the gap between finishing something and checking the response to it — the send-then-refresh reflex. If the gap is near zero, the making and the auditing have fused into one activity, and you are not doing the first thing at all. Try putting a finished piece of work somewhere you cannot see its reception for a day, and notice whether the work itself felt different while you were doing it.
अर्थ और सीख
ध्यान दीजिए कि यह पंक्ति दावा नहीं, इच्छा है — मैं चाहता हूँ। जिसने सचमुच परवाह छोड़ दी हो, उसे यह कहने की ज़रूरत ही न पड़ती, और यही इस वाक्य की ईमानदारी है। इसमें दो अलग चिंताएँ हैं: कौन सुन रहा है, और वह क्या सोचेगा — अक्सर हम दूसरी छोड़ने का दावा करते हैं पर पहली गिनते रहते हैं।
Where it comes from
Freedom from the audience, which is a harder freedom than it sounds. The bird’s song is not a performance and cannot fail, because it was never submitted for approval — and Rumi, a poet with listeners, knew exactly how much that costs to imitate.
A popular modern rendering. Rumi (1207–1273) wrote in Persian; almost every English line shared online is a modern rendering rather than a literal translation. Sourced passages from the Masnavi, with their selection titles, are collected under Rumi on Love.
