— Divan-e-Ghalib, from the ghazal "na tha kuchh to khuda tha"
About this quote
देवनागरी:
न था कुछ तो ख़ुदा था कुछ न होता तो ख़ुदा होता
डुबोया मुझ को होने ने न होता मैं तो क्या होता
English: When nothing was, God was; had nothing been, God would be. It is existence that has drowned me — what would I have been, had I not been?
Meaning: Ghalib’s most philosophical couplet — a meditation on being and non-being worthy of the Upanishads. Existence itself is the calamity; the self is a wave that suffers by having risen from the sea.
अर्थ: जब कुछ नहीं था तब ख़ुदा था; मुझे तो मेरे ‘होने’ ने डुबोया। अस्तित्व पर इतना गहरा सवाल उर्दू शायरी में दूसरा नहीं।
An authentic couplet from the Divan-e-Ghalib, the collected Urdu ghazals of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797–1869), from the ghazal beginning “na tha kuchh to khuda tha”. Transliteration and English rendering are our own.
