— Divan-e-Ghalib, from the ghazal "poochhte hain wo ke Ghalib kaun hai"
About this quote
देवनागरी
पूछते हैं वो कि ‘ग़ालिब’ कौन है
कोई बतलाओ कि हम बतलाएँ क्या
English
They ask, ‘Who is this Ghalib?’ — someone tell me, what am I to say?
What it means
The beloved pretends not to know who Ghalib is; the poet stands mid-sentence, disarmed. Vanity, hurt, and amusement in perfect balance — how do you introduce yourself to someone determined not to know you?
Watch where the second line is aimed: he does not answer the beloved, he turns to the rest of the room — koi batlao, somebody tell me — so that the man asked to define himself has to be briefed on his own identity first. The same verb does both jobs, batlao and batlaayen, asker and answerer folded into one breath. It is often read as pure vanity or pure humility; it is neither, because the poet’s name is already in the line, so the couplet answers the question in the act of failing to.
What it teaches you
See how much of your sense of who you are is on loan from one person’s attention. When someone withholds recognition on purpose, the instinct is to explain yourself harder, longer, better — that is exactly the move that hands them the definition. Let the question stand unanswered and go on doing the work that has your name on it.
अर्थ और सीख
वो पूछते हैं ‘ग़ालिब कौन है?’ — इस अनजान बनने पर क्या ही जवाब दिया जाए। अनदेखी का इतना ख़ूबसूरत गिला और कहाँ।
अपनी पहचान किसी एक की नज़र पर टिकी न रखिए। जो जान-बूझकर न पहचाने, उसे सफ़ाई देकर पहचान नहीं बनती।
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 “poochhte hain wo ke Ghalib kaun hai”. Transliteration and English rendering are our own.
