— Divan-e-Ghalib, from the ghazal "ragon mein daudte phirne ke"
About this quote
देवनागरी
रगों में दौड़ते फिरने के हम नहीं क़ाइल
जब आँख ही से न टपका तो फिर लहू क्या है
English
Merely running in the veins does not impress me — if it never fell from the eye, what kind of blood is it?
What it means
Blood that only circulates is biology; blood that falls as tears has felt something. Ghalib’s test of being alive is the capacity to be moved — feeling, not function, is the proof of life.
Qaail is a word from argument — to concede a point, to be convinced — so Ghalib sets life up as a claim that has to be proved, and then refuses to grant it. Look also at the verb he chooses: not flowed or poured but tapka, dripped, the small undignified leak of a single drop. The bar is deliberately low and therefore unforgiving; and daudte phirne, running about, makes circulation sound like busywork, blood with a job and no reason.
What it teaches you
Change the question you ask of a day. Instead of what you completed, ask whether anything got through — a face, a piece of news, a line of music. One drop counts; a tidy, productive week in which nothing reached you is the thing worth worrying about, and it is the easiest kind of week to mistake for a good one.
अर्थ और सीख
जो लहू सिर्फ़ रगों में दौड़े और कभी आँख से न टपके, वो लहू किस काम का? ग़ालिब के लिए एहसास ही ज़िंदा होने का सबूत है।
दिन के अंत में यह न गिनिए कि कितना काम हुआ, यह देखिए कि कुछ दिल को छू पाया या नहीं। एक बूँद भी काफ़ी है।
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 “ragon mein daudte phirne ke”. Transliteration and English rendering are our own.
