A broader reflection of pain...?

آرائش خیال بھی ہو دل کشا بھی ہو

وہ درد اب کہاں جسے جی چاہتا بھی ہو

Ornament to my thought... Unraveling to my soul...

I have lost the ache to which my heart aspires

In my last notes on Nasir's sorrow I focused on the transcendental quality of the experience of pain. This verse also refers to the same experience but is different in certain ways.

Most notably, it lacks the piercing tone of the last verse and the intense emotionality of the personal experience depicted over there. While flowing, the verse also reads more measured, compared with my last subject. The mood of this verse is also gentler with two instances of word choices which support this milder tone.

The first is "araish-e-khayal" and the second is "dard"; on the other hand the term "dil kusha" directly indicates the continuity of theme with my last subject.

To suggest these choices, in my literal translation here, I have preferred the word 'soul' over 'heart' for "dil kusha".

Ache was my natural choice for "dard". Ache is a somewhat diffused and milder form of pain sensation, compared with the more intense and acute sensation that the word 'pain' itself generally brings to mind. The original word "dard", in contrast, remains a broad spectrum term for all pain sensations and has been applied to a wide variety of painful experiences in literature and general speech at large (such as heartbreak, grief, aches, and pain resulting from all kinds of physical reasons).

I deduce that this verse refers more broadly to the human experience of pain and its positive consequences felt by the wise, compared with the more specific and extreme end focused on in my last subject.

The poet's choice for "araish-e-khayal" forwards the same conclusion.

The word araaish means decoration, adornment, ornamentation. We decorate our houses, attire, and gift presentations with ideas that are both beautiful and purposeful. Meaningless blemishes do not serve the purpose of ornamentation. Beautiful additions to a basic product enhance its value and amplify its essence. Thus the term araaish-e-khayal combines the concepts of addition to, amplification, improvement and (the resulting) beautification of thought.

Anybody may recall from their life history that positive and stable changes in character follow painful experiences: punishment, embarrassment, shame, guilt, disillusionment.

The wiser mind that has come to realize this pattern early and firmly derives ultimate benefit even from traumas: illness, heartbreaks, breaches of trust, losses, bereavement, accidents.

The mental strength derived from courage in the face of trauma in turn broadens the limits of one's endurance such that the person becomes capable of bearing the intense mental pain of acute existential realizations which in an ordinary person may derive him or her to insanity, dehumanization (along with the antipathy or antisocial behaviors resulting from it), or suicide.

Through all these stages the biggest effect is on the sensitivity, refinery and breadth of one's thought that certainly becomes apparent in one's demeanor, speech, conduct and, as in Nasir's case, verses.

The last line of the verse portrays a Nasir which has already suffered the highs and lows of the pains in his life, has distilled and stored the best in the corners of his heart and mind; so much so that the now (relatively or transiently) in-peace poet sweetly misses the throes that always furthered him on the odyssey of personal transcendence.