For those who have joined now, let me say few words about this Ghalib series. 

Ghalib, his ghazals, his poems, his genius, and his wits have always fascinated millions of Urdu lovers including myself. Those who want to read my previous work please Ctrl + click on the following link. http://users.adelphia.net/~asghar   or, if you choose, you may send me an email request; I will email back my previous explanations just for asking. 

This is my 11th installment.  I have received excellent response from lot of friends: both Urdu and non-Urdu speakers. Please know that this is my own, Asghar Vasanwala’s, work and not a forwarding of someone else’s work as some you thought. Please forward this to your friends. Also please send me your comments/complements; I will appreciate that. 

Here is today’s verse (she'r) in Urdu script and also in Roman script.

Mein adem se bhi pare huN, warna, ghafil! bar-ha       I am beyond eternity, otherwise, oh fool                       Meri   Aah-e-atashin   se,   baal-e-anqa   jal   gaya       My flaming cries frequently torched Phoenix’s wings

Adem= Non-existence, next world     pare= away           ghafil= unaware person, fool   Bar-ha= frequently

Aah-e-aatshiN= Fiery cries, sobbing   Baal= feathers, wings    Anqa= Phoenix

This is the 3rd sh’er of Ghalib’s 5th Ghazal. In this sh’er Ghalib has expressed his bravado in a unique way!

As we know poetry is an art of exaggeration and Urdu is unique in this matter. For an example one Urdu poet exaggerates, how profusely he cried when her beloved left him: He says: I shed so many tears that not only this earth got flooded, but the sky also found water waist deep! (AasmaN par bhi kamar-kamar!)

Ghalib uses stories and anecdotes to bolster his exaggeration that very few poets have done.

Anqa or phoenix, is a legendary bird that lived for 500 hundred years and burned itself to ashes on a pyre and rose alive to live another period; and, according to Ghalib, it now lives in “Adem” the next world. Throughout his book of poem (Deewan) Ghalib makes us believe that he is not a creature of this world; he is much above, and is shooting pictures from the space. He says: Oh fools don’t think that I am living in next world; I am even beyond the next world, otherwise when I was in the next world (where phoenix lives) when I cried, heat from my Aah or fiery sigh torched Phoenix wings several times. Since now I am beyond eternity, I can’t burn Phoenix any more. Ghalib wants to tell us that even in the next world he never forgot his beloved and continued to cry and sob for her, and that his cries were like a million-volt bare cable, burning any thing that came in contact. In “Adem” also his cries and sobbing remained as powerful as what were on this earth. 

There are two other explanations from two different Ghalibologist  

Taba-tabai: By saying that he is beyond next world, Ghalib means that he is nether alive nor is he dead.  In this sh’er Ghalib has used word Pare=beyond. This word is legal in Delhi Urdu but is prohibited in Lucknow.

Bekhud: Ghalib says that just in the beginning when he was learning lessons of “Fana” (destruction of physical form) his cries were so powerful that it torched the wings of phoenix, and made phoenix extinct.

(He contradicts the story that Phoenix burned himself, it was Ghalib’s fiery cry that torched him) By Ghafil Ghalib means those folks who do not believe in capabilities of mankind.