mother
o mother
i made a falcon my lover
he'd got a crest on his head
and
anklets on his feet
and pecking for food he came
o 'i devote myself
for thee'! (1)
for one, the radiance of his beauty
was as the sun at
noon,
second, he exuded perfumes (2)
third, he had a rosy bloom
born to
a fair mother
o 'i devote myself for thee'!
his eyes
were as
the spring,
his hair as the monsoon is spread,
and on his lips for a long
time
a new day about to be born
o 'i devote myself for
thee'!
in his breath
the flowers of jasmine;
(as if)someone'd laid
out a garden of sandalwood
in his body played chetar (3)
bathed in
perfumes
o 'i devote myself for thee'!
in his speech,
falls the
easterly wind,
oh he was just as a cuckoo bird;
his teeth white as a crane
in a paddy field
that flies off startled by clapping
o 'i devote
myself for thee'!
of love
one canvas bed
we spread under the
moonlight
the sheet of (my) body became soiled
when he put his feet on the
bed
o 'i devote myself for thee'!
my eyelids hurt
and a flood
of tears
came between
all night i lost spent in thought
oh what is this
punishment i have earned
o 'i devote myself for thee'!
early
morning
kneading washing clay
i scrubbed and bathed it [the body]
from
within my body flew sparks
and my hand became weak
o 'i devote myself
for thee'!
bread crumbs i crushed
but he wouldn't eat them
i fed
him the flesh of my heart
he took off for such a flight
that he's never
returned
o 'i devote myself for thee'!
mother o mother
i made a
falcon my lover
he'd got a crest on his head
and anklets on his
feet
and pecking for food he came
o 'i devote myself for
thee'!
1. "nii maiN vaarii jaaNvaa!" "o 'i
devote myself for thee'!"
Oh this comes straight from Platts. I always thought I
roughly knewthe meaning but then that makes me wonder, is this
"I devote myself for thee" rather than to as I generally
would have used, an English equivalent of a similar custom? A prayer or
something? Platts does give 'sacrifice' as an option too, but
gave this phrase in English in quotes, so just wondering. Besides,
makes methink of Cohen, so quite happy to use it as is.Thankfully
Jagjit Sngh doesn't sing it. It's just in the originaltext I looked
up.
2. The meaning of mahkaaN daa
"tirhaaiyaa"
This, is an old bee in my bonnet that was put in there thanks
tocoming across Khushwant Singh translating it as "thirsting for humanblood"
long back. (It's also there in Declairing Love in FourLanguages
but, then, there, inter alia, while talking about Dagh healso says that
"Wali Dakhani, celebrated poet of Hyderabad acknowledged Dagh as his
poetic mentor". I have been meaning to writeto ask him for a long time
which Wali Dakhani he's talking about, but I digress) I have always thought it
meant something like bathed in perfumes or scents which others
seem to agree with, though like me, they too are no experts in punjabi or urdu
or hindi. My struggles with consulting Platts are quite humbling and the best
that I have come up with there is "tirohit" which means "covered or
concealed". So I am happy with my reading and it seems to fit thecontext.A
friend's father (the same one who was a friend of Batalvi's) said (after I told
him about the Khushwant translation) that maybe it is something like a craving,
from punjabi "treh". And then we went on tospeculate wildly that maybe it's
got something to do with the falcons' olfactory senses and maybe the way
they home in on their prey. I mean,all because none of us have a gurumukhi
dictionary and never ended uplooking it up somehow.So substitute the
correct
meaning of 'tirhaayaa" there and you'd get the correct meaning. Please
tell me too. Though I am quite convinced that there is NOTHING about the scent
of the human blood and so on. I really do plan to maybe even meet Khushwant to
confront him, soon as I get a complete list of things to confront him with.
Which, apart from being a rather tedious process, doesn't
really seem to be
worth it.
I forget what season is equivalent of "chetar"
in Punjabi or "chetra" in Hindi/Urdu. Please let me know. Maybe
it is a warm summer breeze, for here Khushwant Singh says "warm
breezes of early sorrow" but then he also translates "bagla"
or "bagula" as "egrets", I guess with poetic licence, so
I don't really know. Plus, I've justdiscovered a tragedy: my
Platts is missing pp 441-472, because of which I can't check it, though the
binding is perfect and there are no gaps or anything. Which shows just how much
I had consulted it in the past. I am thinking of suing the publishers. If
you are a lawyer or a journalist, please drop me a line. I'd drop whatever I am
doing to file a writ petition or something.