Longing on a autumn evening
May the spring breeze blow, spilling colors onto flowers.
You come too beloved, so that this garden may re-flower.
This cage and its melancholy; do say something to the breeze friends, So that it may return swirling with all those memories of the Friend.
Let the dawn descend from the corner of your lips. Let the night seep into the day from your dark hair tips.
This longing is enough for my heart’s famishment. Just as your name is enough to summon all your loyalists.
What had passed over me passed over me, but loneliness Was it my tears that compelled your fate to pan out so tonight?
The directions, Faiz, on the way we must have forgotten to examine For leaving the beloved’s street, we went straight to the death's platform!
A version of Faiz Ahmed Faiz's beautiful 'Gulon Main Rang Bhare', done as I was waiting for a April 'darshan'
Translations
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Ek hi khwaab - Gulzar
Male Voice:
A single dream I have seen many times over
You had tied the keys to my house to your sari’s end
And came strolling by, just like that, holding my hand.
A single dream...
Arranging flowers on the bed, I have seen you many times over And many times over, have I woken you up from the same bed A single dream…
Humming to yourself, after bathing From your wet hair, dripping drops Over my distracted face willfully, you naughty girl! A single dream...
Over playing cards, quarrelling vehemently over a game And sometimes quarrelling, as if you were playing with me. And then holding an infant in your lap....
Female Voice: Will you shut up?
Laughter
Male Voice continues: And you know Tiku, when I see this dream about you I, who was dead in sleep, feel as if I am waking up.
A translation from a Hindustani Film Lyric
Translations
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Come again, you foreign clouds
[1]
Come again, you foreign clouds
For it’s from your wings, I gather pearls.
Come fill our lakes again, and as you arrive
At the lake shore I shall welcome you,
In a lotus's shadow, with my black earthen pot
[2] Your season to depart has come, I know. Yet will you not turn at some point, And come back? To the black mosque I shall go, and ask if even in your heart There is some mutual love or not?
If you go by these lanes of dust, I will greet you at their beginnings.
[3] Lest you stop somewhere In my anxiety, I shall Tie around your neck A dozen amulets, and with My antimony put a mark To ward off the evil eye On your white cheek
Come by and touch our gardens, where By the peepul tree, I shall wait for you.
Not knowing, or understanding, folk Hindi perfectly, this is a loose translation of a Gulzar's village lyric "Phirse Aaiyo Badra Bidesi ". Perhaps I shouldn't touch some of these, almost all the beauty dies in my hands!
Translations
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