What do we have that is uniquely ours?
Sahir Ludhianvi answers in two lines:
le de ke apne paas faqat ik nazar to hai
kyuuñ dekheñ zindagī ko kisī kī nazar se ham
le de ke: literally “after taking and giving”; idiomatically, “when all is said and done”
faqat: only, merely
nazar: a glance, vision, opinion, perspective
A working translation:
when all is said and done, the one thing I have is my own way of seeing
why should I look at life through anyone else’s eyes?
In Urdu verse ham can mean “I” or “we”, and apne means “one’s own,” so the sher can be read as a personal declaration or as a statement for all of us. I’ve translated it in the singular, but the plural is there too.
The language is simple and colloquial, yet it carries an edge. The speaker takes stock — le de ke — and finds only one thing left: a nazar of his own. He says it with a shrug, but the question is rhetorical: he has no intention of surrendering it. nazar is the one possession that stays ours only for as long as we keep using it.
That is harder than it sounds. Our nazar is shaped by family, school and culture, and today by opinion makers, influencers and advertisers, who compete for our attention and frame every event. That is why the sher is worth returning to. It’s a reminder to ask ourselves: whose eyes am I looking through right now?
