مرنے کی دعائیں کیوں مانگوں جینے کی تمنا کون کرے
یہ دنیا ہو یا وہ دنیا اب خواہش دنیا کون کرے

Readers of this blog will know that Urdu shayari includes many different themes and is vibrant with all of life’s colors. But there does seem to be a strong current of pain, heartbreak, and loss. There are two reasons for it – convention and history. First, the core themes of classical Urdu Ghazal were inherited from the Persian Ghazal tradition, which considered the exquisite expression of dard (pain/anguish) as an aesthetic craft. Second, much of Urdu poetry blossomed during eras of immense political and social upheaval: the decline of the Mughal Empire, colonization, the trauma of 1857, and later the tragedy of Partition. Poets wrote from the wreckage of their cities, courts, and lives, where personal grief merged seamlessly with collective tragedy. Poetry offered shared solace – a way of reminding listeners that their private sorrows were part of the universal human condition.

Ghazals expressed the sorrow in starkly beautiful language.
arz hai:

marne kī duā.eñ kyūñ māñgūñ jīne kī tamannā kaun kare
ye duniyā ho yā vo duniyā ab Khwāhish-e-duniyā kaun kare

This is the matla (opening sher) of a Ghazal by Moin Ahsan Jazbi (b. 1912).
These lines became a timeless classic when sung by Kishore Kumar for the 1948 film Ziddi – notably, his very first song as a playback singer.

tamannā: longing
Khwāhish: desire
A rough translation:

why should I pray for death? who would long for life?
whether this world or that world, who would desire any world now?

This poignant sher captures a state of total existential weariness, where neither the comforts of this life nor the promises of the hereafter hold any allure. The speaker has moved beyond despair into disillusionment. While intense suffering in poetry typically provokes a plea for death, here even praying for an end (marne kī duā) feels redundant.

The sher hints at a deeper realization: praying for death is itself an act of desire. When even the desire to escape suffering has vanished, what remains?

The second misra is simply stunning.
“ye duniyā ho yā vo duniyā ab Khwāhish-e-duniyā kaun kare.”
The repetition of duniyā three times in this line echoes in the listener’s mind, and mirrors the mood of the poem.

“ye duniyā” (this world) is the realm of mortal striving and politics, while “vo duniyā” (the afterlife) belongs to the realm of religious promise. The speaker has grown disillusioned with both.

This next sher‘s imagery describes this resignation:

jab kashtī sābit-o-sālim thī sāhil kī tamannā kis ko thī
ab aisī shikasta kashtī par sāhil kī tamannā kaun kare

kashtī: boat
sābit-o-sālim: intact and sound
sāhil: shore
shikasta: broken, weak, defeated

when the boat was intact and sound, who longed for the shore?
now on this shattered boat, who’d bother longing for the shore?

In youth and strength, when the vessel was whole (sābit-o-sālim), the open sea was an adventure, and the safety of the shore held no appeal. Now that the boat is broken (shikasta), the shore’s safety would be desirable, but now even the longing for the shore has gone. It is too late.

jo āg lagā.ī thī tum ne us ko to bujhāyā ashkoñ ne
jo ashkoñ ne bhaRkā.ī hai us āg ko ThanDā kaun kare

ashk: tear
bhaRkānā: inflame, provoke

the fire you lit was quenched by tears
but who will cool the fire the tears have kindled?

Tears are an unusual kind of water – they extinguish an external fire, but feed an internal blaze. Weeping is meant to be a release, a catharsis that lightens the heart. Here, the tears themselves fuel a conflagration of grief and memory.

This is a sad song, but oh so sweet.