A sher for the road.
arz hai:
kisī ko ghar se nikalte hī mil ga.ī manzil
koī hamārī tarah umr bhar safar meñ rahā
This sher is by Ahmad Faraz (1931-2008).
nikalte hī: just after leaving
manzil: destination, goal
umr bhar: all one’s life
safar: travel, journey
A rough translation :
some found their destination the moment they left home
others, like us, stayed on the road all their lives
The sher is a lament, a complaint about luck, about how effortlessly some people arrive while others wander without ever getting there. Look at the unfairness of the first line. Someone steps out the door and the destination is already within reach. For them, there is no searching, no prolonged struggle. For us, the road never ends.
But there is another way to read the sher.
Perhaps the speaker isn’t envying those who arrived early. Perhaps there is a measure of pride in being hamārī tarah – like us, those who have spent a lifetime traveling. Those who found their manzil at the doorstep may have been spared the uncertainty and hardship of the road, but what did they miss along the way? The lifelong traveler may be unlucky, condemned to a journey without an arrival, but there is something to be said for a life that never quite settles, that keeps searching and discovering.
The sher doesn’t tell us which reading to choose. Its melancholy remains, even if we choose to hear a little defiance in it.
In Urdu poetry manzil and safar are flexible metaphors. manzil can mean a literal place, a beloved, an ideal, a spiritual station, and much more. A safar can be a journey towards something, but it can also be life itself – restless and ever changing.
