Wo mere ke mein
“Those I searched for across the skies and the earth turned out to dwell in the darkened house of my own heart.”
वो निकले मेरे के मकीनों में
The couplet in Devanagari — it carries the authenticity of the original, and every Hindi reader can read it.
وہ نکلے میرے ظلمت خانۂ دل کے مکینوں میں
The couplet as Iqbal wrote it, in Urdu (Nastaliq).
Iqbal describes a long outward search ending in an inward discovery. What he chased through the heavens and across the world was living all along inside him, in the unlit chambers of his own heart. The truths and powers we seek elsewhere are usually already within, waiting to be recognised rather than acquired.
If you have been searching everywhere outside yourself for an answer, turn inward. What you need is often already there, in a part of you that you have not yet looked at honestly.
Khuda bande se khud pooche, bata teri raza kya hai
Tu agar mera nahin banta na ban, apna to ban
Nek jo raah ho us rah pe chalana mujh ko