Urdu Dictionary
Persian · noun · The Tavern & the Cup

Mai

मय
said mai
also written: Sharaab, may, mey
Meaning

Wine; emblem of divine love, ecstasy, and the annihilation of the ego.

Literally: wine

How Iqbal uses it

In the Sufi idiom mai is almost never the drink of the grape but a cipher for divine love and the ecstatic knowledge it pours into the heart — the orthodox forbid it precisely because the poet means the thing they cannot regulate. The tavern keeper, the cup-bearer, the cup are all stages in the soul's drunkenness on God. Iqbal seizes the symbol but reverses its mood: he begs for a wine that does not dull the self into surrender but sets it alight, a draught of love that wakes the khudi (self) into restless action rather than lulling it to sleep.

See it in the verse

Mai in Iqbal’s couplets

Main shakh-e-taak hun meri ghazal hai mera samar
Mire samar se mai-e-laala-faam paida kar
I am the vine-branch; my ghazal is my fruit — from my fruit, press out the rose-red wine.
Aspiration · Action · Youth
Kya dabdaba-e-nadir kya shaukat-e-taimuri
Ho jaate hain sab daftar gharq-e-mai-e-naab aakhir
What of Nadir's dread power, what of Timur's splendour? In the end every such record is drowned in the pure wine of time.
Humility · Self-Knowledge · Adversity
Main shakh-e-tak hun meri ghazal hai mera samar
Mere samar se mai-e-lala-fam paida kar
I am a branch of the vine, my song is my fruit; from that fruit press out the tulip-red wine.
Action · Aspiration · Youth
Related words
ARABIC

Saaqi

The cup-bearer who pours the wine; in mystic verse the giver of spiritual ecstasy, and the beloved.

PERSIAN

Baada

Wine; the intoxicating draught, figure of mystic rapture.

ARABIC

Sharaab

Wine or any intoxicating drink; in the mystical idiom, the rapture of divine love.

PERSIAN

Baadah

Wine; the classic Persian-poetic term for the intoxicant of divine love.

PERSIAN

Jaam

A goblet or wine-cup; the fabled cup of Jamshed that showed the whole world within it.

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