Qatra

A drop, a single bead of water; figuratively the small and individual against the vast.

Literally: drop (of water)

The qatra is the single drop — the dew-bead or raindrop classically set against the ocean (bahr/darya) in the central Sufi image: the drop that loses itself in the sea, the part dissolving into the whole, annihilation in the infinite. Iqbal famously turns this convention on its head: rather than the drop vanishing into the ocean, he asks the drop to keep its self and contain the ocean — 'maqam apni khudi ka' — making the qatra an emblem of selfhood that need not dissolve to be vast.