shayar bahut zaroori hai ik khaandaan hai
rahta hai sirf ek hi kamre mein aadmi
uska guroor rahta hai baqi makaan mein
“The grace of true conversation will come — but for that, at the very least, a poet is essential; a poet is a whole lineage of refinement in himself. A man lives in only one room of the house — his pride occupies all the rest of it.”
शायर बहुत ज़रूरी है इक ख़ानदान है
रहता है सिर्फ़ एक ही कमरे में आदमी
उसका ग़ुरूर रहता है बाक़ी मकान में
The verse in Devanagari — it carries the authenticity of the original, and every Hindi reader can read it.
The first couplet makes a quiet case for poetry as the keeper of civilised speech: the art of conversing well does not arrive on its own — it needs a poet, and a single poet carries the cultivation of an entire household within him. The second couplet sharpens into a devastating domestic image: a man occupies one room, but his pride spreads through every other room of the house, taking up all the space he himself cannot fill. The metaphor turns ego into a kind of squatter, claiming territory the man never lives in. Read together, the two verses move from what refines us — the disciplined grace of language — to what bloats us — vanity claiming room it will never use.
Notice how much room your pride is taking up in rooms you never even enter — most of what ego defends is space you were never going to use.
The heart of this site stays with Iqbal: explore his couplets → Or browse the whole Other Voices shelf →