dil pe zakhm khate hain jaan se guzarte hain — Iqbal Safipuri

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By Iqbal Safipuri

pe khate hain se guzarte hain
hai un ko karte hain

“We take the wounds upon our heart, we give our very life away — and our only crime is this: that we love them.”

Romanहिन्दीIqbal Safipuri

पे खाते हैं से गुज़रते हैं
है उनको करते हैं

The verse in Devanagari — it carries the authenticity of the original, and every Hindi reader can read it.

♪ Hear the couplet

A recitation in a synthesized voice.

The Interpretation

The matla states the whole bargain of devotion in two lines. The first names the cost without flinching — wounds taken willingly, life surrendered. The second supplies the charge for which all of it is the punishment, and the word 'crime' is the wound's edge: the lover is arraigned not for any wrong but for loving, and accepts the sentence anyway. It is the classic Sufi-romantic move, where love and martyrdom become the same act.

For You, Today

Some devotions exact a real price and offer no defence — you simply decide the loving is worth what it costs you. Know which of yours are like that, and stop expecting them to be fair.

By Iqbal Safipuri — a distinct poet, no relation to Allama Iqbal, whose shared takhallus 'Iqbal' leads many to misattribute this verse. Best known from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's qawwali; Sufinama sources it to Safipuri's collection Shaakh-e-Gul. It sits on this shelf both for its own beauty and because correcting the Iqbal mix-up is exactly what this shelf is for.

Themes:Love & LossDevotion

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