hamaare ghar ka batwaara hua hai
“Measure the size of our grief — our home itself has been divided up.”
हमारे घर का बँटवारा हुआ है
The verse in Devanagari — it carries the authenticity of the original, and every Hindi reader can read it.
Two quiet lines that open onto something enormous. A home being partitioned is, on its face, a family dividing property; but 'ghar ka batwaara' carries the whole weight of separation — of a household, and behind it the memory of a land, broken into shares. The couplet does not describe the grief; it asks you to gauge it, knowing the word 'partition' will do the rest.
Some losses are too large to argue; you can only sit with their size. When a shared home is divided, what is split is never only the property.
The heart of this site stays with Iqbal: explore his couplets → Or browse the whole Other Voices shelf →