karun aur use
“Let me not remember her — but how am I to forget her? Let me make a ghazal my pretext, and hum her under my breath.”
करूँ और गुनगुनाऊँ उसे
The verse in Devanagari — it carries the authenticity of the original, and every Hindi reader can read it.
The couplet catches the heart in the act of contradicting itself — the resolve not to remember collapses in the same breath into the impossibility of forgetting. Its loveliest turn is the pretext: the poet pretends he is only crafting a ghazal so that he may, under cover of art, hum the beloved's name aloud.
When you cannot let someone go, notice the small disguises your longing wears — the song, the detour, the pretext — and be honest about what they really are.
The heart of this site stays with Iqbal: explore his couplets → Or browse the whole Other Voices shelf →