Iqbal for All

Poet unknown · kept here, honestly labelled

laga ke aag shahar ko ye badshah ne kaha
utha hai dil mein tamashe ka aaj shauq bahut

jhuka ke sar ko sabhi shah-parast bol uthe
huzur shauq salamat rahe shahar hain aur bahut

“Having set the city ablaze, the king remarked: 'A great appetite for spectacle has risen in my heart today.' Lowering their heads, all the king's worshippers spoke up at once: 'Long may the appetite live, Your Majesty — there are plenty more cities.'”

Romanहिन्दीPoet unknown

लगा के आग शहर को ये बादशाह ने कहा
उठा है दिल में तमाशे का आज शौक़ बहुत

झुका के सर को सभी शाह-परस्त बोल उठे
हुज़ूर शौक़ सलामत रहे शहर हैं और बहुत

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

A two-stanza parable of power and the courtiers who serve it. The king's cruelty is bad enough; but the verse's real target is the second stanza — the bowed heads that do not flinch at a burning city and instead rush to reassure the tyrant that his appetite need never go hungry. Complicity, not the crime, is the subject.

For You, Today

Watch the courtiers, not just the king. The truly dangerous sentence is never the order to burn — it is 'there are plenty more cities', said by someone who should have objected. Ask which one of them you are, in the rooms you sit in.

Marked by us, and by the reader who shared it, as अज्ञात — poet unknown — and that is correct: no source attributes it. We keep it, honestly labelled, because the parable is unforgettable, and getting attribution right is the whole point of this shelf.

Themes:PowerSociety

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