sang-e-manzil jise diwar nazar aane lage
“There is no measuring the exhaustion of that traveller to whom the milestone of the destination begins to look like a wall.”
संग-ए-मंज़िल जिसे दीवार नज़र आने लगे
The verse in Devanagari — it carries the authenticity of the original, and every Hindi reader can read it.
The image at the heart of this couplet is devastating in its precision: the milestone, meant to promise the destination is near, instead looms like a wall. For the traveller worn past a certain point, the very sign of arrival becomes an obstacle, and the couplet measures an exhaustion so total that hope itself reads as barrier.
When the marker of how far you have come starts to feel like a wall, the problem is not the distance left — it is that you are running on empty and need rest before the road, not after it.
The heart of this site stays with Iqbal: explore his couplets → Or browse the whole Other Voices shelf →