ek nahin hota
“Time nurtures it over years — a catastrophe does not happen all at once.”
हादिसा एक नहीं होता
The verse in Devanagari — it carries the authenticity of the original, and every Hindi reader can read it.
The couplet quietly dismantles the idea of sudden disaster — what looks like a single blow has in fact been raised and fed by time over many years. There is grim tenderness in the word "nurtures", as if catastrophe were a child that time patiently brought up, and the line forces a longer, more honest look at how ruin actually arrives.
The crisis that seems to strike out of nowhere was usually being built for years — look earlier than the breaking point if you want to understand it.
The heart of this site stays with Iqbal: explore his couplets → Or browse the whole Other Voices shelf →