Arz kiya hai..

"So what if today's gone, there's always tomorrow"

What she couldn't find so far, how will she get tomorrow?

Time is not very fair in matters of death or love

The dead and the loved ignore today and forget tomorrow.

She sits alone today, with little hope or clue

That they didn't today, but would have met, tomorrow.

She had always refused Time to have his way with her

Her dreams await her, if only she would let tomorrow.

If she could only see the future today she'd know

Her unknown destiny will be met tomorrow.

Do not despair that Time is running out.

Faith, Zaara, for there is hope yet, tomorrow.

My oh-so-feeble attempt at writing a ghazal in English, which sadly, is the only language I dare experiment in. Please don't be too critical...I know that ghazal-fans are very passionate and will probably see this as blasphemy. I only plead ignorance and a naive exploratory impulse. I have started a rocky affair with this beautiful art form only recently - me of the "gender-free Bambaya Hindi and snobby English only" fame is falling crazily and surely in love with Urdu thanks to ghazals. I was given some reading material on the history and technique of ghazal-writing, and tried to follow some of those rules here. I know there are others I may be ignorant about, so any help will be greatly appreciated!


1. "Radif" - Every verse or couplet must end with the same word or phrase (which ends both lines of the first couplet - "Matla")
2. "Kaafiya" - The word before the Radif in each couplet must rhyme
3. "Maqta" - The shaayar's (poet's) name or pen-name appears in the last sher (couplet). Some of you know that I sometimes call myself "Zaara", like at a restaurant making reservations to some idiot host who can't pronounce "Aarti"!
4. Each couplet should be able to live on its own. No story telling then, no links from one verse to the other. The idea is that if you wanted you could drop one or more while quoting/singing it.
5. "Beher" or meter or length - In case you didn't notice, I didn't even try to follow this one. The others were hard enough to keep in mind!