JOST A MON

The idle ramblings of a Jack of some trades, Master of none

Sep 27, 2014

A Bit of Hindi

When I was in school, Hindi was my Achilles heel - I could barely make head or tail of it, and the insistence on the Sanskritised variety confused me even further. We covered quite a bit of poetry those days, poetry that was occasionally melodic, occasionally ancient, and occasionally a bit moral. Here's one that suddenly came back to me recently, and the only reason it came back to me (because, to be sure, I've put all matters of Hindi education to a dark and undusted corner of my mind) is that Dusted Off mentioned it during her coverage of little-known ruins in Delhi.

बुरा जो देखन मैं चला
बुरा ना मिलिया कोय
जो दिल खोजा आपना
मुझसा बुरा ना कोय

By Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khanan (1556-1626), general and poet, a Navratan of Akbar.

"When I set out to look for evil, I found no-one wicked. When I searched my own heart, I found there was none as evil as I."

0 comments:

Post a Comment