DID YOU KNOW ?

Ever wondered how these three words, ‘Megh’, ‘MeGH’, and ‘GHem’ are related to each other? Well, they all mean the same thing, it’s just that their letters are flip-flopped! In Arabic, a dense, dark rain cloud is called ‘GHem’, the same word’s palindrome became ‘MeGH’, in Persian. Twin to these words is the Sanskrit word ‘Megh’, which is an inseparable part of Hindustani music and poetry. Let the linguists nail down what the relationship between Sanskrit and archaic Persian was; the beauty of Urdu poetry is that on the one hand, Mir Taqi Mir says in one of his couplets:

Tah-e-MeGH-e-Khurshiid Pinhaa.n Huaa
Na Dekha Magar Ruu-e-Jaanaa.n Hua

And Insha Allah Khan Insha, one of his contemporaries, who also had a bent for music, wrote:

Ye Jal-tarang ne phailaa dii aag paanii par
Ki jal ke gir paDii Khud megh raag paanii par