raat bhi neend bhi kahani bhi

Song : Raat Bhi
Lyrics :
Singer: Chitra Singh
Language : Urdu

Resung by : Sindhuja Bhaktavatsalam

This is a ghazal by Chitra Singh. Her beautiful voice makes her ghazals sound even more special. Very sad that she stopped singing after the death of her son.

Here are the lyrics followed by my rendition of the ghazal. As always, feedback is much appreciated, especially here, since I'm not exactly super comfortable singing this genre :) Also, keeping with the spirit of this blog, it would be nice to open a discussion on the interpretation of the lyrics.

रात भी नींद भी कहानी भी
हाय! क्या चीज़ है जवानी भी

दिल को शोलों से करती है सैलाब
ज़िन्दगी आग भी है पानी भी

ख़त क्या क्या मुझे नहीं कहती
कुछ सुनूं मैं तेरी जुबानी भी
पास रहना किसी का रात की रात
महमानी भी मज़बानी भी

Word meanings:- shola: fire/ flame; sailaab: flood; hkhat: letter; zubaani: language; mehmaan: guest; mezbaan: host


A note on first word of the last stanza: Its not exactly clear to me what Chitraji sings. I found various substitutes for that word when I looked up various versions of lyrics for this song on the internet. There was "khat", "harf", "khalq", "khaRk"... Going by the context I think it makes sense that it should mean "letter". I understood the first two lines to mean that the girl says to her man that a letter does not say everything, so she longs to listen to him speak to her- which is why I sang it as "khat".

When I looked up Urdu dictionaries, "harf" was also said to mean "letter", but not as in "writing a letter", but as in "letter of the alphabet". As for "khaRk" and "khalq" I am really unsure. So if someone can throw some light on this, it would be great.

So here goes...