Kihde Paase Jaiye Sajjnawhich way do we turn now, beloved?

a word on russi

Russna is what a loved one does — not an enemy. It is the sulk of someone who is still yours, who has turned their back but not left the room, and who can in principle be won over. Manauna is the answering verb: to cajole, to make up with. Sartaaj applies both to taqdeer, fate. Fate is not being fought here. It is being courted.

a word on ves and sadde

Ves is dress, costume, the garb one puts on — so the sky is not merely dark, it has chosen mourning. The doubling kaale-kaale is Punjabi intensification: black on black, not just black. Sadda is a call or summons, the shout you send after someone; sadde launa is to send those calls out. The line asks not "who will answer" but "who is even there to shout at".

a word on asees and vairaag

Asees is a blessing, specifically the kind an elder gives — which is what makes the line bitter rather than sweet: someone wished this love onto me and left me holding it. Vairaag has no clean English word; it is the ache of separation and the pull toward renunciation at once, the state of a heart that has come loose from the world. Hauka is the catch in the breath before a sob; haava the sound that follows it.

a word on ibaadat — and a returning verb

Ibaadat is worship in the formal, devotional sense — the word for prayer as a daily observance, not a cry for help. Pairing it with ghaman naal baith ("sitting down with one's griefs") makes the grief itself the liturgy. Note too that manaauna returns here from the sthayi: fate was to be coaxed back, and now so are laughter and delight. Both have russ-ed. Both are being courted.

a word on the courtroom

This stanza runs on legal vocabulary end to end: gunaah (sin, in the religious register), jurm (crime, in the juridical one), sazaa (sentence, the punishment awarded by a court), dosh (blame, fault, the charge itself). The complaint is not that the punishment is too harsh. It is that no charge was ever read out. Note also that laiye — "should we lay" — is the same verb that ended Antara 1, where it was calls being sent out. There, no one to call; here, no one to accuse.

a word on vela

Vela is a stretch of time with a character to it — a season of one's life, "those days" — not a clock reading. The plural veliyan carries affection. This is the only movement whose closing line is not a question: bada pachhtaaiye is a statement. The song stops asking here, and simply admits.

a word on the ask

The whole stanza is one conditional held open across four lines — je … je …, "if … if …" — and it never resolves into a main clause. And notice how small the request has become: not the beloved back, not the years restored. A mulaaqaat, a meeting, of a few breaths' length. Stolen, at that: chori concedes that even this much is not rightfully his to ask for.

why this stanza is different

This is a maqta — the closing couplet of a ghazal, in which the poet writes his own pen-name into the verse. Sartaaj is Satinder Sartaaj's takhallus; the word itself means crown, or the one at the head. So the line works two ways at once and is meant to: go tell Sartaaj how I am, and go tell my sovereign how I am. The singer steps outside the song, names himself, and asks to be told about his own condition in the third person. Everything before this was addressed to the beloved. This is addressed to whoever is listening.

Note also the final turn. Eight lines of asking which way, who, how — and the last request is not for a road or an answer. It is ohi geet gaaiye: that very song, let us sing it again. The song is what is left.