SHAI'R 5

TASHREE:~

1. The literal translation of this shai'r would be as follows:
   Vision...alcohol, hope...the bartender, sight...pre-occupied An imaginary gathering ...like a ghost-bar(abandoned bar)
2. The poet is sitting drunk at the bar and looking about himself. He sees an abundance of alcohol but nobody to drink it with. He sees the bartender standing alone and hopeless; and yet he seems to be the poet's only hope in this moment of despair. He has left it ambiguous as to whether he is alone in the bar or there are other people present; I think it is irrelevant. He is speaking for himself and the general atmosphere of the bar when he refers to it as being a 'ghost-bar'. I think this shai'r is talking about loneliness on an individual basis and as a collective conscious state; where everyone is pre-occupied and simply there... Ghalib is referring to the boulevard of broken dreams.