qaid-e-hayaat o band-e-gham

Interpretation

If read through the lens of Buddha’s teachings, Ghalib’s couplet becomes a meditation on dukkha (sorrow) the First Noble Truth. Buddha said that life, by its very nature, is marked by suffering: birth, aging, loss, and desire bind us to a perpetual cycle of pain. Ghalib’s qaid-e-hayaat (prison of life) and band-e-gham (chain of sorrow) echo precisely this, saying the same thing — they are not separate states but two expressions of the same bondage. Buddha’s path to liberation was not escape from sorrow but understanding it and transcending it by weakening and dissolving desire. Ghalib, however, seems to offer a more fatalistic reflection: as long as one lives, grief remains inescapable and freedom from it can only come with death. Where Buddha saw Nirvana as the extinguishing of desire while living, Ghalib sees mortality as the only true release. In essence, both confront the same truth: that to live is to suffer.