Bewilderment, Fire and Nothingness

 

  بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

Mīrzā ʿAbd-al-Qādir Bīdel (Bedil Dehlavi) (often dated 1644–1720/1721) was an Indo-Persian poet and Sufi-minded thinker who spent much of his life in Delhi, writing in Persian during the late Mughal period. He was born in ʿAẓīmābād (Patna), and sources describe his family as being of Turkic/Chaghatay (Arlās) descent. 
Bedil is widely regarded as the leading figure of the later “Indian style” (sabk-e hindī) in Persian poetry—famous (and sometimes feared) for compressed metaphors, intricate syntax, and a mind that keeps pressing spiritual questions into philosophical intensity. Encyclopaedia Iranica even calls him the most “difficult and challenging” poet of that school. 
His output is massive: he wrote across ghazal, masnavi, and prose; a standard compilation of his works runs to about 147,000 verses. His prose masterpiece, Chahār ʿUnṣur (The Four Elements), blends autobiographical moments with reflections on speech and silence, spiritual experience, and the riddles of being. Later poets such as Ghalib and Iqbal are often discussed as having felt his pressure and influence. 
In these couplets, Bedil speaks in the voice of hard-won counsel—urging wakefulness to time, humility under heat, and a kind of self-forgetful usefulness—returning again and again to “smoke” as the modest sign of an inner fire that refuses ego’s blaze.

  من نمی‌گویم زیان کن یا به فکر سود باش
ای ز فرصت بیخبر در هر چه باشی زود باش

Close translation:
I’m not telling you to take a loss, or to fixate on gain.
You who are unaware of opportunity—whatever you are doing, be quick about it.
My version:
Neither loss, nor profit do I preach
I  seek to awaken you who sleep through opportune time—whatever you do, do it now.
Explanation / notes:
This is not a merchant’s proverb. “Profit/loss” is a way of naming all the calculations of ego: How do I come out ahead?
Bedil’s point: you can argue forever about outcomes, but the real failure is missing the moment (فرصت).
زود باش (“be quick”) isn’t just speed; it’s wakefulness, responsiveness, not postponing life.

در طلب تشنیع کوتاهی مکش از هیچکس
شعله هم‌ گر بال بی‌ آبی‌ گشاید دود باش

Close translation:
In the pursuit of censure/blame, don’t hold back from anyone.
Even if a flame spreads wings in dryness, be smoke.
My version:
If blame is the price, don’t shy away from any road.
Even when the fire flares in drought—choose to be smoke.
Explanation / notes (and why it sounds paradoxical):
تشنیع is “denunciation, public blaming.” Bedil treats “being blamed” as something you may meet when you act truthfully or refuse hypocrisy.
The second line is a signature Bedil move: he shifts from heroic imagery (شعله, flame) to something less “proud”: دود, smoke.
My reading: he’s advising humility under heat. When conditions make you “flare up” (anger, ego, performance), don’t become a destructive blaze—be smoke: present, undeniable, but self-effacing, drifting upward rather than striking outward.
Another layer: smoke is also proof of an inner fire. Even when you cannot “burn brightly,” let there still be a sign of sincerity.

زیب هستی چیست غیر از شور عشق و ساز حسن
نکهت‌ گل ‌گر نه‌ای دود دماغ عود باش

Close translation:
What adorns existence except love’s fervor and beauty’s music?
If you’re not the flower’s fragrance, then be the incense-smoke that pleases the senses.
My version:
What makes life worth wearing, except love’s heat and beauty’s song?
If you can’t be rose-scent—then be oud-smoke: at least, perfume the air.
Explanation / notes:
زیب هستی = “the ornament/beauty of being.” For Bedil, existence is justified aesthetically and spiritually: love + beauty.
He offers a gentle but demanding ethic: If you can’t be the rose itself (natural perfection), then be the incense (crafted offering).
دود دماغ عود: literally “smoke for the nose from aloeswood/incense.” It suggests: even if your form is “smoke” (ephemeral, not solid), you can still give fragrance—benefit, refinement, sweetness—to others.

از خموشی‌ گر بچینی دستگاه عافیت
گفتگو هم عالمی دارد نفس فرسود باش

Close translation:
If from silence you set up the apparatus of safety/ease,
conversation too has its own world—be a worn-out breath.
My version:
Even if you build your comfort out of silence,
speech has its own universe—so speak like a worn breath: lightly.
Explanation / notes:
دستگاه عافیت: a whole “setup” of wellbeing—almost like a little fortress of comfort. Silence can be used as protection.
But Bedil refuses a simple “silence good / speech bad.” He says گفتگو هم عالمی دارد: talk also contains worlds—meaning, connection, discovery, even devotion.
نفس فرسود (“worn-out breath”) is striking: if you must speak, speak without force, without vanity—less “performance,” more “exhale.”
I also hear a warning: don’t let your speech become mere breath-waste; either keep silence, or let words carry real weight.

راحتی‌گر هست در آغوش سعی بیخودیست
یک قلم لغزش چو مژگانهای خواب‌آلود باش

Close translation:
If there is comfort, it’s in the embrace of striving—and in self-forgetfulness.
Let even a single slip of the pen be like the eyelashes of the drowsy.
My version:
Rest is not in idling—it’s in effort that forgets the self.
Even your smallest “mistake” should fall softly, like sleepy lashes.
Explanation / notes:
بیخودی in Bedil is often mystical: “selflessness / self-forgetfulness.”. Comfort comes when the ego loosens.
The second line uses calligraphic delicacy: لغزش قلم (a pen’s slip) can ruin a line—or create a graceful curve. مژگان (eyelashes) are a classic image for thin, fine strokes.
Ethically: even your wrong turns should be gentle, not cruel; aesthetically: even deviation can carry grace when it’s not driven by ego.

مومیایی هم شکستن خالی از تعمیر نیست
ای زیانت هیچ بهر دردمندی سود باش

Close translation:
Even breaking “mūmiyā’ī” (mummy-balm / medicinal mummia) is not without repair.
O you who are “loss”—be profit for some afflicted person.
My version:
Even what gets crushed can become a salve.
If you must be loss—then be someone’s healing.
Explanation / notes:
مومیایی can refer to a medicinal substance associated with “mummia,” used as a restorative in older medicine.  Dehkhodā explicitly records this “drug” sense alongside the mummy/embalming senses, and even notes older classifications like مومیایی معدنی (mineral mumiya) versus مومیایی قبوری (mumiya associated with tombs/mummies).  In older Arabic, mūmiyā as a resinous bitumen used medically.  In Indo-Persian/Unani-Ayurvedic spheres, مومیا / مومیایی is often used for a healing mineral substance, and it can overlap in popular naming with shilajit (the resin/exudate associated with mountain rock).

The idea is: it’s broken/crushed to become useful.
Bedil flips the ordinary fear of نقصان (loss): don’t obsess over being “successful.” If you’re broken, let the brokenness become medicine—service, compassion, repair.
This is one of Bedil’s most human lines: suffering is not praised as suffering; it’s praised only if it is turned outward into benefit.

خاک آدم‌، آتش ابلیس دارد درکمین
از تعین هم برآیی حاسد و محسود باش

Close translation:
Adam’s dust has Iblis’s fire lying in ambush.
Even if you rise beyond individuation, you’ll face envy—envier and envied.
My version:
In Adam’s clay, Satan’s fire waits in hiding.
Even if you outgrow the “self,” envy still circles: giving it, receiving it.
Explanation / notes:
The human is made of خاک (clay) but shadowed by آتش (fire): temptation, arrogance, rivalry.
تعین is “fixed identity / individuation”—the sense of “I am this, not that.” Bedil says: even if you transcend that, social life still throws envy at you.
حاسد و محسود: the jealous one and the one envied. It’s a bleak realism: as long as there are comparisons, envy keeps reproducing.
The implied counsel: don’t feed the comparison-machine. Keep the ego small; don’t intoxicate yourself with being admired, and don’t poison yourself with wanting what others have.

چیست دل تا روکش دیدار باید ساختن
حسن بی‌پروا خوشست آیینه‌گو مر دود باش

Close translation:
What is the heart, that one must make a cover/veil for the sight of meeting?
Unguarded beauty is sweet—mirror, tell me: be smoke.
My version:
Why should the heart sew a veil over seeing?
Beauty is best unveiled—mirror, instruct me: become smoke.
Explanation / notes (this one is deliberately hard):
روکش دیدار: a “covering” over vision/encounter. The heart is often the “mirror” of seeing the Beloved; coverings are excuses, fears, self-protections.
Bedil praises حسن بی‌پروا: beauty without timid concealment.
Then he returns to the refrain: دود. Here smoke reads to me as self-erasure: when beauty appears, the lover’s ego should not “stand solid” in front of it. Become smoke—thin, rising, leaving no hard outline.
There’s also a dramatic logic: smoke is what a hidden fire produces. If you cannot show the fire directly, let the smoke of longing testify.

زینهمه سعی طلب جز عافیت مطلوب نیست
گر همه داغست هر جا شعله آب آسود باش

Close translation:
From all this striving of seeking, nothing is wanted except wellbeing/ease.
If everything is scorch and wound, wherever you are be a flame resting in water.
My version:
All our seeking, in the end, wants peace.
Even if the world is all burns—be a flame that can rest in water.
Explanation / notes:
First line is quietly ironic: we dress life up as ambition, spirituality, knowledge—yet we’re often just chasing aafiyat (ease, safety).
Second line is pure Bedil: an impossible image—a flame at ease in water. That impossibility is the point: a person with inward steadiness can hold fire (clarity, love, aspiration) without agitation, even inside conditions that should extinguish them.
It’s not about becoming cold; it’s about becoming unshaken.

نقد حیرتخانهٔ هستی صدایی بیش نیست
ای عدم نامی به دست آورده‌ای موجود باش

Close translation:
The ready cash of existence’s house of bewilderment is nothing but a sound.
O nonbeing, you’ve gained a name—be “existent.”
My version:
In the marketplace of this baffling life, the only currency is a sound—
a name. O nothingness, once you’re named, you pass as real.
Explanation / notes:
نقد is “cash-in-hand,” what counts immediately. Bedil says what counts, socially and existentially, is often just صدا—voice, talk, the word.
The second line is a sharp philosophical jab: naming creates “presence.” Nonbeing becomes “something” once language pins a label on it.
Bedil isn’t simply saying “everything is fake.” He’s showing how fragile our “reality” is: part experience, part story, part reputation, part sound.

بر مقیمان سرای عاریت بیدل مپیچ
چون تو اینجا نیستی‌ گوهر که خواهد بود باش

Close translation:
Don’t entangle yourself with the residents of this borrowed dwelling, Bedil.
Since you are not truly here, be the jewel—be what will endure.
My version:
Bedil—don’t entangle yourself with the residents of this  rented house.
Since you don’t belong to “here,”  be the jewel that lasts.
Explanation / notes:
سرای عاریت: the world as a loaned house—temporary lodging.
مپیچ: don’t twist yourself around them—don’t get caught in their disputes, status games, and attachments.
The closing push is strong: if you’re not made for this temporary stay, then be gohar—the essence, the concentrated value, the inner substance.
He ends by addressing himself, which makes it feel like a private correction rather than a sermon.