“The Quintessence of Dust” or Man in Mir’s Measure

“How favored is man at whose behest, / The sky is made to measure the earth”; so begins the matla of one of Mir’s ghazals.*  The next few couplets elaborate the privilege of being human on earth where everything - the “chain of day and night”, “the sun, moon and clouds” –  is dwarfed to the service and interest of man. One sher even ventures that the upkeep of provisions must come at a cost: “What pain and toil it must have cost,  / To provide him things of varied hue”. The ghazal builds up the bounty and generosity within which human life exists only to contrast it with the attitude with which it is received: “But strange is man in word and deed / Self-willed, self-loving, full of self-conceit”.  The lack of humility, the inability to bow in gratitude to God or nature is the point of sharp criticism that this ghazal offers about the predicament of man. The maqta ends not on a note of admonishment as one might have come to expect but on a note of surprise, how did the quintessence of dust come to acquire so much privilege in God’s creation? “Mir! a handful of dust, my God! / How did he attain such heights”. This ghazal is a meditation on service and the self-importance of those that take their resources and their place in creation for granted. 

*This translation is by K.C.  Kanda  pg. 107 / (1998)