Who steals my purse steals solid cash? Shakespeare and Ghālib decode it for you

 

Is money God? Or is it trash? Permit me to begin with mock solemnity, almost scriptural in gravity, head bowed, voice lowered, sackcloth firmly in place. This piety, however, will not last long. Very soon, the discourse is likely to descend into inanities, and, not long after, into profanities of a distinctly unholy kind.

For the moment, money pretends to be a lofty abstraction, discussed gravely over coffee by people who insist they are not materialistic. Wait a little. Very soon it clears its throat, rattles its coins, and asks who exactly is settling the bill. We publicly scold it as vulgar, privately chase it with remarkable agility, and when the landlord knocks, discover a sudden, sincere, and deeply devotional faith in its divinity.

Sad jalva rū-ba-rū hai jo mizhgāñ uThā.iye

tāqat kahāñ ki diid kā ehsāñ uThā.iye

(Sad jalva: a hundred grand appearances, spectacles, rū-ba-rū: face to face, mizhgāñ: eyebrows, diid: sight, ehsāñ: obligation)

Dīvār bār-e-minnat-e-mazdūr se hai ḳham

ai ḳhānumāñ- ḳharāb na ehsāñ uThā.iye

(bār-e-minnat-e-mazdūr: weight of the kindness of the labourers, ḳhānumāñ-ḳharāb: one whose home is ruined, ehsāñ: obligation) 

Ghālib has opened the account with two shers that speak not merely of beauty or devotion, but of burden, of obligation disguised as generosity, of splendour so overwhelming that even witnessing it becomes a debt one cannot repay.

Hundreds of dazzling spectacles of (her or his) charisma) erupt the moment one lifts one’s eyelids. But where is the strength to witness such overwhelming power? Who has the capacity to bear the obligation imposed by this vision and absorb all its moods and hues? A man keeps looking, and looking, until he is exhausted, while the marvels of her magnificence—or his omnipotence—remain inexhaustible.

Read romantically, the sher suggests that as soon as the lover opens his eyes, the beloved stands before him in radiant splendour, as though hundreds of lights have been switched on at once. He is dazzled, elated, and immediately burdened by gratitude. The glow of her beauty overwhelms him; he feels indebted for the vision, yet incapable of carrying the weight of that obligation. Another sense hints that our fragile minds cannot bear the kindness of sight itself, and that we enjoy the spectacle of the world only so long as we keep our eyes shut. The first misra may also be read as an offer of innumerable worldly temptations, spectacles best refused.

The sher lends itself equally well to a metaphysical reading. The beloved may dissolve into the Supreme Being, and ehsāñ uThā.iye becomes not kindness but an inescapable obligation. The burden is the vision itself, bestowed upon you, leaving you permanently indebted, without the strength to ever set it down.

What makes the construction exquisite is the repeated act of lifting, first the eyelids, and then the burden of beneficence that follows. Lifting one’s eyelids appears effortless, but what it reveals is so heavy that the act itself becomes a trial. The simplest motion triggers the greatest weight.

The second sher carries this argument forward. The weight of obligation is so immense that even the walls of one’s house cannot withstand it; they bend under the load of the kindness of the labourers who built it. O ruined soul, do not shoulder the weight of another’s favour while you inhabit this world. Learn from your own walls: even stone buckles when forced to uphold an obligation too long.

Moving from metaphor to real-world debts, we encounter Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice, speaking glibly of his heavy indebtedness to his friend, and principal creditor, Antonio. He admits to living extravagantly, to maintaining ‘a more swelling port’ than his faint means could afford, and now professes a desire to settle honourably. A sense of propriety belatedly dawns, even as he prepares to borrow yet again:

“’Tis not unknown to you, Antonio,
How much I have disabled mine estate
By something showing a more swelling port
Than my faint means would grant continuance.
Nor do I now make moan to be abridged
From such a noble rate. But my chief care
Is to come fairly off from the great debts
Wherein my time, something too prodigal,
Hath left me gaged. To you, Antonio,
I owe the most in money and in love,
And from your love I have a warranty
To unburden all my plots and purposes
How to get clear of all the debts I owe.”

Bassanio’s speech reminds one of this famous sher of Ghālib:

Qarz kī piite the mai lekin samajhte the ki haañ

Rang lāvegī hamārī fāqa-mastī ek din

(fāqa-mastī: cheerfulness in starvation)

On the surface, it appears repentant: drinking on borrowed money, fully aware of the consequences that drunken and cheerful profligacy in the middle of abject poverty of starvation would certainly show its true colours in some severe comeuppance. But this is Ghālib, not a moralising accountant. I prefer to read rang lāvegī positively—as a celebration of cheerful recklessness. Even amid deprivation, he drinks with aplomb, buoyed by the conviction that this very insouciance will brighten things someday. The sher is not apologetic; it is gloriously self-congratulatory.

Polonius in Hamlet, often dismissed as a fool, strikes gold here: imposing debt on a friend is a sure way to lose both money and friendship. “For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” Really? And yet, do we not all believe we have liberal friends immune to such arithmetic?

Here you may pause, nod gravely with Polonius, and then, like the rest of us, promptly exempt your own circle from this dreary axiom. For surely our friends are different: immune to loans, inoculated against resentment, sanctified by credit cards, UPI pings, split bills, and that eternal sacrament, “next week pakka, boss.” Thus we preach prudence by day and borrow by night, convinced that affection compounds while accounts miraculously cancel themselves. For where goodwill is sworn and emojis are plentiful, debt, like honour, shall dissolve in air—which sounds magnificently Shakespearean, and is therefore best abandoned at once for the Bard himself.

The First Gaoler in Cymbeline offers a darker consolation to a condemned prisoner, Lenatus: while his circumstances are dire, at least he need no longer worry about settling his tavern bills. “But the comfort is, you shall be called to no more payments, fear no more tavern-bills.” Financial freedom, at last.

Stephano in The Tempest goes one step further: death itself clears the ledger. “He that dies pays all debts.” A remarkably final settlement.

Somewhere between these heavy burdens and flippant consolations, I find myself enjoying this excursion through the masters. Read Shakespeare and Ghālib on money long enough, and you will always find justification for precisely the philosophy you wish to adopt. Their ambivalence is their greatest gift.

Bazm-e-shāhanshāh meñ ash.ār kā daftar khulā

rakhiyo yā rab ye dar-e-ganjīna-e-gauhar khulā

(daftar: office, scroll, registry, dar-e-ganjīna-e-gauhar: door of the treasury of gems)

God knows what the master intended but let us ignore the deeper meaning here. Taken literally, it is a prayer that some bountiful ledger, and its doors, may open for you. One could do worse.

Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor understands the matter succinctly. Although the Bard’s works hardly show that money complicates things, this chap somehow did catch the core. Money simplifies life, oils every hinge, and clears every obstruction. “If money go before, all ways do lie open.”

Now to the central point. The Bard had the villain Iago, in Othello, famously declare, “Who steals my purse steals trash. 'Tis something, nothing: 'Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands.” The rhetoric is clever, but strip it bare and the purse still matters profoundly—especially to the one who owned it.

Then you have Falstaff, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, adding his brand of wisdom: money fights on your behalf. Grammar aside, the sentiment stands firm, Money is a good soldier, and will on.”

The Bastard in King John provides perhaps the most enduring insight of all: morality follows money, that we modulate our actions to fit our finances. Consider today’s electoral democracy and its functioning on the ground, where many voters resort to curry favours for their financial interests, with scant regard to consistent ideology and so lines between political left and right are blurred, bar the shouting. Lo behold, we all must accept the bastard’s philosophy. “Whiles I am a beggar, I will rail and say there is no sin but to be rich; and being rich, my virtue then shall be to say there is no vice but beggary.”

Let me conclude this shower of pearls from the two masters with Ghālib’s final defiance: a refusal to accept that money is mere trash, and a clear assertion that, yes, when I bite the dust but had the ability, I would ask the miserly earth as to what it had done with all those precious treasures which were consigned to it along with me.

Maqdūr ho to ḳhaak se pūchhūñ ki ai la.iim

tū ne vo ganj-hā-e-garāñ-māya kyā kiye

(Maqdūr: ability, capacity, la.iim: sordid, miserly, vile, mean ganj-hā-e-garāñ-māya: strongly precious treasures)

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