Word Meaning
ख़जलत
ḳhajlat
Meaning
Shame, embarrassment, mortification, or bashfulness.
Detailed Meaning
In classical Urdu poetry, 'ḳhajlat' signifies profound shame, embarrassment, or mortification. In this couplet, the speaker is overwhelmed and exhausted by humiliation ('be-dimāġ-e-ḳhajlat'), enduring a prolonged, agonizing trial of existence. It conveys both an intense psychological unworthiness and the bitter sorrow of exposure before fate and the beloved.
Etymology
Arabic خَجْلَة (khajlah/khajlat), from the trilateral root خ-ج-ل (kh-j-l) meaning to be ashamed, confounded, or to blush.
Usage
Commonly invoked in the ghazal to express the lover's crushing sense of unworthiness, regret, or blushing humiliation before the indifferent beloved.
Examples
drowned in a sea of shame (ḳhajlat)
the mortification of repeated failures