मज़दूरी

Meaning

Manual labor, daily wage work, or toil done for hire.

Detailed Meaning

Literally denoting physical toil or hired manual labor, the word carries a sharply satirical undertone in this couplet. Ghalib reduces Farhad's legendary romantic feat of cutting a canal through Mount Bisutun to mere unpaid servitude for his rival Khusrav's palace of pleasure. It effectively demystifies noble romantic sacrifice into mundane, unrewarded labor.

Etymology

Persian (مزد 'mazd', reward/wage + وری '-varī', suffix denoting activity or state).

Usage

In classical ghazal poetry, 'mazdoori' is rarely aligned with romance; here it is deployed with deliberate irony to deflate exalted notions of romantic self-sacrifice.

Examples

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Related Words