What the Sun Leaves Behind

सूरज हूँ ज़िंदगी की रमक़ छोड़ जाऊँगा
मैं डूब भी गया तो शफ़क़ छोड़ जाऊँगा

— Iqbal Sajid

I keep coming back to this couplet. I first heard it in the 1990s, in the Akbar the Great serial on Doordarshan, and after that I never missed it. It has stayed with me since. Beautiful lines, and the fuller ghazal is better still. For some reason they sit in my head next to Frost’s miles to go before I sleep.

There is a more personal reason too. My name, Ravikiran, means a ray of the sun — Ravi is the sun, kiran its ray. So when the poet says “I am the sun,” the line feels almost meant for me. Over the years it has become a kind of note to myself: to live like that.

Roughly, the couplet says: I am the sun; I will leave a glow of life behind me, and even when I sink I will leave the red of dusk. Two words carry it. रमक़ (ramaq) is the faint spark that means something is still alive. शफ़क़ (shafaq) is the red that stays in the sky after the sun has gone down.

What I like is that the poet doesn’t ask to be spared the setting. The sun sets. That was never the question. He is saying something quieter: setting is not the same as disappearing. The light lasts a little longer than its source, and the dusk is proof the sun was there.

That is a kind way to think about a life. We spend so much effort just hoping to last. This says the measure is different — not how long you burn, but the colour you leave in the sky after you are gone.