Ghalib is prepared to compromise:“Naheen nigar ko ulfat na ho, nigar tau hai, Ravani-e-ravish-o-masti-e-ada kahye.”
That means going as far as the other wants to. Not to push things. But this could have an opposite reaction:
“Soupçonnés tu le plaisir——d’agiter comme le vent le coeur des femmes timides.” Flaubert 
Some lines so resist translation. But I’ll try. “Do you imagine the pleasure—-of making, in the manner of the breeze, the heart of timid women flutter?” The line is preceded by: “long live love, money, wine, family, joy and sentiments. We take of all these as much as we can, but do not believe them.” Well, I suppose every society grants to its writers the privilege to bend the language to their whims and moods.But why “timid” women? In love, in reacting to attention, nay in attracting it, no woman is timid. It is often the young men, who are “timid”. They carry their shyness to a point, which others take for arrogance or indifference.The nineteenth century French poet, Jules Laforgue, who died at 27, wrote: 
 “Je puis mourir demain et je n’ai pas aimé. Mes lèvres n’ont jamais touché lèvres de femme, Nulle ne m’a donné dans un regard son âme, Nulle ne m’a tenu contre son coeur pâmé.”
(I can die tomorrow and I have never loved. My lips have never touched the lips of a woman,No one has passed her soul to me in a look,No one has held me against her fainting heart.)
Later in the poem, he said that he hated love and its etiquette. It is not quite clear what is meant by “hating love”. Perhaps, he never came across a woman he could love, or did not come across her at the right moment when she was free to reciprocate.Perhaps, it is something more. He begins another poem with:
 “Celle qui doit me mettre au courant de la Femme, Nous lui dirons d’abord, de mon air le moins froid, La somme des angles d’un triangle, chère âme, Est egale à deux droits.”
(She who should educate me about the woman, We will first say to her in my least cold manner, The sum of angles of a triangle, dear heart Is equal to two right angles.)
This is the language of a woman-hater, not that of a timid heart. It could also be the result of an ardent passion rejected, or of a rebuff to someone’s first advances. The problem of an amorous relationship is the problem of a choice at each step. As Sartre says, when a man takes a woman’s hand the first time in his, she has to make a decision right away. Sartre does not add that the need for a choice does not confront the man with the same immediacy. He has time!Our poetic tradition solves this problem of the appropriate signal by creating an unattainable object of love. She is an icon, an ideal, pure beauty, anything but a woman looking for and hoping to find a sympathetic comrade.
“Allah ray bay-niazi-e-adaab-e-iltifat, Dekha mujhay tau pa-e-nazar darmian na thha.”Faani
Majaz objects to a relationship, which gives birth to such poetry and appeals to the woman to be a comrade in the struggle for a better world:
“Toot jana dar-e-zindan ka tau dushwar na thha, Khood Zuleikha hi rafiq-e-mah-e-canaan na bani.”
He is right! We cannot go to a higher stage of poetic expression without breaking down the social barriers between the young of our nation. 

The writer is a retired ambassador.Email: abul_f@hotmail.com