Tamaan umr ka hisaab maangti hai zindagi.

When a tangential truth is sought brutally,

because existence has to be negotiated between

oppressive dark trials of morality,

Your jeering faces begin to look ridiculous to me.

I cannot pretend not to notice you.

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Trial , however is a sterner thing.

thinner than a hair, sharper than a sword’s edge…

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*beginning of a rendition on Shahryar’s lyric for the song ‘Yeh Kya Jagah hai Doston’, from Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan.