Gulzar

Aadmi bulbula hai pani ka,
Aur pani ki bahti satah par,
Tootta bhi hai, doobta bhi hai,
Phir ubharta hai, phir se behta hai,
Na samandar nigal saka isko,
Na tawareekh tod paaiee hai,
Waqt ki mauj par sada behta,
Aadmi bulbula hai pani ka!
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Gulzar saab is a master poet! And his recitation of these awesome verses, before the song called 'Zindagi kya hai' (album: Koi Baat Chale), is brilliant. I had put this up as my gtalk status line and the snowbeak asked for a line-by-line translation. The following is what I could come up with:
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Man's a bubble of water,
And on the flowing surface of water,
He bursts, he drowns,
Then he emerges, and then again he flows,
Neither could the sea engulf him,
Nor could the annals destroy him,
Flowing eternally on the waves of time,
Man's a bubble of water!
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Another friend saw the translation and tried to correlate this to the laws of Physics. He said that the bubble is smallest when it's deep below the surface and its size slowly increases as it reaches the surface, where its size is maximum. And then it bursts. So, he said that water here is like problems and troubles and reaching the surface is some sort of an achievement and you literally get a 'breather' once you've achieved something.