Ye daagh daagh ujaalaa, ye shab-gaziida sahar,
Vo intizaar thaa jis-kaa, ye vo sahar to nahiin,
Ye vo sahar to nahiin jis-kii aarzu lekar
Chale the yaar ke mil-ja-egi kahiin na kahin...

Faiz Ahmed Faiz was not alone in lamenting that the dawn of freedom from foreign rule did not quite turn out to be the dawn people were waiting for. The sky was supposed to be a vibrant rainbow of soaring hopes and joyous celebrations. But it was, as one translator of Faiz has put it, a "leprous daybreak", a "dawn mangled by night-s fangs".