Dushyant Kumar chooses one of the grandest images in Indian geography. The Himalaya is the source of the Ganga, India's most sacred river. Suffering has piled up like a mountain; it must now thaw and become a river of change.

The verb 'pighalni chahiye' (must melt) states a moral necessity rather than a hope. This is protest poetry in the Hindi ghazal form: the poet is not complaining but demanding that society's stored-up grief become movement.

The couplet comes from his collection Saaye Mein Dhoop (1975), which appeared months before his death and shortly after the Emergency era began; many readers have since used it as a rallying line for social movements.