I am sharing an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir: Whirlwind of the Heart:

I grew up with Urdu poetry, learning to recite verses from ghazals as soon as I could talk. Words held only visual meanings for me but that changed as I grew older and began to enter the world of poetry. Now I teach poetry whenever I can gather a group of students to take my class.

I enjoy explaining why ‘longing’ is an emotion filled with ‘rasa’ [relish] that should be experienced… Sanskrit poetics emphasises that the content of poetry is emotion and so does the classical ghazal: why love’s arrow stuck in the heart creates a wound that should not heal, why pain is a cleanser. But love is also the source of creation, the reason for existence. Love is both universal and personal; it transcends time and space; it carves light from darkness.

The heart is also a mirror of the self and, in the ghazal, the analogy of the mirror-heart is carried to great lengths. The heart’s depth cannot be fathomed; but the heart can also grow narrow or constricted. Why and how is the heart perceived as narrow? Perhaps because the pain of love is greater than the space in the heart, and the heart is filled with emotions. In the classical ghazal, another organ –– the liver, or jigar –– is equal to the heart in being a locus of love. The heart and liver are often in sync; they speak to each other and are equally affected by love. The liver, it was believed, produced blood while the heart expended it. But while the liver is perceived as the locus of life, the heart is the locus of Divine Radiance.

Altaf Husain Hali and Shibli Nomani, two important Urdu critics of the early 20th century, were critical of the role of emotions or jazbaat at the core of the ghazal. Under the influence of British colonial literary practice and Protestant values, Hali and Nomani advocated, instead, for the role of ethics as a more important component of poetry.

Another path-breaking early modern critic, Muhammad Hasan Askari, was also critical of the importance given to emotions in Urdu poetry. He emphasised the importance of qalb, the heart-mind, as the core of poetry, and argued that Islah-i-qalb or improvement of the qalb should be the goal of the ghazal. Qalb, the heart-mind, should not be confused with nafs or breath, self, soul, essence.

Askari’s thought merged the ghazal entirely with tasawwuf or mysticism. Earlier, Sufi poets such as Hafez and Rumi had taken the ghazal to profound spiritual heights, demonstrating that ishq-i-majaazi or worldly love could be a template for ishq-i-haqiqi or spiritual love. In the ghazal, love of the earthly kind can be a step or stage toward the opening of the heart to love of God.

Koi mere dil se poochhay tere teer-i-neem-kash ko Ye khalish kahaan se hoti jo jigar ke paar hota

[Would someone ask my heart about your half-drawn arrow/ Could such gnawing pain be there if it had gone through the liver?]

While the ghazal can glide from majaazi to haqiqi love through poetic devices such as tropes and metaphors, I believe that the ghazal, in both its classical and modern forms, transcends any kind of binding themes. Within the realm of the ghazal, themes can be infinitely refined and polished, subverted and reinvented. Thus, I was shocked to discover that Askari considers this famous verse of Ghalib to be weak because it only addresses the external world of love, ishq-i-majaazi, and not the internal or spiritual realm or ishq-i-haqiqi.

He claims that if the love represented in this ghazal was spiritual or haqiqi, then its khalish [gnawing pain or compulsive thought] would continue to escalate, even if the beloved’s arrow had pierced through the heart to enter the liver. He quotes a verse from Ghalib’s great contemporary, the master poet Zauq, to prove his point.

Khudang-i-yaar mere dil se kis tarha niklay Keh us ke saath hai ai Zauq meri jaan lagi

[How would the Beloved’s arrow leave my heart?/ O Zauq, my life is attached to it]

Zauq’s verse is undoubtedly effective, almost electrifying. Yet, I find myself arguing with Askari’s assessment. I don’t think Ghalib’s verse is any less accomplished, even if it does not allow a spiritual interpretation. After all, there is so much going on in Ghalib’s couplet. It begins with a piquant dialogue between the poet-speaker and the reader-listener: would someone ask the heart about the anguish or khalish that it is experiencing due to the arrow stuck in the liver?

The Urdu word ‘khalish’ has many meanings, including pain; one of them is curiosity or prying intensity. Ghalib’s verse enacts a playful and subtle slippage between arrow, liver and heart, where the arrow itself speaks through the liver, and addresses its question to the heart.

There is no easy way to translate jigar, a powerful and poetic ghazal trope, into English. ‘Liver’ in English, sounds simply gross. However, within the ghazal’s complex repertoire of the bodily metaphor, dil, the heart — a wayward, passionate, wounded, pain-filled, aching piece of the lover’s anatomy — is closely associated with jigar, the liver, which is constant, staid, filled with life-giving, life-sustaining blood. When the ghazal’s beloved throws her nigaah, her piercing gaze, it falls like an arrow to enter the heart, piercing its way down from the heart to the liver in one stroke, making both parts of the lover’s body consent to her power.

To take pleasure in the world of the ghazal, one must learn to appreciate the role of the liver alongside the heart. But the liver-heart connection also carries other serious physiological resonances. When one’s heart is medicated, one’s liver function is constantly monitored. The liver sympathises with the heart’s struggle, but tries to keep it in check from self-destruction.

The columnist is Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia in the US. X: @FarooqiMehr

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 22nd, 2026

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