S. R. Faruqi:

Ghalib has presented this theme with perfect eloquence [balaa;Gat]:

G{35,2}

But Mir has made devastating use of the word suluuk , since it can also mean 'kindness', 'virtue', and 'peace'. All four words in the second line are a good example of the wordplay of 'commonality' [muraa((at ul-na:ziir]. There's also a good mood of 'opposition'. If sometimes there was 'pain', then sometimes there was only a 'wound/scar', which itself is not necessarily painful. If sometimes there was a 'wound/injury', then sometimes there was only a 'strike/cut', which doesn't necessarily result in a wound.

In addition, in Ghalib's verse there's the time of leave-taking and the situation after it, but in Mir's verse the time before the leave-taking, the leave-taking, and the time after the leave-taking-- all three times are present. That is, the 'pain' was of the fear of separation, and this was a result of that 'strike/cut' that separation has inflicted, and the 'wound/scar' is of that 'wound/injury' that was received in the separation and now (after the separation) has scabbed over and become a 'scar'.

FWP:

SETS == PARALLELISM; REPETITION; SOUND EFFECTS
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS == OPPOSITION; RHYME; WORDPLAY

This is an unusually long and swingy meter; it's really fun to recite aloud. The rhythm and repetition have a hypnotic effect of their own, and in each of the verses selected from this ghazal Mir contrives to create additional, and different, special effects of internal rhyme. In the present verse, both lines offer internal rhyme at the halfway point-- a rhyme that coincides with the rhyme and refrain of the opening-verse itself, giving us a fourfold internal rhyme in two lines. Similar internal-rhyme effects have been created in {45,2}, {45,6}, and {45,7} as well (and in {45,3} and {45,4}, which are not included in SSA).

As SRF points out, suluuk is a multivalent word, offering a range of neutral and favorable possibilities (see the definition above)-- but no clearly negative ones. Thus the inventory in the second line comes as a shock of 'opposition'. There's also the special 'behavior' or 'treatment' of vidaa(( itself, a term that refers not just to the physical act of parting but more particularly to the special social ceremony of 'leave-taking' that precedes the parting. This formal leave-taking conspicuously features an 'embrace of leave-taking' [aa;Gosh-e vidaa((]; for a discussion and examples, see G{57,6}. It often includes the gift of a ring or other memento by the leave-taker, the presentation of a protective amulet to the leave-taker, etc. So the memory of such a leave-taking might well be bittersweet.

But the speaker's memory of 'leave-taking', by which he is constantly hounded, includes nothing but the bitter, nothing but wounds and pain and misery. The rhetorical structure of 'sometimes X, sometimes Y' leads us to expect an alternation among different entities. But his memory in effect is of 'sometimes X, sometimes X, sometimes X, sometimes X'. The piling up of slots for different entities, and the successive filling up of each one with virtually the same item, creates a cumulative effect of utter wretchedness. The small variations that SRF points out are certainly there, but they're subsumed into a much more powerful, looming, seemingly universal wretchedness. Within those contours, the lover's entire life seems to take place. In a way he's showing us around it-- and perhaps even with a certain perverse pride. Along these lines, compare G{2,1}.