S. R. Faruqi:

In the second line ko))ii has the metrical weight of fa(( . A wretched death, or a miserable life-- and then for word of this to go (or not go) to the dying person's survivors; this theme Mir has often versified. It is a reflection of his pursuit of his temperamental absorption in down-to-earthness and domestic, daily life. It reveals his interests in affairs that are based on human relationships. From the fifth divan [{1564,3}]:

diivaaro;N se sar maaraa tab raat sa;har kii hai
ai .sa;hib-e sangii;N-dil ab merii ;xabar karnaa

[I struck my head against walls-- then I have turned night into dawn
oh Sahib with a stony heart, now inquire about me]

Here ;xabar karnaa means both 'to take care of, to support' and 'to obtain information about'. In the light of the second meaning, the second line is a powerful cry/call. Some person is in prison, and says to the keeper of the prison, or the one who has imprisoned him, 'Now send information about me to my family'.

In the first divan itself, in one verse he has expressed the theme of information being sent, by means of the sinking of a ship-- and expressed it superbly well:

{552,9}.

Dard too has composed a ghazal in this 'ground', and has versified the theme of information being sent, in a very fresh style:

qaa.sid se kaho phir ;xabar uudhar hii ko le jaa
yaa;N be-;xabarii aa ga))ii jab tak ;xabar aave

[tell the Messenger, then, to take the word in that direction
here, unconsciousness would have come, by the time word would come]

In Mir's present verse, the word :taraf-daaro;N is very meaningful. This includes the speaker's family, friends, sympathizers, and all those who valued his life and did not want him to die. So to speak, these people are the ones who will mourn the speaker's death, or grieve over it. In the second line the word :zaalim is of course appropriate, but here it doesn't have the power that it has in

{946,3}.

Rather, in the present verse this word :zaalim seems to have an unnecessary amount of 'dramaticness' and to be overstated, because in it is the kind of appeal for pity that we saw in {552,9}. Despite this weakness, the present verse is admirable because in it has been versified a whole story of friendlessness and solitary death.

With regard to the theme, the special point in the verse is that the speaker doesn't want his life to be saved-- he is convinced of his death, but feels no sorrow over it. He is leaving to his slayer/slayers or enemy/enemies a final bequest: that they should arrange for the comfort of his friends/partisans. In this too there's sarcasm-- that on behalf of the slayers, someone should go to offer comfort or consolation. The case of the people of Imam Husain's household and the people around Yazid comes to mind.

In tasallii ko kar aave there's a novel aspect that's worth our attention. In Urdu tasallii denaa is the idiom. Mir and some other eighteenth-century poets, translating directly from the Persian, used tasallii honaa (that is, tasallii shudan ) in the sense of 'for the heart to be a bit reassured and peaceful'. See for example

{483,3}.

But tasallii karnaa is usually transitive, meaning 'to reassure someone'; in the Punjab, even now they say aap apnii tasallii kar le;N kih sab saamaan ma;hfuu:z hai .

Mir has apparently used tasallii kar aave in the sense of 'to give consolation/reassurance' [tasallii de aave] . But if he has used this idiom in the sense of 'to reassure oneself', then the meaning emerges that the slayer/slayers' Messenger will go and reassure himself that none of the speaker's friends/supporters are left alive, but rather that they've all been sent down into the valley of death. It's clear that this is an extremely sarcastic utterance, because it means that (1) the slayers seek the death not only of the speaker, but rather of all his friends/supporters; and (2) the slayers are anxious and fearful only about the slain one's friends/supporters, and after the slain one's death they don't want to leave them alive.

None of the Urdu dictionaries have tasallii karnaa ; in fact, only Platts' dictionary has given even tasallii honaa . [A discussion of the deficiencies of various dictionaries; they are reproached for neglecting the usages of a poet like Mir.]

FWP:

SETS
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS

SRF presents this ghazal and the next one, {509}, as a 'double ghazal'; for discussion of this, see {509,1}.

In the first line the mere looks like a kind of 'midpoint' (positioned so as to be read with either the previous clause or the following one). But in this case I think it must be read with the previous clause, because 'after my having died' is just sufficient information to start the gears turning, while 'after having died', with no dead person specified, is really too vague a beginning for a verse. (Then as a fringe benefit we get an extra emphasis on the enjoyable juxtaposition mare mere .)

This means that the :taraf-daar people cannot be modified by the mere , so they don't necessarily belong to the speaker. They could equally well be 'friends/supporters' of the slayer/beloved, and the speaker could be (bitterly? sarcastically? amusedly?) urging the slayer to send word around to all her friends after his death, so that they can all be relieved and consoled at his being out of their lives.

Another possibility that occurred to me is that we might be dealing here with the usual kind of absent, remote beloved. After the speaker dies, she will no doubt hear rumors about it through the gossip network. But she will naturally want to be sure that he's really and truly gone, so the speaker reminds her (bitterly? sarcastically? amusedly?) that she should be sure and send to his friends/supporters a Messenger who can reliably confirm the information.

Note for grammar fans: We need to take mare as short for the adverbial perfect participle mare hu))e , 'my [being in a state of] having died'. Modern usage would be marne .

Note for meter fans: Here ko))ii is scanned as one long syllable, which is a permissible variation. This is what SRF means by saying that it 'has the metrical weight of fa(( '.