S. R. Faruqi:

To call the heart a broad desert is a common theme; see

{1374,7}

and

{1620,7}.

In addition, consider, from the third divan:

{1252,4}.

Qa'im, like Mir, has used the image of a desolate jungle, and the truth is that he has done justice to it:

ghabrāʾe hai jī vusʿat-e dil dekh ke har dam
allâh re yih dasht bhī kitnā laq-o-daq hai

[the inner-self becomes agitated, seeing the expanse of the heart, at every moment
oh God, even/also this desert-- how desolate it is!]

But the freshness of Mir's verse has its own rank, because he has advised getting a view by putting the head down into the garment-hem, and has thus created an enjoyable tension in the expression. Janab Shah Husain Nahri has counselled, ''To put one's face into the collar' and 'to put one's head into the collar' are two different idioms'. For in fact, garebān meñ sar ḍālnā is a translation of [the Persian] sar bah garebān burdan , and we say it idiomatically when we want to admonish someone to give some thought to something. Or again, it's used in the sense of paying attention, as in Ghalib's line nāt̤iqah sar bah-garebāñ hai use kyā kahye [from his betel-nut ode, presented in G{95,1}].

Mir has gestured also to its sense of 'hidden' and expressed a fresh idea: that if you pay a bit of attention, if you learn your own inner condition, then you will know how empty, desolate, expansive a desert is the heart. He has excellently used garebāñ meñ sar ḍālnā in both the dictionary sense and the idiomatic sense. Without bending/bowing the head, the condition of the heart cannot be known.

This same idea Mir has expressed in almost the same words in the third divan [{1028,8}]:

ṭuk garebāñ meñ sar ko ḍāl ke dekh
dil bhī dāman-vasīʿ-e ṣaḥrā hai

[just put your head into your collar and look
even/also the heart is the expansive garment-hem of the desert]

The construction dāman-vasīʿ is fine, and the zila between garebāñ and dāman is interesting as well. But the sound-suitable narrativity of laqq-o-daqq-e jangal would be impossible to match. In the second line, the insha'iyah style has created 'dramaticness' in the style.

This 'ground' is that of Siraj Aurangabadi, but none of his verses is of the same stature. Although indeed, Fani has well composed this theme. In his verse, there's a 'mood' like the changing scene of a film:

ik ʿālam-e dil hai yihī dunyā yihī firdaus
har shai naz̤ar ātī hai naz̤ar ātī huʾī sī

[a single/particular/unique/excellent world of the heart, is this very world, this very sky
every thing is seen as if just coming into view]

In laq-o-daq, Mir placed a tashdīd on both the occurrences of qāf , and Qa'im versified them without the tashdīd . Nowadays they are to be heard without the tashdīd . But [the dictionary] nūr ul-luġhāt says that in Urdu this word is used only with the tashdīd . The amusing thing is that in nūr , the verse by Aftab ul-Daulah Qalaq that is given as a 'warrant' has a tashdīd only on the first qāf :

dekhā to laqq-o-daq hai ik maidāñ
bū-e insāñ nah ṣūrat-e ḥaivāñ

[when he looked-- there is a desolation, a single plain
neither the scent of a man, nor the shape of a beast]

[Discussion of the tashdīd indications in other dictionaries, and of various theories about the origin of the expression.] That is, it's a place that would be flat and devoid of greenery. In Urdu the sense of 'expansive' too would be blended in, and the meaning becomes 'an expansive, broad, devastated field or desert'. Nowadays this word is used only without a tashdīd . Abd ul-Rashid has collected more examples of both kinds of usage. Mir Anis:

vuh fauj vuh siyāhī-e ṣaḥrā-e laqq-o-daq
garmī vuh roz-e jang kī vuh pyās kā qalaq

[that army, that blackness of the desolate desert
that heat of the day of battle, that agitation of thirst]

And Mirza Sauda:

naz̤ar āyā ʿajab ṣaḥrā laq-o-daq
kih dekhe se jigar ho sher kā shaq

[there came into view a strange desert, a desolation
such that seeing it, a tiger's liver would split in half]

[Further discussion of modern usage, in relation to Arabic grammar.] Mir has taken daq as an Arabic word, and used a tashdid on the qāf . We can call this Mir's own invention.

FWP:

SETS == BHI; IDIOMS
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS == THEME

Taking the 'put your head into your collar' idiom as enjoining special attention, can you put your head inside your chest and see your own heart? If you could, you'd be in the midst of a bleak, hopeless, jungle or wilderness.

The use of bhī is particularly clever here. It can most conspicuously be the colloquial kind of usage that appears (and is discussed) in {601,1}; in both cases it appears in the same position in the line. In this case it's emphatic, meditative, or whatever, but doesn't (necessarily) have its ordinary meaning. But then-- in this case, unlike {601,1}, why couldn't it also have its ordinary meaning? In that case we'd have 'the heart too'-- that is, like the rest of the universe, it too is a jungly wilderness. Or else we'd have 'even the heart'-- you'd think it might be an exception to the hostile wildness of the universe, but alas, it's not.

Note for meter fans: In practical terms, we don't have to worry about decision criteria for the tashdīd , because the presence or absence of the tashdīd can be reliably known from the scansion of the line in question. It's useful to note that in classical Urdu ghazal, before an izafat (or a conjunctive vāʾo ), a two-consonant Arabic-derived word very often gains a tashdīd on the second consonant. Think of it as a bit of help for these very tiny words, since before an izafat the second consonant metrically abandons the first one and forms a new syllable with the izafat. This means that if the first consonant is left entirely alone, it hardly exists as a word any more. Thus for example fann-e dāstān-goʾī with the tashdīd is easier to read, because 'fan-ne' is easier to interpret than 'fa-ne' . This effect could be taken to account for the first tashdīd (before the conjunctive vāʾo ), but not the second, since in this verse it's not followed by an izafat; here we just have to take it as part of the (oddly spelled) word laqq-o-daqq , in the form in which Mir has chosen to use it.