FWP:
SETS == A,B; GENERATORS;
OPPOSITES
MIRROR: {8,3}
ABOUT THE SIX DIRECTIONS: Whenever
Ghalib mentions the 'six directions', he always seems to go spiralling off
into some kind of cosmic abstraction. The literal meaning of shash-jihat is 'six-sided' (see the definition above). Ghalib uses it to refer to the 'six directions' (the usual
four, plus up and down); the extension from four to six means that mystical interpretations can readily be invited. For more such complex uses of
the 'six directions', see {12,6x}, {128,1}, {152,4},
{155,4x}, {228,2}, and {420x,6}.
What a total change from the first three verses! From extreme simplicity and starkness, to such a baroque, metaphysical complexity. Faruqi's explanation seems to make most sense of the verse. A mirror reflects anything that comes along-- any kind of thing, defective or perfect, from any direction. The searching heart of the mystical seeker, says Faruqi, no longer bothers with such distinctions, but transcends them. Perhaps they are all part of God's creation; perhaps they are nothing at all, and just don't signify. The word yaa;N , literally 'here', usually implies either 'in the speaker's vicinity' or, more generally, 'in this world'.
But of course, any sense-making is on thin ice, and can never be other than haphazard or arbitrary-feeling. For the entities in the verse are excessively abstract-- a mirror, a door, the 'six directions', and someone or something located 'here' (about whom or which we have no information whatsoever).
And since the verse is a classic 'A,B' one, the relationship between the two lines is left entirely up to us to decide. Do the two lines describe the same situation? Does one of them describe a cause, and the other an effect (and if so, which way around)? Or do they describe two different situations-- which may be similar, or then again may be contrasted? As so often in Ghalib's verses, whatever answers we choose to give can be nothing but speculative, based largely as they must be on our own literary sensibilities or philosophical notions-- or, for that matter, the mood we're in at the time.
For surely a large part of the pleasure of the verse is actually a kind of mood-- a vague sense of quiescence, of radical passivity and acceptance, of mystical openness, of marveling at the whole liilaa of the cosmos.
Compare the less compelling {60,2}, in which the addressee is apparently rebuked for distinguishing between 'lowness and highness'.
Compare Mir's brilliantly simple, faux-naïf rejection of such distinctions in M{694,3}.
Nazm:
Before both defective and perfect, the six directions are present, and we are at a loss to understand them both. We are looking at both in that mirror, and are astonished that both have the same aspect. Here there's no difference between defective and perfect. A second interpretation is that the author would have called them 'facing toward six directions', and the meaning is that the way a mirror accepts reflections, and makes no distinctions, this is the same state as the image of the mystic knower's illumined heart. (38-39)
== Nazm page 38; Nazm page 39