FWP:
SETS == MUSHAIRAH;
WORDPLAY
EYES {3,1}
'DOUBLE ACTIVATION' VERSES: {13,1}, pardah ; {16,4}; {18,7x}; {20,3}, ʿahd bañdhnā ; {26,4}, gāliyāñ khānā ; {27,10x}, ġhubār ; {48,10}, havā ; {49,5}; {50,3}, ḥarf ; {58,5}, saudā ; {62,10}, nāle ; {77,4}*, shor ; {81,5}, nikalnā (evoked); {81,7x}; {84,3x}, gird/gard; {89,3}, qasam khānā ; {100,2}, muqaddar ; {100,3}, manżūr ; {100,4}; {120,3}, sīne ; {120,6}**, kāñ ; {121,1}; {152,1}; {156,2x}, Zamin explains; {166,7x}**; {167,6}, qalam honā ; {169,14x}; {172,3}; {180,7}, kām ; {183,6}**, triple; {183,7}; {193,2}, āb ; {217,2}; {217,5}**, uṭhānā ; [227,2}, fashār ; {229,6} // {428x,6}*
ABOUT 'DOUBLE ACTIVATION': The present verse is a clever, enjoyable example of wordplay. And in classic mushairah-verse style, it not only refuses to yield its full meaning until the very last moment, but actually misdirects the reader or hearer. For after the first line speaks of what is obviously a grievous wound, the second line seems at first simply to locate it: it's found, naturally, 'in the breast' [sīne meñ], where the lover's mortal wound must always be.
Not until we hear, at the last possible moment, the word 'needle' [sozan], do we realize that we need to go back and revise our reading. And not substitutionally revise it (by replacing one meaning with another), but expand it into two separate readings. For the heart (sorry, sorry) of the verse is sīne meñ , which contains the oblique forms of both sīnah , 'breast, chest', and sīnā , 'to stitch, to sew'. Since both nouns look the same in the oblique, they aren't even homonyms as they normally are, but must be undecideably both present at once, like the properties of light. And since both nouns would yield a completely, equally, fine and appropriate meaning in that position in that sentence, neither can be at all preferred over the other. This makes it an excellent example of what I have decided to call 'double activation'.
For discussion of such 'double activation' examples in Mir, see M{15,1}. And here is a piquant modern example by Nasir Turabi (from ʿaks-e faryādī , p. 112, with thanks to Zahra Sabri):
yih bhī hai ek zindagī yūñ bhī sahī kabhī kabhī
apnā to bojh utar gayā , apnī to hār ho chukī
The sahī can be from sahnā , or else it can be part of the idiomatic expression yūñ bhī sahī .
Either 'in the breast' (where the wound is located), or 'in stitching' (while the process of sewing up the wound was under way), the wound made the eyelashes of the needle 'blood-dripping'. It did this either by (1) bleeding so grievously that the needle's eye became physically saturated with blood; or by (2) offering such a melancholy sight that the eye of the needle actually wept tears of deep emotion and compassion-- the proverbial 'tears of blood' such as lovers constantly weep-- at the sight of it.
Equipping the needle not only with an 'eye'-- which it always has, in Urdu just as primally as in English-- is supplemented by equipping the needle's eye with 'eyelashes', which it normally doesn't have in Urdu any more than in English. That might seem at first glance (so to speak) to work in favor of the 'pathetic fallacy' meaning (2); but the matter is not so simple. The polish-marks on a mirror can seek to be metallic 'eyelashes' too, as in {17,4}, in response to the beloved's radiance, but without any such quivering, emotional anthropomorphism.
This verse has two beautiful cousins {97,11}
and {97,12} whose greater glory of metaphor might seem
to overshadow it; but if they have glory, this one has wit.
Nazm:
By 'needle' is meant the 'needle of grief', the place of which is inside the breast. And if we don't take 'needle' as this metaphor, then the verse will become commonplace [ʿāmiyānah], the way unintelligent poets versify unreal [ġhair-vāqiʿī] things. Here, if in place of 'breast' [sīnah] you consider it to be 'stitching' [sīnā], then there's no need of a metaphor. (128)
== Nazm page 128