FWP:
SETS == DIALOGUE;
EXCLAMATION; IDIOMS; SUBJECT?
MADNESS: {14,3}
SPEAKING: {14,4}
It's clear that the commentators-- these and others-- can't agree on who's saying what to whom. Which isn't surprising, is it? Ghalib has obviously rigged the verse that way. I can't figure out any one clear reading either. Here are some of the possibilities:
=Who has said, 'Ghalib's not bad'?! But except for for the fact that he's disordered in the head, what can anybody say?
=Who has said, 'Ghalib's not bad'? But except for for saying 'He's disordered in the head', what can anybody say?
=Who has said, 'Ghalib's not bad'? [He is bad, of course.] But except for the fact that he's disordered in the head-- he's indescribable [in his excellence]! ( kyaa kahiye , like kyaa baat hai , can also be used for the inexpressibility trope.)
If you ever see actual quotation marks in an edition of the divan, remember that they're only those of some modern editor trying to 'help' us by ruling out all readings other than his own. Ghalib would never have been so destructive of his own multivalence. But no matter how we choose to parse the implicit quotation marks, one clear and excellent feature remains: the interaction of kyaa kahiye with every possibility is jaunty, idiomatic, clever, amusing, and absolutely appropriate.
For another view of the 'disordered head', see {159,7}.
(Isn't it a pity that our 'scatterbrained', which is almost a literal translation, doesn't have the same meaning?) For another multivalent use of kyaa kahiye , see {209,1}.
Nazm:
That is, if he wouldn't be mad, then what can be said about him at all? [Discussion of the Arabic word sivaa being used with a Persian i.zaafat and also an Indic ke , and the nuances of this in terms of Urdu idiom.] (226)
== Nazm page 226