S. R. Faruqi:

In reply to the present verse, this can be said:

{775,10}.

It should be kept in mind that baate;N also means 'speech, poetry'. Even here, Mir paid heed to the aspect of meaning.

The mention of people reading/reciting verses in the streets is both cultural reality and a boast. The Lord be thanked that up to our time the custom remains that in the midst of conversation people casually recite [pa;Rh denaa] verses. Although it's no longer the case that people pass through the streets reciting verses, or get together to recite and listen to verses, in our society verses are still valued.

Informal poetry recitation in fact thrives in a culture in which the spoken word is more popular than the written word. Such cultures are now steadily becoming fewer, because the custom of writing, and of publishing, has spread. Mir's first line is the mirror of a whole culture. It should be kept in mind that here and there Mir has also mentioned that in various places people wander around reciting his verses.

Muhammad Husain Azad has written that when some ghazal of Nasikh's arrived in Delhi, then Zauq at once used to think about composing 'on' it [us par] verses of his own. And (to make the same point) when people came from Lucknow (Allahabad, Kanpur, or wherever Nasikh would be at that time), they used to bring Nasikh's verses by way of a special gift [sau;Gaat].

[See {1791,1}.]

FWP:

SETS == POETRY
MOTIFS
NAMES == REKHTAH
TERMS == GHAZAL 'ON' A GHAZAL

Here's a prime example of the use of re;xtah not as 'Rekhtah', an early name for Urdu, but as a name for a sort of poetry, a broad term for a genre of verse, generally undefined but presumably centered on the ghazal. Mir, like his contemporaries, used the name in both senses. See the 'Names' index for the instances that appear in this commentary.

Other verses in which re;xtah appears as a genre of poetry are {859,11} and {1554,6} (both added by me, since they have no great literary interest and SRF understandably omitted them).