S. R. Faruqi:

In the qissah of Hatim Ta'i, the 'Mountain of the Voice' [koh-e nidaa] appears-- from it a voice used to come, yaa a;xii , yaa a;xii ('oh brother!' or 'oh generous one!'), and anyone on whose ear this voice fell started off at once and abandoned every worldly concern. In this verse there's that same 'mood'-- that everyone's heart is drawn in some direction, no one knows what there is in that direction.

And to top it all off, the speaker says that it is excessive/vain even to think of investigating the matter of what thing it is, or what it is, that draws all hearts. Swami Bhupat Ra'i Begham has said this much [in Persian]:

'He who is purified from the nature of 'I' and 'you',
If you call him 'nonexistent', even then it's appropriate.'

That is, the Divine Self is inscrutable, devoid of qualities, and unfathomable. (This is also the path of some Sufis.) Mir says that it's enough that there's someone/something there, or that there's the idea that there's someone/something there. The important thing is the attracting power of passion that draws along every individual. This idea he has expressed twice more in the second divan [{1051,5}]:

kyaa kahe;N dil kuchh khi;Nche jaate hai;N uudhar har gha;Rii
kaam ham be-:taaqato;N ko ((ishq-e zor-aavar se hai

[what can we say-- hearts are somewhat drawn in that direction at every hour
we strengthless ones have to deal with powerful passion]

Also from the second divan [{1028,6}]:

dil khi;Nche jaate hai;N usii kii or
saare ((aalam kii vuh tamannaa hai

[hearts are drawn toward only/emphatically that/Him
that/He is the longing of the whole world]

In fact {1051,5} is a verse such that thousands of ghazals would be sacrificed for it. Hafiz too has composed [in Persian] an uncommon verse:

'No one knows where the intended destination is.
It's just that the sound of the bell comes, and he goes.'

Mir's present verse certainly shows a gleam from Hafiz's verse. But in Mir's verse there's an uncommon dignity, and a strange kind of pride at the helplessness of the human condition-- that we don't even think about, if there's something there, what it is; we just go alone. For the heart to be drawn is more important; in which direction the heart is being drawn is not an important thing.

FWP:

SETS == FILL-IN
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS

My favorite thing about the verse is how it's bookended by two somewhat different possibilities-- both of which remain extremely open, for us readers to fill in for ourselves. At the beginning of the first line we have ko))ii hai , which basically means 'there is someone' or 'it is someone' or 'someone is' (and of course it could also, if desired, be read interrogatively). However we read it, it's about a person. By the end, the inquiry that we're discouraged from making is in inquiry into something else, something non-personal, kyaa hai -- 'what it is' or 'what is it?'. Conspicuously, the inquiry is not about 'who it is', but about 'what's going on'.

The effect, to my mind, is one of helpless suspicion. The person's identity is less urgently important than the general situation-- we're being helplessly drawn in 'that direction', and we can't figure out (and apparently shouldn't even try to figure out) why we're being drawn, or how, or where. Is it a trick, is it a setup, is it highway robbery?

The fact that the 'what' question comes to displace the 'who' question feels ominous rather than mystically pious. And the speaker seems to be in on the plot, or else brainwashed, for he sneers at 'this investigation/prying' and strongly suggests that it should be given up. Or else he's just a bitterly ironic retired investigator, who knows a hopeless 'cold case' when he sees one.