S. R. Faruqi:

muqarrar = certainly

He presented this theme in other places as well. From the first divan [{101,6}]:

kuuche me;N us ke jaa kar bantaa nahii;N phir aanaa
;xuun ek din giregaa us ;xaak par hamaaraa

[having gone into her lane, coming out again doesn't happen
our blood will one day fall on that dust]

In the third divan [{1070,6}]:

kyuu;Nkar galii se us kii mai;N u;Th ke chalaa jaataa
yaa;N ;xaak me;N malnaa thaa lohuu me;N nahaanaa thaa

[how, from her street, would I have arisen and gone away?
here I was to rub myself in the dust, I was to bathe in blood]

But the idea of the present verse has not appeared anywhere in them. For the ground of the beloved's lane to attract the lover's heart seems to be inescapable, like the writing of fate. But the first line seems to be mentioning a common sort of idea, because it's an ineluctable fact that the dust of the beloved's street must after all attract the garment-hem of the lover's heart. The line in a way gives us confidence-- and deceives us. It doesn't prepare us for the second line. Rather, if there's any fear or disquietude in our heart, it lulls them to sleep, it doesn't awaken them.

In the second line, the expression of the inevitability of slaughter affects us like a lightning bolt, because we absolutely didn't expect it. And the finishing touch on it is that in the tone there's no anxiety, no regret, no desiapr; rather, there's a kind of assurance, a careless composure, a feeling of completion-- that now he's gone and learned the purpose of life.

Then, for slaughter he's made the implication of blood falling or flowing, and that implication has bestowed a new meaning on the expression in the first line, that the ground very much attracts the heart. It's clear that when the heart will be attracted toward the ground, then of course it will fall. And the heart contains blood; they even use for the heart the simile of a glass. In this way, when the blood-filled glass of the heart will fall to the ground, its blood will of course flow.

The phrase dil bahut khe;Nchtii hai can also be taken to mean 'it's very attractive'. In this way the implication of the beauty and attractiveness of the beloved's lane has been established. The first-person style of speech is also worthy of praise. The whole verse is pervaded with the atmosphere of muttering under one's breath. It's an effect like the pleasure of again seeing and recognizing a previously-recognized thing. He has also finely used the word muqarrar , because in it, in addition to the real idiomatic sense ('definitely'), there's also present a suggestion of the ineluctably written, decreed-from-all-eternity quality of my blood's being shed in that street ('It's been decided that our blood will fall on that dust').

Atish has taken up this theme, and within the limit of his ability has composed a fine verse:

apne ;xuu;N kii buu hame;N aatii hai yaa;N kii ;xaak se
zindagii me;N kuu-e qaatil se safar kyuu;Nkar kare;N

[the scent of our own blood comes to us from the dust of this place
in our lifetime, how would we travel away from the street of the murderer?]

But as usual he has rushed it, and has said 'street of the murderer' and damaged the meaningfulness of the verse. Because when he made it clear that it's the 'street of the murderer', it also became clear that here we would be murdered. So then what subtlety remains in the coming of the scent of our own blood from the dust of that street? When it's known that this is the street of the murderer, to say anything more is only to talk for the sake of talking [baat banaanaa]. How excellently Mir avoided this problem! He said it all in a few words [baat kii baat kah dii], and also created a dramatic effect. Between a great and an ordinary poet, this is the difference.

This rhyme, and the theme of the ground of the street, has been used in a very light but extremely interesting and clever way by Imdad 'Ali 'Bahr', like this:

nuur-e barsaatii hai zulfo;N kii gha;Taa chahro;N par
paa))o;N us kuuche me;N phislegaa muqarrar apnaa

[the cloud-mass of curls on the face has a 'rainy-season light'
my feet will certainly slip, in that lane]

FWP:

SETS == MIDPOINTS
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS == DRAMATICNESS

As SRF points out, the first line in its blandness and vague conventionality lulls the reader into paying it merely perfunctory attention. Thus khe;Nchntii haireceives only a cursory reading, and we take it to mean 'attracts; in the general sense. (Compare dil-kash , 'heart-pulling', which has a similar general least-marked sense of 'attractive'; or, for that matter, 'to attract [the way a magnet attracts filings'], in English, which similarly is usually used in merely a loose metaphorical sense.

Not until we're allowed (after the usual mushairah delay) to hear the second line, can we go back and reimagine the first line, taking the 'attraction' literally and coping with the sense of bloodshed and unflinchingly-regarded death that SRF so well conjures up. His description of the style and 'tone' of the verse seems exactly right. We're lucky to have him as such a fine guide, as we wend our way through the thickets of Mir.

As he also observes, muqarrar can be either an adverb (as in 2a) or a predicate adjective (as in 2b). This makes it a kind of 'midpoint', in my terminology.