S. R. Faruqi:

Hali has written, in yaadgaar-e ;Gaalib , that one time in Azurdah's presence someone recited/read [pa;Rhaa] this verse:

G{97,10}.

Azurdah praised it greatly. Since, according to Hali, Azurdah didn't like Ghalib's style of poetry, when the gentlement who had recited the verse told him it was a verse of Ghalib's, whose poetry he [=Azurdah] didn't like, then Azurdah said, 'What excellence has Mirza Naushah shown in it-- this verse is in my own special style!'. Leaving aside Azurdah's wilfulness, Hali has reported this event twice, once with the verse and once without noting the verse. Hali was a trustworthy person, so his account must be believed. Otherwise, if some ordinary careless person had given this account, then the suspicion could arise that someone had seen Mir's verse and had invented it.

At present it's necessary to say that this verse of course gives a very fine picture of the psychology of a wilful, unjust person. But this anecdote too is also a kind of revelation that what has been said in the verse, actually happened. Muhammad Husain Azad has noted in aab-e ;hayaat many such revelations about Zauq. Azad has not made an explicit claim, but his underlying intention is that Zauq should be considered a possessor of inspiration and a 'friend of God'. I make no such claim about Mir, but the context of Ghalib's verse and Azurdah's reaction certainly add to the interest and bitingness/pungency of his verse.

FWP:

SETS == POETRY
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS

Hali's anecdote, translated in full in G{97,10}, is not entirely perfect for SRF's purposes, since in it Azurdah doesn't claim that he himself actually composed the verse, but only asserts that it's in his own 'style'. Obviously he's trying to escape from the embarrassment of having been caught publicly praising a verse by a poet whose work he was known to dislike. In Mir's verse the beloved of course goes much further: she entirely deprives the speaker of the verse, by attributing it to someone else. She may even be doing so without any smokescreen of plausibility, simply in order to make a show of her contrariness and wilful power.

Note for grammar fans: In the second line kahaa is treated as a noun (see the definition above), but of course it's really the perfect participle of kahnaa , so that it refers to the speaker's kahaa hu))aa shi((r , his verse that is 'in a state of having been said'. To 'say' a ghazal verse is to compose it; kahnaa is the normal verb for the process of poetic composition. For recitation, either from memory or from a written text, pa;Rhnaa is commonly used, as in Hali's anecdote cited above.