jis qadar jigar ;xuu;N ho kuuchah-daadan-e
gul hai
za;xm-e te;G-e qaatil ko ;turfah dil-kushaa paayaa
1) to the extent to which the liver would be blood,
it is a road-giver of/to the rose
2) the wound of the murderer's/murderous sword, I found [to be] wondrously
{exhilarating / 'heart-opening'}
:turfah : 'Novel, rare, strange, extraordinary, wonderful; --a pleasing rarity; a novelty, a strange thing, a wonder'. (Platts p.752)
dil-kushaa : 'Heart-expanding, blissful, delightful, charming, exhilarating'. (Platts p.523)
SETS == MUSHAIRAH
JIGAR: {2,1}
SWORD: {1,3}
Raza p. 222. S. R. Faruqi's choices. Ghalib took verses from two separate early (1821) ham-:tar;h ghazals and combined them in his published divan. From one ghazal he took {4,1}, and from the other he took the rest, {4,2-7}. This is the ninth verse in the ghazal of which the first verse is {4,2}.
The liver may be converted into blood by the lover's own suffering, as in the idiom 'to torment oneself, distress oneself' [jigar kaa ;xuu;N piinaa] . Here, however, the liver is apparently slashed open by a sword, and that too is a proper part of the lover's passion: it 'opens a road' of 'rose'. The rose of course is blood-red, so that the flowing of fresh blood may seem to create something like a channel or 'road' for 'rosiness' or 'the rose'. And the rose is also of course a well-established image of the beloved, so that the flow of liver-blood may facilitate her access to the lover's inmost depths.
The sword that makes this slash may, thanks to the powers of the i.zaafat , be a 'sword of the murderer' (who is presumably the beloved herself); or it may be a 'sword which is a murderer'-- a weapon that is 'murderous' and deadly in its killing power, and/or a semi-personified one that actually desires the lover's death the way a real murderer would.
But above all, this is a mushairah-verse. The first line is so broad in its possibilities that we can't really tell from it where the verse is going. Then in the second line, no real interpretation is possible until the last possible moment, when we get that excellent rhyme-word dil-kushaa , with its witty complexities:
=it establishes the metaphorical 'exhilaration' or 'happiness' felt by the lover when the sword-stroke opens such a desirable rose-road inside him
=it establishes the physical effects of the sword-stroke, which literally (and not just metaphorically) 'opens' the liver; on this see {209,4}
=it introduces the 'heart' [dil], which is the more restless, high-maintenance companion of the liver. But why would what seems to be a wound in the liver, also be imagined as 'heart-opening'? Ghalib himself has given the perfect reason: for the answer, and much discussion, see {30,2}.
Gyan Chand:
In a verse Ghalib has said: {209,4}. The literal meaning of dil-kushaa is 'heart-opening', and in the idiom, 'making the heart happy'.
For Ghalib, however wide/'opened' the wound would be, the heart is that much happy. In the verse under discussion the murderer's sword has made a wound in the liver. For Ghalib, for the liver to be blood is to assemble the ground for the blooming of flowers. The similitude of blood is with the color of the rose; thus to Ghalib the wound of the sword is very heart-pleasing. (69-70)