FWP:
SETS == CATCH-22; SUBJECT?
GAZE: {10,12}
The chief pleasure of the verse is in the wordplay (and meaning-play) with dekhaa . The semantic range of dekhnaa is even greater than 'to look' in English, since it also includes 'to see'. '[When we] looked' [dekhaa] thus applies broadly to almost any action like inspection, checking, reviewing, assessing. This use and positioning of dekhaa to is so common that the first time through, it seems thoroughly unremarkable: 'When we looked, the tank was empty', 'When we looked, it wasn't true', etc. In this case, 'When we looked, the lost (offered-up) heart was incapable of vision'. For another use of this structure, see {16,5}.
Only on the second go-round do we realize that the phrase also applies, even more powerfully and effectively, to the primal act of looking itself: 'When we looked-- or rather, tried to look-- we discovered that we no longer had strength enough for (the) sight/vision'.
And only on the third go-round (at least, in my case) do we realize that the person who 'looked' could also be the beloved, since the subject is omitted (and since Urdu offers us the morbid wonders of the ergative construction). In that case, the lover's realization of radical, hopeless weakness comes not upon his inspection, and not upon his (attempt at) looking, but upon the beloved's looking at him-- or at least, her looking in his general direction, her paying some kind of heed to him.
The other enjoyable bit of wordplay comes through diidaar , which can mean the act of sight itself; or something that is looked at-- an (irresistibly beautiful) appearance or face (see the definition above). The distinction is more or less that between longing for 'vision', and longing for 'a vision'. Needless to say, both meanings work excellently in this verse.
In its 'catch-22' quality (we sacrifice our heart for a sight;
the sacrifice makes us too weak to see) this verse reminds me of {25,4}
(we sacrifice our heart in the test itself; the sacrifice leaves us with nothing
left to offer after we pass the test). Or there's {210,6} (we complain of her neglect; she gives us one look, and it vaporizes us).
Nazm:
That is, when in pursuit of the longing for sight we'd already erased the heart, after that when we reflected, then we found that the strength and endurance for sight didn't remain in us. [Here the word] dekhaa is connected with both actions. (120)
== Nazm page 120