Ghazal 161, Verse 3

Nazm:

This is a verse that even Mir ought to envy. Under what a rubric he's presented sorrow of the temperament, and how excellently he's presented a commentary on it! (173)

== Nazm page 173

Bekhud Mohani:

We never laughed very much. Indeed, sometimes we laughed at the heart's restlessnesses, the heart's anxieties, the heart's unheard-of yearnings. But now sorrow has reached such a limit that we don't laugh at anything. (309)

Faruqi:

Here apparently there's no [special] point. But suddenly it becomes clear that the meaning of the second line can also be that now laughter comes at nothing, or rather, at the matter of silence. Now this verse seems to be based on the theme of madness and mental defect, rather than despair and sorrow. Because of this specialty of Ghalib's, it's very difficult to make a selection of his poetry.
-- S. R. Faruqi, ;Gaalib par chaar ta;hriire;N (New Delhi: Ghalib Institute, 2001), p. 61

FWP:

SETS

This is another brilliantly simple verse that works by implication. We used to laugh at the state of the heart-- why then do we now not laugh at anything?

=because the state of the heart used to amuse us, but now the heart's state is now so grim that it's not amusing any more

=because the heart is now gone completely, having melted into a pool of blood, so it's not there to laugh at any more

=because nothing else is as bleakly funny as the heart used to be in its heyday, so we have no other cause to laugh now that the heart's not so amusing

=because we're now too depressed and grief-stricken to laugh at all

=because now we're almost catatonic and no longer respond to stimuli

Or, to adopt Faruqi's clever reading, because now we laugh at nothing-- that is, we've gone mad.