The first line of the verse sets us up for some kind of movement beyond alienation, strangeness, strangerness, estrangement []. Since the first line denies us an 'excuse' for alienation, we expect to receive a moral injunction in the second line. We expect the second line to say something like 'keep in friendly touch with others', or words to that effect. Or at least it might be expected to say 'keep in friendly touch with yourself, if you can't do so with others'. However, the second line-- in proper mushairah performance style-- doesn't say anything of the sort. It simply adjures us to do some 'it' toward ourselves, and not toward others. And the 'it' proves to be flexible-- its limit case is , but the full range is much wider. The shock of this sudden injunction forces us to think much more deeply about the verse. If the 'it' is taken to be some bad, alienating feeling (like ), then it might seem that we should show 'it' toward ourselves, not toward others, as a form of courtesy and kindness. By treating others thoughtfully we would avoid displaying a culpable toward them. This argument represents, however, only a special case. For the 'it' can clearly also be some other, and quite different feeling, as the grammar of the second line emphatically envisions-- some kind of feeling of which is only the most extreme example. In that case, the sense of the line turns right around and moves off into Ghalib's famous domain of exhortations to radical 'independence' (see 9,1 for more on this). The verse then urges us to behave, basically, in the manner described in 119,5 -- or in 119,6 , which is perhaps even more solipsistic in its moral vision. In {119,5} it's 'friendlessness' that induces us to choose radical self-reliance, in {119,6} it's apparently pride, and here it's 'liberatedness'; in {119,5} and {119,6} it's 'shame' that is in question, and here it's any emotion whatsoever. But the general thrust of the meaning is the same: whatever (good or bad) emotions we feel, we should feel them toward or before ourselves, not toward or before other people. It turns out in any case, therefore, that avoiding 'strangeness' and 'alienness' is a matter entirely of one's relation with oneself. Other people are very explicitly irrelevant. Faruqi rightly points out that the initial is often colloquially dropped in the 'neither/nor' construction, and thus may also be taken as implicit before the second line, giving rise to a meaning of 'do it neither toward yourself, nor toward an Other' (2b). This reading, while perfectly plausible in a grammatical sense, causes problems with the . For it's quite possible to imagine an exhortation that one should show wildness neither toward oneself nor toward an Other. But then, why the 'even if it be' wildness? On this reading, wildness would seem to be not a limit case but the main case, a prime example of exactly the kind of bad, alienated behavior that one was enjoined against showing toward anybody at all. But then, perhaps is such a powerful, uncontrollable emotion that 'even if it be' it must still at all costs be suppressed and not shown to anybody. The sound sequence has a fine rhythm, too. On , see 119,1 . graphics/dandelionfluff.jpg