The rhyme -words in this ghazal are all of course intended to end with the same vowel sound; this sound is usually taken to be . But in some cases this makes for truly odd effects. Here are some thoughts on the subject from Pasha Mohamad Khan (Apr. 2008): 'The as-yet-unwritten history of the vowel shift in Persian from ( o , e ) to ( ) is weird and meandering -- unfortunately one can't always identify the classical pronunciation of a Persian word with its modern South Asian pronunciation. This ghazal is to my mind an indication that Ghalib meant for to be pronounced , which is possible in classical Persian. Personally I'm quite convinced that the rhyme words in the ghazal must be pronounced , rather than . It is valid to read these as having vowels; in the case of , I've never heard it pronounced as in Urdu. Basically, it makes more sense to use the endings, which are attested in Steingass, than to turn into . This indicates that either these vowels hadn't yet become in Ghalib's time, or that Ghalib used the pronunciation of and for poetic reasons.' I find this argument very plausible, and so I've opted for Pasha's suggested readings of the rhyme-words. There's also the fact that is a purely Indic word (and the only such word on the list), so to convert it into on entirely Persian-specific grounds would be a stretch. This is a 'short meter' [] ghazal, so there's less room in each line for complex effects. As usual, the commentators seem to be satisfied with no effects at all, just a prosy paraphrase. As usual, I look for more. And in this case, the 'more' leaps to the eye-- the wordplay and 'script-play' of , which in its normal written form, without short vowel markers, looks exactly like (see the definitions above). (For more on such 'script-plays', see 33,7 .) Lest I be thought frivolous, note that Ghalib could easily have put the far more common or or in exactly the same metrical space. (The latter would fit if it were given a full .) These are the words that the commentators use to explain (and in one case, actually to define) , a word they obviously think may be unfamiliar to their readers. (When the word is used once more, in 164,7 , it's clearly there because it can form a rhyme -word.) Yet Ghalib chose instead to use , and to plant (sorry, sorry!) the name of this tree-grown nut exactly beside the name of a tree that doesn't grow nuts-- in a line that could also be read as declaring that one's life is a (useful, enjoyable) , not a (fruitless) willow-tree. (And what has more 'effect' than betel-nut , the vital ingredient in ?) Ghalib again sneers at the tree for its fruitlessness in 95,7x ; see that verse for further discussion. It might be argued that Ghalib had a lofty mind, and wouldn't even have noticed such a mere low-class frivolous pun in the first place. To which I say, Hah! How probable is it that someone like me, a latecomer who started studying Hindi at the age of 20, and Urdu even later, could easily notice a bit of wordplay that would remain invisible to Ghalib? Ghalib could hardly have failed to see it (even if he didn't put it in on purpose, as I'm sure he did). If he didn't want his readers to experience it as part of the verse, he could easily have replaced it with one of the commentators' preferred synonyms. Compare a similar effect in 230,11 . As further evidence (if any is needed) of Ghalib's irreverence and sense of humor, consider his whole impromptu ode addressed to a betel-nut. (I'm glad to have an excuse to drag it in!) It pulls out all the stops of ghazal rhetoric. We find Majnun, Laila, the Ka'bah, the desert, the wine-cask, the Pari s, the beloved, and even the wildly abstract itself (on this term see 3,2 ), all pressed into service to praise this particular betel-nut-- which was a fine one, of course, with no fiber. So why can't the present verse be allowed a touch of that same uninhibited sense of fun? (As a fringe benefit, and further evidence of Ghalib's sense of humor, right after the betel-nut ode in his divan comes a little two-verse verse-set : don't ask about its rank-- that which his Exalted Highness has sent me, a roghni roti made of besan-flour he wouldn't have eaten wheat, he wouldn't have emerged from Paradise if Hazrat Adam had eaten this besan-flour roti.) While working on Mir , I've just come upon another interesting case, cited by Faruqi in connection with M 420,7 . It is a verse by Siraj Aurangabadi that plays Ghalib's trick in reverse: [life, betel-nut; wound, catechu; lime, the eye of waiting for the sake of the guest Grief, the heart is a bira of paan] Here Siraj is definitely using , because the line specifically equates the lover's life with a betel-nut (in a line full of the ingredients of paan). But in such an amusing verse, surely he must have enjoyed setting up his audience to hear or read at the beginning of the first line the more expectable -- only to provide them not with lofty notions of the martyrdom of love, but with the makings of a paan! Here is a nice descriptive tribute to paan, by Rakhshanda Jalil . graphics/supari.jpg