Sher-o-shairi, Ghazals

Have lately been reading about Mirza Ghalib whose poetry has always intrigued me. The urdu and persian words are however too tough to understand but one gets the general drift of what Mirza Ghalib wanted to convey. Have recently revisited the Doordarshan TV serial directed by Gulzar in which Naseeruddin Shah has portrayed ghalib so well. A great actor indeed. The serial is available in a set of 6 CDs.

It turns out that a Ghazal and Sher are quite technical and formats are pretty strictly prescribed.

I picked up the following from the net :

A Ghazal is defined as a collection of 'Shers' in which there is at least one 'Matla', one 'Maqta' and all the shers have the same 'beher' , 'kaafiya' and 'radif'. 

As an illustration : a Ghazal from Ghalib :

"koi ummeed bar nahin aati

koi soorat nazar nahin aati

aati thi haale-dil par hasi

ab kisi baat par nahin aati

hum wahan hain jahan se humko bhi

kuch hamari khabar nahin aati

Kaaba kis muh se jaoge'Ghalib'

sharm tumko magar nahin aati"

Each two liner is a sher and complete in itself.

The beher is basically the metre or the length of each line. Both lines of the sher should have the same beher, ie. should be approximately equal.

The Radif is the rhyming end of each second line of the shers in the Ghazal. In this case the Radif is 

'nahin aati'

The Kaafiya is the rhyming pattern preceeding each Radif. In this case the Kaafiya are nazar, baat par,khabar and nazar.

The Matla is the first sher in the Ghazal and both its lines must have the Radif. In this case 'nahin aati' is at the end of each line of the first sher-the matla.

The Maqta is the sher in which the Shair or poet inserts his 'Takhallus' So in this case the last sher has 'Ghalib'  and is the Maqta.