Distance Without Blame: Reading ‘Dil Se Dil Ki Duri’

A separation poem can tempt a reader to look for a villain. Someone left, someone lied, someone was not brave enough: we may begin supplying that story before we have listened. For this reading of ‘Dil Se Dil Ki Duri’, chapter seven of Mohabbat wagaira.., I want to leave that search aside. In the two selected couplets, there is another task available: notice how the speaker describes distance without directly naming someone to blame.

The opening couplet sets the terms:

Dil se dil ki duri nahi hoti,
Har dastaan-ishq ki poori nahi hoti.

— Faizan Shaikh, Mohabbat wagaira.. (Dil Se Dil Ki Duri, couplet 1)

Two statements, each general, each refusing to be about one specific person. There is no distance between heart and heart. And then: not every love story is completed. Read quickly, the two lines seem to contradict each other — if hearts are never apart, why do stories end unfinished? Read slowly, the contradiction becomes the point. The hearts are not the problem. Something else is. The couplet does not yet say what.

The refrain of this ghazal, nahi hoti — does not happen, does not occur — is doing careful work. It is impersonal. In Roman Urdu, as in English, you can say she did not or he would not; the ghazal instead says it does not happen. Grammar becomes a kind of mercy. No one is the subject of the sentence that ends the story.

The second couplet brings the two people into the same frame, physically, for the first time:

Nigaahein aaj bhi takraati hain bheed mein uss se,
Par ab pehli si mulaaqaat zaroori nahi hoti.

— Faizan Shaikh, Mohabbat wagaira.. (Dil Se Dil Ki Duri, couplet 2)

Eyes still meet across a crowd — aaj bhi, even today. The first line admits that nothing has been switched off. Then the second line: but the old kind of meeting is no longer necessary. Not forbidden. Not impossible. Not necessary. The word zaroori is where the whole couplet balances. It would have been easy to write a line about turning away, or about pretending not to see. Instead the ghazal says something quieter and, to me, more adult: we see each other, and we have stopped needing the thing we used to do about it.

Try reading this couplet aloud twice with a different emphasis each time. Stress takraati — collide — and notice the encounter. Stress zaroori and notice the decision about what need not follow it. One reading may foreground surprise; the other may foreground restraint. Neither needs to become a claim about the poet's private intention or the listener's relationship. The point is to hear how a small change in emphasis changes the sentence's centre of attention.

What interests me in these two selections is the space between noticing another person and acting on that notice. The rest of the ghazal has a sharper tone in places, so it would be misleading to describe every line as free of complaint. A close reading can stay local. We can attend to the restraint in zaroori nahi hoti without turning it into a verdict on the whole poem, or a claim that the speaker never feels anger.

For readers new to the book, a note on where this sits. Chapter seven comes before the chapters on the blank page and the dupatta used for the series' first two themes. These selected lines have a different temperature for me: cooler, more composed. The book's own plain reading and the story that follows are behind the first door, and I leave them there. Try reading these selections as decisions rather than only feelings. An encounter can be noticed without demanding a meeting. An unfinished story can be named without supplying its entire history.

This reading does not need a villain to be useful. It asks how the two selected couplets make room for something unfinished. The fictional speaker can remain unfinished too; the reader does not have to settle every question about the imagined relationship.

The week's remaining readings stay in this chapter; the carousel the day after tomorrow takes up the Majnu couplet directly.

Verse © Faizan Shaikh. Reading notes are the reader's interpretation. Content note: the book deals with grief and separation; it prints helpline information.

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