Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi (A Thousand Desires) by Mirza Ghalib
Quick answer: Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi by Mirza Ghalib, explained: the meaning of the famous couplets, how a ghazal's refrain works, and what poets can learn from Ghalib.
Thousands of desires, each so consuming it could cost a life: many of my longings were fulfilled, and still they proved too few. That, in rough paraphrase, is the opening couplet of Ghalib's most famous ghazal, and it may be the most quoted pair of lines in Urdu poetry. People who have never read a book of verse can finish it for you.
Mirza Ghalib wrote in nineteenth-century Delhi, in the last decades of the Mughal court, and his ghazals mix anguish, blasphemy and self-mockery in a way that still feels modern. This poem is also the perfect machine for understanding how a ghazal actually works, couplet by couplet, refrain by refrain.
What the poem says
A ghazal is not a story; it is a string of self-contained couplets, called sher, united by form and temperament rather than plot. The opening couplet states the theme of infinite desire: fulfilment itself cannot keep pace with wanting. Another celebrated sher turns to scripture with a straight face: we have always heard how Adam was expelled from Eden, but the humiliation of leaving your street, the beloved's lane, was of another order altogether. Paradise lost ranks second to a lover's disgrace.
Elsewhere Ghalib declares that in love there is no difference between living and dying, since he lives by gazing at the very idol for whom he would give up his breath. And the closing couplet, where the poet signs his own name as tradition demands, is pure mischief: what business, Ghalib asks, has the preacher at the tavern door? None, surely. And yet I do know this much: he was going in as I came out.
How it works: the ghazal's machinery
Every couplet ends with the same refrain word, the radif, here 'nikle', which means roughly came out, emerged, turned out. Just before it sits the qafiya, a changing rhyme word: dam, kam, ham and so on. The opening couplet, the matla, uses the refrain in both lines to teach the reader the pattern, and the final couplet, the maqta, carries the poet's pen name. Within these rules, each sher must be a complete two-line poem with its own turn of thought.
The refrain is more than decoration. 'Dam nikle', breath going out, is the Urdu idiom for dying, so every couplet quietly rhymes with mortality no matter what its subject is. And Ghalib's signature move is the reversal between lines: the first line sets up a solemn premise, the second undercuts it with wit, as the preacher couplet shows. Irony is built into the very hinge of the form.
Why it lasts
Ghalib is the most quoted Urdu poet by some distance, and this ghazal is his calling card. Singers have carried it across generations, a film borrowed its opening line for a title, and its couplets circulate as proverbs. What keeps it alive is the temperament: a man who takes desire completely seriously and himself not seriously at all. That combination of ache and shrug feels contemporary in any century, and it gives young poets permission to be funny and devastated in the same breath.
What today's poet can steal
Try the form itself. Write five to seven couplets in English, each ending with the same refrain word preceded by a changing rhyme, each couplet able to stand alone, and sign your name or nickname into the last one. The ghazal has been naturalised into English by many contemporary poets, and it rewards patience.
If the full form feels heavy, steal the hinge: let your second line reverse or deflate your first. Writory's monthly contest happily accepts ghazals, and a refrain handled with Ghalib's discipline tends to score well on both structure and language.
What poets can take from this
- Write couplets that can survive alone; if a sher needs its neighbour to make sense, rework it.
- Choose a refrain word rich in idiom, so it changes shade with every couplet.
- Use the second line of each couplet to turn, undercut or reverse the first.
- Sign yourself into the final couplet and address yourself by name; the shift in distance is bracing.
- Read your refrain aloud seven times in a row before committing: you and your reader will live with it.
Try it yourself
Write a five-couplet ghazal with the refrain word 'returns', letting each couplet treat a different subject, desire, weather, money, faith, memory, and end by addressing yourself by name about what never returns.
Questions
What does Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi mean?
The phrase means 'thousands of such desires'. The opening couplet says each desire is intense enough to cost a life, and though many longings were fulfilled, they still turned out to be too few. Insatiable desire is the ghazal's ruling theme.
What is a radif in a ghazal?
The radif is the refrain word or phrase that ends both lines of the opening couplet and the second line of every couplet after it. In this ghazal the radif is 'nikle', and the changing rhyme word before it is called the qafiya.
Who was Mirza Ghalib?
Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797 to 1869) was a poet of Urdu and Persian who lived in Delhi during the final years of the Mughal court. He is widely regarded as the greatest Urdu ghazal writer, famous for wit, irony and philosophical depth.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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