Sher
Quick answer: A sher is a two line Urdu couplet. Read famous shers by Ghalib, Mir and Zafar with meanings in English, then learn the simple rules to write your own.
A sher is a two-line poem in the Urdu and Persian tradition: a couplet complete in itself, with its own beginning, turn and landing, whether it stands alone or serves as one link in a ghazal. Each of its two lines is called a misra, and both must share the same metre. The plural is ashaar. Above all, a sher is not an excerpt; even inside a fifteen-couplet ghazal, every sher must satisfy a listener who hears nothing else.
This is why Urdu speakers quote individual couplets the way English speakers quote proverbs. At a mushaira, a poetry gathering, the audience responds couplet by couplet, repeating a fine line back to the poet, and a single sher can outlive the ghazal it came from by a century.
The poem
Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ki har khwahish pe dam nikle,
Bahut nikle mere armaan lekin phir bhi kam nikle.
Mirza Ghalib (1797 to 1869)
Famous Shers to Read, with Meaning
The finest way to understand a sher is to sit with a few. Here are celebrated couplets from the classical Urdu masters, each followed by a plain sense of what it says. Read the two lines, pause, and let the turn land before you move on.
How It Works
The classic sher operates like a hinge. The first misra sets a scene, a claim or a question and creates a small suspense; the second turns, answers or detonates it. An invented example: 'I taught my window every name for light; / now it wakes me to argue about the dark.' Line one is a whole situation, line two a reversal that reframes it. That two-stroke shape, setup and strike, is the engine.
Within a ghazal, a sher must also carry the shared machinery: the correct metre throughout, and the rhyme and refrain at the end of its second line.
Where You Will See It
Ghalib's ashaar are proverbial across South Asia, quoted in films, speeches and arguments; Mir set the standard for heartbreak a generation earlier, and Faiz Ahmed Faiz gave the couplet political voltage in the twentieth century. A sher composed outside any ghazal is called a fard, and poets also build qitas, short thematic sets of couplets. If you have seen two lines of Urdu poetry shared on a card or a wall, you have met the sher doing what it does best: travelling light.
How to Write One
Think of it as the smallest complete poem you can make. Draft the second line first, the landing, then build a first line that makes the landing inevitable but not predictable. Keep the two lines in matching rhythm, and cut every word that merely helps the grammar along. Writing ten standalone couplets is among the fastest ways to sharpen any longer poem you write afterwards, because it teaches you what a line owes the line that follows.
What poets can take from this
- Write the second line first; a sher is aimed, not wandered into.
- Give each line its own integrity; neither misra should read as filler for the other.
- Keep both lines in the same metre so the turn lands on a level floor.
- Test the couplet on a listener with zero context; if it needs a preface, it is not finished.
- Read Ghalib in translation two lines at a time, pausing after each sher as a mushaira audience would.
Try it yourself
Write five standalone couplets, each about a different everyday object, where the first line makes a promise and the second line breaks or transforms it; keep only the best two.
Questions
What is the difference between a sher and a couplet?
Every sher is a couplet, but not every couplet is a sher. A sher must be metrically matched across its two lines and complete in meaning on its own, needing no surrounding poem.
What is a misra?
A single line of a sher. The first is the misra-e-oola, the second the misra-e-sani, and in a ghazal the second line carries the rhyme and refrain.
Can a sher exist outside a ghazal?
Yes. A standalone couplet is called a fard, and poets often compose and share single ashaar. The ghazal is a string of shers, not their only home.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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