the concept of ‘Jigar’

For those who are famil­iar with hindi/urdu songs, ghaz­als etc are well-versed with the usage of ‘jigar’ in typ­i­cal love songs. I might be wrong but most of the peo­ple mis­take it for ‘heart’ and those who know its eng­lish trans­la­tion take it to be an excep­tional usage in poetry.

“nazar ke saamne, jigar ke paas
koi rehta hai wo ho tum”

If we con­sider this chart­buster hit from Aashiqui, it would trans­late to ‘you stay close to my gaze, close to my liver’. Now, I would not want my beloved to be close to my liver. So, what is the deal. The usage has become pop­u­lar since the ancient times of urdu mae­stros who used the term for quite a dif­fer­ent ref­er­ence, which has noth­ing to do with gas­tric func­tion­al­i­ties at all.

If I may quote from a web ref­er­ence — “In ghazal phys­i­ol­ogy, the liver is the organ that makes fresh blood; thus it’s an emblem of for­ti­tude, stead­fast­ness, endurance over time. The heart, by con­trast is always con­sum­ing blood: bleed­ing con­stantly, pump­ing blood to the eyes so the lover can weep tears of blood, and then tear­ing itself into frag­ments as a sign of its proper lover-like self-destruction. For the heart to be done for is an ini­tial state of pas­sion, since more blood can be sent along from the liver. But when the liver is fin­ished, the game is up.”

Beau­ti­fully put by the author. I think that clar­i­fies it nicely for all of us who keep won­der­ing about usage of ‘jaan-e-jigar’ etc again and again.

Let the thought sink in with few ashaar–

“chak jigar ke see lete hain,
jaise bhi ho jee lete hain”

“aashiqui sabr talab aur tamanna betaab
dil ka kya rang karun, khoon-e-jigar hone tak”

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1. the con­cept of ‘Jigar’