Tumhein Kitna Pyaar Karte — Lyric Review

tumhein dil nisaar karte
tumhein jaan nisaar karte

Wasn't it supposed to be 'tumpe dil nisaar karte'? (Of course that wouldn't fit the meter here, but just talking of the grammar.)

But then of course, one can take some poetic liberty, as long as the meaning of the lyrics doesn't go some other way, and they are understood by people.

Except that in case of words like 'nisaar', things can go the 'other' way very quickly.

Nisaar means to sacrifice, and if not used carefully, it can go kinda... wrong. That is to say, instead of saying sacrificing 'for someone', you might sacrifice that someone in a line.

So when the words should be (hum) tumpe X nisaar karte (meaning, I would have sacrificed X for you), you can't really change it to 'tumhein' nisaar karte, because then it becomes more like I'd have sacrificed 'you'.

Of course, here it's not exactly 'tumhein nisaar karte', because the words are tumhein dil nisaar karte and tumhein jaan nisaar karte, but then Urdu gives you an option to club some words in such a way that words like dil-nisaar and jaan-nisaar can be used as words with their own meaning. (For the uninitiated, Javed Akhtar's father, who was a famous poet and lyricist too, was called Jaan Nisaar Akhtar.) Hence, 'jaan-nisaar' can easily mean someone who sacrifices his life.

So in this song's lines, if you see dil-nisaar and jaan-nisaar as words in their own right (because they would grammatically be perfect fits in these lines), the lines mean more like, I'd have made you someone who sacrifices your heart, sacrifices your life — something that might sound okay, but not really the intended meaning, I believe.

I know it's a bit of a nitpicking in an otherwise lovely and very enjoyable song, but then, what are big lyricists there for if one can't discuss such nuances? 🤓 Especially when you love the song...