The ghazal is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain where each line shares the same meter.A poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain.
But is it necesarry that a ghazal is composed of couplets, five or more.
MOreover why the second line of each couplet (or sher) in a ghazal usually ends with the repetition of a refrain of one or a few words, known as a radif preceded by a rhyme known as the qaafiyaa.
Ghazal is simply the name of a form, and is not language-specific. Ghazals also exist, for example in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Turkish, Kashmiri, Kurdish and even Gujarati.
Although every sher may be an independent poem in itself, it is possible for all the shers to be on the same theme or even have continuity of thought. This is called a musalsal ghazal, or “continuous ghazal”. The ghazal “chupke chupke raat din aasUU bahaanaa yaad hai” is a famous example of a musalsal ghazal.
In modern Urdu poetry, there are a few ghazals which do not follow the restriction that the same beher must be used in both the lines of a sher. But even in these ghazals, qaafiyaa and, usually, radif are present.
