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‘Composing a good sher [verse] in the short metre merits a certificate of perfection (kamaal ki daleel) in the world of the ghazal’. I was taken aback when I came across this pronouncement since I had never thought of metre in quite this way. Now I had an inspiration: why not apply the short metre test to weigh in on the ‘Great Comparison’ the longstanding debate as to who is the greater poet, Mir Taqi Mir or Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib? As I was writing this, I came across a title from Harvard University Press; it was Nigel Smith’s Is Milton Better than Shakespeare? I felt this vindicated my plunge into the bottomless ocean of comparison. ....