Shiv Kumar Batalvi

Shiv Kumar Batalvi (23 July 1936 - 6 May 1973 ) was an Indian poet, writer and playwright of the Punjabi language.

He was most known for his romantic poetry, noted for its heightened passion, pathos, separation and lover's agony, due to that he was also called Birha Da Sultan.

Shiv Kumar Batalvi was born on 23 July 1936 (though a few documents related to him state 8 October 1937) in the village Bara Pind Lohtian in the Shakargarh Tehsil of Gurdaspur District (now in Narowal District of Punjab, Pakistan) into a Punjabi Hindu Brahmin family to father, Pandit Krishan Gopal Sharma, the village tehsildar in the revenue department, and mother, Shanti Devi, a housewife.

In 1947, when he was aged 11, his family moved to Batala, Gurdaspur district after partition of India, where his father continued his work as a patwari and young Shiv received his primary education.

Allegedly, he was a dreamy child, often vanishing for the duration of the day, to be found lying under trees by the riverbank close to the Mandir or Hindu temple outside the village, lost in a brown reverie.

He appears to have been fascinated by local renditions of the Hindu epic Ramayana, as well as wandering minstrel singers, snake charmers and the like – which feature as metaphors in his poetry, giving it a uniquely rural flavour.

He met a girl named Maina at a fair in Baijnath.

When he went back to look for her in her hometown, he heard the news of her death and wrote his elegy Maina.

This episode was to prefigure numerous other partings that would serve as material to distil into poems.

Perhaps the most celebrated such episode is his fascination for Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari's daughter who left for Venezuela and married someone else.

When he heard of the birth of her first child, Shiv wrote 'Main ik shikra yaar banaya', perhaps his most famous love poem.

It's said that when she had her second child, someone asked Shiv whether he would write another poem.

Shiv replied "Have I become responsible for her? Am I to write a poem on her every time she gives birth to a child?"

The poem 'Main ek shikra yaar banaya' is in the Punjabi Language, the English translation of this poem is also equally beautiful.

Shiv Kumar Batalvi's poems have been sung by famous singers such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ghulam Ali, Jagjit Singh, Hans Raj Hans, and many others.

He completed his matriculation in 1953 at Panjab University, and enrolled in the F.Sc.

program at Baring Union Christian College, Batala, though before completing his degree he moved to S.N. College, Qadian, where he joined the Arts program more suited to his persona, though he left that too in the second year.

Thereafter he joined a school at Baijnath, Himachal Pradesh to do a diploma in Civil Engineering.

Here again, he left it in the middle.

Next he studied for some time at Govt.

Ripudaman College, Nabha.

Later in life, his father got a job as patwari at Qadian, it was during this period, that he produced some of his best work.

His first anthology of poems was published in 1960, titled Piran da Paraga (A handful of pain), which became an instant success.

Some senior writers of Batlaviji, including Jaswant Singh Rahi, Kartar Singh Balgan and Barkat Ram Yumman, as the saying goes, took him under their wings.

In 1965, he became the youngest recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1967, for his magnum opus, a verse play Loona (1965).

His poetry recitations, and singing his own verse, made him and his work even more popular amongst the masses.

He became the youngest recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1967, given by the Sahitya Akademi (India's National Academy of Letters), for his epic verse play based on the ancient legend of Puran Bhagat, Loona (1965), now considered a masterpiece in modern Punjabi literature, and which also created a new genre, of modern Punjabi kissa.

Today, his poetry stands in equal footing, amongst that by stalwarts of modern Punjabi poetry, like Mohan Singh (poet) and Amrita Pritam, all of whom are popular on both sides of Indo-Pakistan border.

On 5 February 1967, he married, Aruna, a Brahmin girl from his own caste.

She is from Kiri Mangyal, Gurdaspur district, and later the couple had two children, Meharban (1968) and Puja (1969).

Soon after his marriage, in 1968, he shifted to Chandigarh, where he joined the State Bank of India, as a professional.

In the following years, bad health plagued him, though he continued to write prolifically.

In May 1972, Shiv visited England at the invitation of Dr. Gupal Puri and Mrs. Kailash Puri.

He had been looking forward to his first trip abroad as a welcome relief from the drudgery of his life in Chandigarh.

When he arrived in England, his popularity and fame had already reached a high point among the Punjabi community.

His arrival was announced in the local Indian papers with headlines and pictures.

[Takhar.

Int.

2002]. He spent a busy time in England.

A number of public functions and private parties were arranged in his honour where he recited his poetry.