Sahir Hoshiarpuri

Hoshiarpur's enchanter — who says love has a language? The eyes say it all. Sahir Hoshiarpuri (1913–1994), born Ram Prakash Sharma on 5 March 1913 at Hoshiarpur in Punjab, was an Indian Urdu poet whose main form was the ghazal. He studied at Government College and took his M.A. in Persian in 1935, learning his craft as a disciple of Josh Malsiyani of the Dagh school. In his college days he formed a lifelong friendship with the poet Mehr Lal Soni Zia Fatehabadi, and the two later lived in Kanpur. With Naresh Kumar Shad he edited the Urdu journal Chandan. Five collections of his verse appeared in his lifetime — Jal Tarang, Sahar-e-Ghazal (1959), Sahar-e-Naghma (1970), Sahar-e-Haraf (1982) and Sahar-e-Khayal (1990) — and his late study Nuqoosh-e-Dagh (1992) gathered the poets of the Dagh school. His ghazals were sung by leading singers, among them Jagjit Singh, and in 1989 the Ghalib Institute honoured him with the Ghalib Award. He died on 18 December 1994, aged 81.