Shiv Kumar Batalvi

Punjab's Birha da Sultan — the King of Separation, whose songs of parting Punjab still sings. Shiv Kumar Batalvi (1936–1973), born Shiv Kumar on 23 July 1936 at Bara Pind Lohtian, a village in Shakargarh tehsil of Sialkot district in undivided Punjab, was the most loved romantic poet of modern Punjabi — the "Birha da Sultan", the King of Separation, whose songs of love and parting Punjab still sings. He was born into a Saraswat Brahmin family — his father, Pandit Krishan Gopal, a patwari who rose to tehsildar in the revenue department, his mother Shanti Devi — and was eleven when Partition moved the family to Batala in Gurdaspur district, where he grew up. He passed his matriculation in 1953 and studied science at Baring Union Christian College in Batala, then arts at S.N. College in Qadian, leaving without a degree; it was in those college years that he began to sing his own ghazals and songs to his classmates. His first collection, Peeran da Paraga (The Scarf of Sorrows), appeared in 1960, when he was twenty-four, and was an instant success; Mainu Vida Karo (Bid Me Farewell) followed in 1963. His masterpiece, the verse play Loona (1965), retells the old legend of Puran Bhagat from the side of Loona, the woman blamed for the tragedy — a new kind of modern Punjabi qissa — and won him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1967, the youngest recipient of the award. He married Aruna, of Kiri Mangial in Gurdaspur district, on 5 February 1967; they had two children, Meharban and Puja. In 1968 he moved to Chandigarh and joined the State Bank of India. His verse — love that aches, parting that never heals, a death-wish spoken plainly — was sung by the great voices of Punjab, from Surinder Kaur and Jagjit Singh to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and made him the people's poet of his generation. A visit to London in 1972 was followed by failing health; he died of liver cirrhosis on 6 May 1973 at Kiri Mangial, his wife's village, aged thirty-six. A selection of his poems, Birha da Sultan, chosen by Amrita Pritam, appeared in 1993, and an anthology, Alvida, had appeared posthumously in 1974.