Shiv Kumar Batalvi

Shiv Kumar was a born poet who migrated from the poetic region of Sialkot to Batala at the most miserable moment of human history. It was the Independence of the sub-continent in 1947 - the dreadful, painful, horrible, miserable, devastating, slaughtering and marauding phenomenon, which bisected the trouble stricken North India. The pangs of separation are recurrent themes of this great lyricist of the land. He has been hailed as one of the great poets of all times. Shiv Kumar was born on July 23, 1936 in Bara Pind Lohtian (Shakargarh tehsil), in Punjab (now Pakistan). His father was a Patwari by the name of Pandit Krishan Gopal. After the partition his family moved to Batala. As a child Shiv is said to have been fascinated by birds and rugged, thorny plants on the Punjabi landscape. Shiv was exposed to the -ramlila- at an early age, and it is to be expected that he received what was later to become his instinctive understanding of drama from these early performances.

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Shiv kumar batalvi is a very famous Hindu poet in Punjabi and even today singers like jasbir jassi(of dil le gayi kudi Gujarat di fame) sings his songs.He usually wrote romantic poems or songs but one day some one asked him why don’t u write something about Guru Gobind Singh ji.He said I will try.

He himself has written in his book that after studying about Guru Gobind Singh ji he couldn’t find words to describe him and said that he was unable to pen a single alphabet abt Guru sahib for 3 months bcos he says that he cant describe him as god as Guru Gobind singh ji himself has said that “mau ko parmeswar jo ucharre te sab narak kund main jaye” (whosoever treat me as a god, he would surely go to hell if there is 1). But still he wrote some poems out of which one is as follows:

Main kis hanju da diwa baal ke teri aarti lawaan,

(out of which tear drop should I light a lamp n do ur aarti)

mera har geet bujdil hai, main keda geet aj gawaan,

(my every song is full of cowardness,which song should I sing today)

mera koi geet nahi aisa jo tere mech aa jawe,

(none of my songs can match ur personality)

sarre bajaar ja kar ke jo apna sir kata aawe,

(which can openly get his head beheaded, here the writer is actually referring to the sacrifice of Guru tegh bahadur sahib ji because it was Guru gobind singh ji who said Guru tegh bahadur ji to save the hindu religion and in turn his father Guru tegh bahadur sahib our 9th Guru got beheaded for saving hindu or so called ism)

jo apne sohal chhinde bol nihaan wich china aawe,

(who can get his favourite words bricked, here writer is refeering to his two sons sahibzada zorawar singh ji and sahibzada fateh singh ji who were bricked alive by wazir khan)

je lut jaawe taan phir bhi yaar te saathde jaawe,

(when he has lost everything even then he lives as he used to live, here writer says that Guru gobind singh jis belief in god was same when he had anandpur sahib, his four sons, 52 poets, his darbar, his army and it remained same when he lost everything,was in machiwara, he didn’t utter a single word or tear at the death of his sons, while on the other hand when leaving Chamkaur Sahib bhai sahib bhai daya singh ji(1 of the punj pyaras or 5 beloved ones) was accompanying Guru Gobind Singh ji he stoped and and Guru Gobind Gingh ji said what happened he said Sahibzada Ajit Singh ji and Jujhar Singh ji are lying on the battle field , you go ahead and I will meet you after doing their creamation, Guru gobind singh ji said they are not my only sons whole of khalsa is my own who will do their creamation and Guru gobind singh ji said that I don’t want any one to say that I treated my sons

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Shiv passed his matriculate exams in 1953, from Punjab University. He went on to enroll in the F.Sc. programme at Baring Union Christian College in Batala. Before completing his degree he moved to S.N. College, Qadian into their Arts program. It is here that he began to sing ghazals and songs for his classmates. Shiv never gave the final exams he needed to pass to receive his degree.

Around this period, 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 distill into poems. Perhaps the most celebrated such episode is his fascination for Gurbaksh Singh's daughter who left for the US and married someone else. When he heard of the birth of her first child, Shiv wrote Main ek 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?" Sounds much better in Punjabi (main oda theka leya hoyaa? Oho bacche banayi jave te main ode te kavita likhda rehma?).

In 1965 Shiv won the Sahitya Akademi award for his verse-drama Loona. He married on Feb 5, 1967 His wife Aruna was a Brahmin from Kir Mangyal in district Gurdaspur. By all accounts Shiv had a happy marriage. He had two children, Meharbaan (b. Apr. 12, 1968) and Puja (b. Sep. 23, 1969) whom he loved immensely.

By 1968 he had moved to Chandigarh, but both Batala and Chandigarh became soulless in his eyes. Chandigarh brought him fame, but scathing criticism as well, Shiv replied with an article titled My hostile critics. Meanwhile his epilepsy got worse and he had a serious attack while at a store in Chandigarh-s section 22. In the early 70-s Shiv came to Bombay for a literary conference. In keeping with Shiv-s outrageous behaviour there is a story about his trip to Bombay as well. Part of the conference involved readings at Shanmukhananda hall. After a few people had read their work (one of whom was Meena Kumari), Shiv got on the stage and began with "Almost everyone today has begun to consider themselves a poet, each and every person off the streets is writing ghazals". By the time he'd finished with his diatribe, there was not a sound in the hall. This is when he began to read Ek kuri jeeda naam mohabbat. gum hai, gum hai…. There wasn't a sound when he finished either.

Shiv has been called a Bohemian. There were complaints about his drinking and some suggestions that his 'friends' had him drink so he would exhibit his outrageous self. Shiv Kumar died in the 36th year of his life on May 7, 1973 in his father-in-law's house at Kir Mangyal near Pathankot.

Shiv as the traditional poetical phenomenon was born out of the literary conjugation (Kalmi sanjog) of Amrita Pritam and Mohan Singh, to whom he appropriately dedicated his most important creation Briha too Sultan. Both Amrita and Mohan had personally suffered in their respective love lives on account of circumstances beyond their control. In their romanticism therefore, a personal tinge of desperation was in-evitable. Punjabi character is far more emotional, both in happiness as well as sadness, than all other peoples- of the Indian subcontinent.

To succeed as a poet, therefore, one must succeed in making people cry as well as bursting into hilarious laughter with the flow of the lines. In contradiction to Amrita and Mohan, Shiv therefore, developed the most superb art of recitation. He will be long remembered, like Heer Warris Shah, for this emotional rendering of whatever he wrote. I was deeply impressed by his exposition of this vivid magic in the very first Kavita that he gave at our house - Ki puchde ho hal fakiran da. This ren-dering has the touch of Sehgal-s voice - -])ukhh ke Aab din bitad nahin- Shiv like Sehgal had the inborn gift of soul-touching expression. He needed words and lines and in this he had the help of his creators more than anyone else past or present. I feel that in her enthusiasm to present her -poetic-child- to the world Amrita herself became too emotional in giving an unnecessary notoriety to Shiv as a heart-throwing lover (dil-pheank ashiq.).

Any healthy child experiences love-stings like Shiv and dreams love dreams like he did, but every child cannot be a poet. In the lines that are attributed to this side of Shiv-s creation there is the show of an irksome mockery. Every effort had been made to present him as a love-torn lover; as a half living, babbling corpse of love's treachery. True to his creators he was expounding all his life a love-lost theme, which was not, his own but was someone else's. He was never allowed to grow up beyond this slippery, muddy stage of deception with alcohol and tobacco in his body and love-potions in his mind. But Shiv violently protested against this utter subjugation. In his Main to Main he says:-

-O mere sirjko Tan de trashanhar butkaro Tuhadi wansh wich hun bal nahin 1k swal jamna si Jida uttar wi moran ton Tusan sabna sen sangna si Te jad men oodri thup nen Mere jungle choun langna si Taan bhuldi sabiyata men Shaher de moran to khangna si

He had tried to find himself in his own self. Similar effort has been made again and again in Loona. I feel sure that as time passes on people will try to find out more of the philosophy of his life butt at the occasion of the first national meeting that is being held in London to remember Shiv.

I wish to add my own appreciation of the man who came in our life only for a few brief moments. I had not heard of him in India and met him for the first time when I went to receive him at Heathrow. I was not aware of his poetry either. During all his stay in England I had never found him sober, but he was wonderful to his onlookers, a joke to his critics, and an enigma to himself. What I have written so far is the expression of a mixture of feelings that Shiv generated. But he had something really unique in him which would have him a place of pride among poets of the Punjab. He will be remembered long after his contemporaries would be forgotten for having brought to the Punjabi Kavita a true expression of the Punjabi cultural panorama.

Although he has written on a variety of themes, the main theme in Shiv's Poetry is Chet, Chandni, Joban rutan, Bhalke - nah - rehna. He writes

Phul di mahek mare Par agg di mahek na mardi.

A flower does not die only its odour disappears

That is why he wished after death to become first a star and then a second choice a flower to pervade on the earth and sky, be here day or night. A shining star gives its odour in its twinkling - the fire of love. Shiv was himself a fiery person. His laughter was tinged with fire of inner grief and showed a perpetual depression - a fiery depression. He was depressed, is no doubt.

--Main niki umren sara dard banda baetha eadi joban rat lahi dard kenwars hor deo-

In the parts of the Siwaliks there grow wild trees of har sangar (cyctanthes- arbor - tristis). The whole tree flowers around the early hours of the morning and fully grown white - dreamy - tinged with orange flowers fall down almost in rain before daybreak. It is a wonder-ful sight to see this spread of flowers, a massacre of youthful beauty. These are picked up, wovwn into garlands and tied around hair knots by young village lassies. Bushes of chamba and chambeli have also fully grown white creamy flowers that fall in the same way, but not so spectacularly. Chambe-di-kali flower buds are more commonly attributed to chamba. I am sure Shiv as a child must have been impressed by this dramatic death of the full grown youthful flowers, dying at the height of life. This became Shiv-s ideal -

-Chambe da phul sajra naio tur paina-

He grieved to see the death of a Chamba flower - Aj ik chambe da phul moea Gal paona de pa ke bahin Gora chetar chham chham roea -Asaan te joban ruten marna Mur jana asan bhare bharae Hijer tere di kar prikarma.

These lines are a superb poetry as an example of delicate sensitivity in expression. He filled sadness in the refreshing dew on the fallen flowers - as chham chham roaa and confirmed his faith in the transmigration of the soul. He was truly a poet of nature-flower-soil-death and life, threading these into a garland of laughing sadness. -Pa tandan de thaknan Kis lei katna Oah nah aapna Tan asan kis lai katna hor ji- He wanted to go - -Ni jinde main kal nahin rehna- Asan kis khatar hun jina Is miti kise chuman da phul Kade nah ditha khiria-

He was a lover of colour and beauty but with these he wanted purity integrity and respectability. He complained of -Widwa rut- Widwa joban

Whatever personal and impersonal emotion Shiv experienced he spread these to the outside nature. His outer and inner nature became one many a time, and one waited for the other for the union. -Marua khirna babul Ji, Jad chetar mur aawe-

In every aspect of nature he found an image of death - a phenomena which was unique in Shiv. He said -

-Main chaonda haan aaj da gora din Aanaei maot na mar jae-

No other poet before him, to my knowledge, was so much glamorised by the phenomenon of death as Shiv was. As Shiv was, death truly is a gift that is given to a man at birth and that is not an end, but is a milestone on the journey from beyond to beyond. I see Shiv walking on this path. -Raat chanani main turan-

He will continue to walk and we will continue to see him shining as a star at nightfall and touch him, smell him, enjoy him as a flower, like the chambe da phul -he will be seen again and again dying on the morning after morning. To him death seems more real then life. No one sees the flower coming into life, but what we see is only the death of the living. But death also is not the end.

-Nahen sade tan koi rog awalra Nahan sadi oomsr aakhiri Babul ji Aasan mukh da suraj Dubde tak mur aonna He will come back again on the horizon before sunset to live through the night.

I am waiting for that moment when Shiv, like Lord Shiv Ji will recreate himself out of the pieces and bits that he has left for all of us in the form of his poetry - the immortal images of his mortal frame.

Zindgi us ke liye ik maut thi Who pa gaya hai zindagi dar asal mar jane ke baad.