Sana Name Poetry in Urdu
"Ishq par zor nahi, yeh woh aatish hai Ghalib, jo lagaaye na lage aur bhujhaaye na bhujhe"
Mirza Ghalib was born in Kala Mahal, Agra into a family descended from Aibak Turks who moved to Samarkand (now in Uzbekistan) after the downfall of the Seljuk kings.
In accordance with upper class Muslim tradition, he had an arranged marriage at the age of 13, but none of his seven children survived beyond infancy. After his marriage he settled in Delhi. In one of his letters he describes his marriage as the second imprisonment after the initial confinement that was life itself. The idea that life is one continuous painful struggle which can end only when life itself ends, is a recurring theme in his poetry. One of his couplets puts it in a nutshell:
"The prison of lige and the bondage of grief are one and the same,
Before the onset of death, how can man expect to be free of grief?"
Ghalib started composing poetry at the age of 11. His first language was Urdu, but Persian and Turkish were also spoken at home. Although Ghalib himself was far prouder of his poetic achievements in Persian, he is today more famous for his Urdu Ghazals. Numerous elucidations of Ghalib's ghazal compilations have been written by Urdu scholars. The first such elucidation or Sharh was written by Ali Haider Nazm Tabatabai of Hyderabad during the rule of the Last Nizam Of Hydrabad.
In keeping with the conventions of the classical ghazal, in most of Ghalib's verses, the identity and the gender of the beloved is indeterminate. The critic/poet/writer Shamsur Rahman Faruqui explains that the convention of having the "idea" of a lover or beloved instead of an actual lover/beloved freed the poet-protagonist-lover from the demands of realism. Love poetry in Urdu from the last quarter of the seventeenth century onwards consists mostly of "poems about love" and not "love poems" in the Western sense of the term.
The first complete English translation of Ghalib's ghazals was Love Sonnets of Ghalib, written by Sarfaraz K Niaziand published by Rupa & Co in India and Ferozsons in Pakistan. It contains complete Roman transliteration, explication and an extensive lexicon.
Mirza Ghalib was also a gifted letter writer. Not only Urdu poetry but the prose is also indebted to Mirza Ghalib. His letters gave foundation to easy and popular Urdu. He made his letters "talk" by using words and sentences as if he were conversing with the reader.
His letters were very informal, some times he would just write the name of the person and start the letter. He was very humorous and wrote very interesting letters. In one letter he wrote "Main koshish karta hoon ke koi aisi baat likhoon jo padhe khush ho jaaye'" (I want to write lines such that whoever reads them would enjoy them). Some scholar says that Ghalib would have the same place in Urdu literature if only on the basis of his letters. They have been translated into English by Ralph Russell in The Oxford Ghalib.
Ghazal maestros likeJagjit Singh, Mehdi Hassan, Abida Parveen, Farida Khanum, Tina Sani, Asha Bhosle, Begam Akhtar, Ghulam Ali, Lata Mangeshkar, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan have sung his ghazals.Many singers from all over South Asia have sung many of his ghazals. A poem titled 'Ghalib' by poet-diplomat Abhay K highlights the trials and tribulations faced by Ghalib during his life.
Ghalib was buried in Hazrat Nizamuddin near the tomb of Nizamuddin Auliya. The side view of Mazar-e-Ghalib is shown in the image.
Side view of Mazar-e-Ghalib
"maze jahaan ke apnee nazar meiN KHaak naheeN
siwaa-e-KHoon-e-jigar, so jigar meiN KHaak naheeN"
(The happiness of the world is nothing for me
for my heart is left with no feeling besides blood.)
Source: https://www.sbs.com.au/language/english/ghalib-the-king-of-urdu-poetry-was-born-this-day