From the mid to the late seventies of the last century, when Jalandhar was still called Jullundur, and before the turmoil in Punjab grounded all youth festivals and cultural activities, his melancholic songs were on everyone’s lips in college and university programmes.
Jagjit Singh gave voice to his iconic poems: Main Kandyali Thor Ve (I am a thorny cactus); Ghamaan Di Raat Lammi Ae (The night of sorrows is long); Eh Mera Geet Kise Na Gaana (No one shall sing these songs of mine); Maye Ni Maye (Oh mother, mother dear); Mainu Tera Shabab Le Baitha (Your beautiful youth has been my undoing); Main Ik Shikra Yaar Banaya (I made an untamed hawk my beloved); Yarian, Rab Kar Ke (May such friendships be blessed by the Lord); Rog Ban Ke Reh Gaya (It remains a sad malady); and Raat Gayi Kar Tara Tara (The night is gone, but some stars are still seen on the firmament). We heard them on audio cassettes played on then-ubiquitous tape recorders, as well as on All India Radio (AIR), for Doordarshan had still not reached every household.
However, the mass-circulation Hindi press—Punjab Kesari and Veer Pratap—ignored Shiv Kumar Batalvi because he wrote in Punjabi, while Punjabi papers such as Ajeet and Akali Patrika were not very comfortable with his Bohemian lifestyle, especially his public image with a cigarette in hand, which went against orthodox Sikh tradition. I am not aware of whether the Urdu press in Jalandhar or Lahore covered him—probably not. The Tribune, the only English newspaper from Chandigarh, was still ‘stiff upper lip’, and its editors did not give him or his poetry the coverage he deserved. However, the thespian Balwant Gargi made a documentary on him for the Films Division of the I&B Ministry in 1979.
Also Read: The carefully curated selfhood of Diljit Dosanjh
An uncomfortable masterpiece
Batalvi, who worked at the SBI, was the youngest person to win the Sahitya Akademi Award, at the age of 31, in 1967 for his magnum opus, Loona, a radical reinterpretation of Qissa Bhagat Puran. He was interviewed by BBC Urdu in 1970, and his fame spread across both the Punjabs.
In any case, while Loona won critical acclaim, at least my professors at Lyallpur Khalsa College—both male and female—in the departments of English and Punjabi (1976-79) found it difficult to accept its revolutionary reinterpretation of the ancient legend of Qissa Puran Bhagat.
Batalvi had refused to cast Loona—the young second wife of an ageing, impotent, upper-caste king—as the villain of the piece. In fact, she was a victim of her Chamar caste and of circumstances that pitted her against a vengeful king, who ordered the dismemberment of his ‘ascetic’ son who had refused her advances. For centuries, Loona was the accursed one, while no strictures were cast upon the king. Her yearning and torment had gone unnoticed, and yet she was the one to be cursed for seeking fulfilment of the body and soul.
Yet the book did find a wider readership despite its uncomfortable themes. The Sahitya Akademi commissioned BM Bhalla, a professor of English at Delhi University and a connoisseur of English, Urdu, and Punjabi literature, to render Loona into a slim volume of 170 pages, which also won the Delhi Sahitya Akademi Award for translation.
Bhalla’s translation has been commended for capturing the critical nuances of pre-Partition Punjab, especially the landscape and soundscape around Jhelum, the terrain of Loona, the dramatic structure, and the psychological depth of Batalvi’s poetic verse. It made this foundational piece of non-scriptural Punjabi literature accessible to English-speaking readers. I must admit that I first read the translation, for many words in the original Punjabi are not in common currency today.
Also Read: Saeed Naqvi on how Urdu poetry lives and breathes in everyday moments
The poet returns
Among the many collateral damages of the insurgency in Punjab was that all spaces in public discourse were captured either by the kind of narrative now presented in the film Satluj or by the equally powerful counter-narrative.
However, at the turn of the century, Batalvi was resurrected by Bollywood and the music industry.
It started with Ajj Din Chadheya, sung by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan in Love Aaj Kal (2009), which adapted the opening lines and overall essence of Batalvi’s famous poem, Ajj Din Chadheya Tere Rang Varga: the dawn today brings with it not just light, but also your hues and your warmth.
This was followed by the iconic track Ikk Kudi from Udta Punjab (2016), with one version sung by Shahid Mallya and another by Diljit Dosanjh. It is an adaptation of Batalvi’s classic poem, Ikk Kudi Jihda Naam Mohabbat, Ghum Hai, Ghum Hai, Ghum Hai: there is a girl whose name is Love, and she is lost, lost forever.
In Dunki (2023), director Rajkumar Hirani used the haunting lines from his lyric Ki Puchde O Haal Fakiran Da as the poignant background to a scene. In Amar Singh Chamkila (2024), the emotional climax track Vida Karo (composed by AR Rahman and sung by Arijit Singh) was inspired by and adapted from his poem Mainu Vida Karo. And finally, in Satluj, the background score draws on Ghamaan Di Raat Lammi Ae—the night of sorrows is long.
Like Keats, Byron, and Shelley, Batalvi died young— before the insurgency had shaken Punjab to its roots. Ironically, the headquarters of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was at Chowk Mehta near Batala, the city that the poet made famous by adopting “Batalvi” as his takhallus (nom de plume), much like other poets in the Urdu and Punjabi tradition, such as Sahir Ludhianvi and Hafiz Jalandhari.
One can only wonder what he would have felt and written on seeing the blood in the Sutlej or Beas. Amrita Pritam had, after all, written that poignant poem, Lahoo Di Bhari Chenab—the Chenab has more blood than water—about how red the river had become in 1947. Maybe his voice would have dinned some sense into those who perpetrated the senseless killings that marked the two wasted decades of Punjab, whose aftermath the state and its people continue to suffer in the present continuous.
The poet is dead. Long live the poet!
Sanjeev Chopra is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Prime Ministers Museum and Library (PMML), New Delhi, where his Fellowship topic is Borders, Boundaries and Bluewaters of Bharat. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)