Yesterday, was Ghalib’s birthday and all the heritage walk leaders/ historians, I know shared nuggets from his life. Today I saw a lovely video by Aditya Pathak, about Ghalib and seeing that I thought I should write something about the man, who other than Harivansh Rai, Kaifi Azmi and Javed Akhtar and much later, Pablo Neruda, got me through many turbulent nights.

Ghalib was in another league, of course. One does suffer from existential angst, for unrequited love, separation and heartbreak, one found solace in Mirza Asadullah Beig’s poetry. Hum bikhre hue, bigde hue, sharab peene wallo ko, jo khudda he woh to mante he, magar duniya aur mazahb me nahin, unke liye Ghalib mian, ek humnawa he. Ek humsafar, jo Janat ki hakeekat jaanta he. Ghalib, may be a passing fascination for the pious, religious lot but for us cynics, he’s our fellow traveller, who has experienced unbearable loss and who died without an offspring. Unke baare me padh kar lagta he, yeh jee liye to hum bhi, jee hi lenge!