Balwant Singh
A professor and contemporary mushaira poet who recites in Urdu — his very name placing him outside the single faith the language is so often, and so wrongly, assumed to belong to. His verse is built for the live hall: defiant, warm about home and family, and quick enough to turn his own professorship into a punchline.
Balwant Singh is introduced on stage as 'Professor Balwant Singh', and the compère's affectionate wordplay gives the game away — here, he says, is a man with experience of both ishq and of teaching, of love and of the lecture hall, which is why only he could have written the couplet about students who do well at their books yet cannot do love well. He belongs to the circuit of living poets whose reputation is made in the hall and on the recording rather than on the printed page, carrying the Urdu ghazal to mushaira audiences across India and the Gulf.
He is, by the standards of the classical masters on this shelf, lightly documented — a working performance poet rather than a settled literary biography — and we do not invent what the record does not hold. What the recitation itself shows is a clear and likeable signature: a defiance that will not bow to fear, to power, or to a charity that arrives with strings; a tenderness about the daily struggle of keeping a household; and a wit that can name Socrates in one breath and the blister on a working man's foot in the next. He stands on this shelf for one of the plainest truths it exists to tell — that great Urdu verse has never been the property of any one community, and a professor named Balwant Singh, reciting to a mushaira crowd, is as much its keeper as anyone.
jo saal-o-saal na ho raat-o-raat ho jaaye …
“If a man's hour turns to his side, then what would not happen in years can happen in a single night. And those who pick on the weak will find out soon enough — the day it ever comes to blows with us.”
chalne deta nahin jab paaon ka chhaala ham ko …
“We walk on our heads for the sake of the household's needs — even on the days the blister on our foot will not let us walk at all. We are Socrates: poison is the very thing that will keep us alive. If you truly mean to kill us, then hand us a cup of nectar.”
aap ko jeene ke andaaz nahin aayenge
“The fear of death torments you at every hour — and so you will never learn the art of living.”
padhaai mein jo achchha kar rahe hain
“How will they ever manage to love well — the ones who are so busy being good at their studies?”
dil ke hujre mein dagha-baaz nahin aayenge
“Only the faithful are given room in here — into the small chamber of the heart, the treacherous will never be let in.”
sirf paison pe sukhan-saaz nahin aayenge
“These ones, too, will have to be seated on the high seat with honour — the makers of verse do not come for money alone.”
aisi soorat se nahin lena ujaala ham ko
“The one who gives us light and then keeps reminding us of the favour — light on those terms is light we would rather not take.”
aur qayaamat ka bhi dete hain hawaala ham ko
“People will push us into the sins themselves — and then hold the Day of Judgment over us as a warning.”
baad maa-baap ke jis bhai ne paala ham ko
“With what face could we have fought him over land — the brother who raised us after our parents were gone?”
ab mujhe dhoke se maara hi nahin jaa sakta
“There is no one in my army except myself — and so now I cannot be killed by treachery.”
sirf ashkon se to roya hi nahin jaa sakta
“Keep blood in your eyes as well — for in the grief of love, weeping with mere tears is not enough.”
saal do saal to poochha hi nahin jaa sakta
“A plain, direct question of love to some girl — that is something you simply cannot bring yourself to ask for a year or two.”
main wo pathar hoon jo pooja hi nahin jaa sakta
“The one who can never be set inside any temple — I am that stone, the kind that simply cannot be worshipped.”
hamaare ghar ka batwaara hua hai
“Measure the size of our grief — our home itself has been divided up.”
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