Waseem Barelvi
One of India's most beloved living Urdu poets and mushaira performers, celebrated for an accessible, epigrammatic idiom — short couplets on dignity, self-respect and quiet moral courage that land instantly with a live audience.
Firaq Gorakhpuri International Award (2008)
Born Zahid Hussain in Bareilly — the city his takhallus carries — Waseem Barelvi built two careers at once. He took a master's in Urdu and rose to head the Urdu department at Bareilly College, and at the same time became one of the most recognisable faces of the international mushaira, where his measured, declamatory delivery is itself the draw.
He has carried that standing into public life: vice-chairman of the National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language, and since 2016 a member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council — unusual for a working poet. His ghazals reached listeners who never attend a mushaira through the recordings of singers like Jagjit Singh.
His subject is dignity — self-respect, conscience, the quiet moral courage of the ordinary person — delivered in the short, epigrammatic couplet that a live audience can catch and carry home in one hearing. He remains, well into his eighties, a master of that instant landing.
diye ham bhi jalate hain ujala kyon nahin hota …
“What kind of dream is this, that the eyes have no share in it — I too light lamps, why does no light come? Keeping me apart from everyone was simply his pleasure — or he could have belonged to the whole world; why then not to me?”
main e'tibar na karta to aur kya karta
“He was lying with such grace and skill — what could I do but believe him?”
kisi charagh ka apna makan nahin hota
“Wherever it stays, there it will spill its light — a lamp has no dwelling it can call its own.”
kisi ko chhodna ho to mulaqaten badi karna
“Not everyone knows the art of parting in love — if you must leave someone, let the meetings grow longer.”
dekhna ye hai charaghon ka safar kitna hai
“Night is bound by time and will surely pass — what remains to be seen is how far the lamps can travel.”
tu mira khwab nahin hai jo bikhar jaaega
“I have loved you the way one loves an ordinary human being — you are not a dream of mine, that you would simply scatter away.”
tumhara saath dena chhod dengi
“If you dream too many dreams, your eyes will stop keeping you company.”
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