Chandigarh: "Eh mera geet, kise na gana. Eh mera geet, main aape gaake, bhalke mar jana (This song of mine, no one will sing it. This song of mine, I will sing it myself, and by tomorrow, I shall be gone).
" Shiv Kumar Batalvi wrote these lines, maybe in a moment of prophetic defiance that no one else would sing his song, and that he alone would carry its pain to the grave. Decades later, these words feel eerily true. Not because his poetry faded, it didn't.
His verses echo across oceans, in Bollywood tracks and across social media. But in the very institutions where his journey began, Baring Union Christian College in his hometown Batala and Sikh National College in Qadian, there is silence. No bust, no plaque, no literary corner.
If he would have been alive, Batalvi would have turned 89 on Wednesday. The youngest recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award, Batalvi completed his matriculation in 1953 and enrolled in Baring College but soon left, joining Sikh National College. He dropped out midway through his second year to join engineering in Himachal Pradesh, which also, he left.
Yet even those brief years shaped his early journey. "There's so much curiosity about him. People come from abroad, even researchers from other Indian states just to ask about his life, his home, his voice," said his nephew Rajiv Batalvi, 58, who still lives in the family house in Batala.
"But in the places where he once studied, spent his formative years, there's no sign he was ever there. It's like .
