Batalvi, nature’s wild child

Raj Kumar 

In literary circles, many comparisons are drawn between Shiv Kumar Batalvi and John Keats. Though with Keats my association is through his odes, with Batalvi I spent many days and nights of my life. He would call me by my pet name Rajha and for me he was just Shiv. Even when the world of literary wits had begun to recognise him as a poet of pangs, pain and poignancy, and famous personalities from the cinematic circle got smitten with his romantic but heart-melting poems, he remained down to earth with friends — though he was an altogether different Shiv for the outer world — arrogant, iconoclast, rebel and bohemian. He was a strange child of nature — creative but whimsical. He had the charisma to draw people close to him, but was too introvert to get attached with them. His temperament was mercurial. Shorn of pretence, he would call a spade a spade. 

Once he asked me to accompany him to a college where he was invited to regale the audience with his heart-piercing poetry. Having reached the venue, Shiv straightaway demanded liquor from the hosts standing at the main gate to offer him a floral welcome. When the chairman of the college extended him a garland, Shiv began to sternly rebuke him and said he had committed ‘hundreds of murder’ just to present him a needless floral welcome. ‘Chairman saheb,  phoolan di jagha galeyaan ch nahi gamleyaan ch hundi hai, te naale mera swagat sharaab naal karo kisi shingaar naal nahi’ (the befitting place of flowers is not around the neck, but in earthen pots; you should welcome me by presenting liquor and not any floral embellishments). 

One night, Shiv was at our place in Batala. We both would drink. He regaled my wife and I with his poetic pieces recited in his mellifluous voice with which he was certainly divinely blessed. When after some time my wife retired to our room, and playing a good host I decided to share the room with Shiv, he remarked: ‘Rajhay, you cannot sleep with me as I have a furtive meeting with my beloved tonight. You will have to leave me with her now!’ I was utterly amazed but on his obstinate insistence, I, too, retired to my room. That night I could not even sleep for a moment as I could hear Shiv talking to himself all night. He did not sleep but sang, cried and laughed loudly, as if he were with his beloved — sometimes loving her and other moments nagging her. 

Such was the enigmatic persona of our loveable Shiv, a riddle, a shrouded mystery that still lives unsolved in many hearts even after his untimely tragic death. On his birth anniversary on July 23, I remember him again with tears in my eyes and his magnum opus Loona in hands. What a remarkable man Shiv was!