'Dushmani jam kar karo lekin...': Bashir Badr, beloved voice of modern Urdu ghazal, dies at 91

BAshir Badr, the much-feted and dear Urdu poet with an immense mass followers, passed aside on th. He was 91 and indisposed from dementia and other age-related issues.Who was Bashir Badr?Born on February 15, 1935, in what was then the United Province in pre-independent India, Badr was a keen student of the ghazal. Like his contemporary, Nasir Kazmi (older to Badr by a decade), Badr used everyday language to great effect, ensuring that his verses spoke directly to the listener.An alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University, Badr authored several books of ghazals, literary criticism of the form, and taught at Meerut University for several years.Such was his popularity that in 1972, the then President of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto quoted him when Pakistan and India signed the Shimla agreement, signalling the end of the Indo-Pak war: Dushmani jam kar karo lekin yeh gunjaish rahein/ Jab kabhi hum dost ho jayein, toh sharminda na ho (We can pursue enmity with all our might but let us leave a little room/ When we become friends again, we must not feel ashamed). His popularity also crossed over to the Hindi film industry, with filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj and lyricist Varun Grover using his couplets in their works.Badr won several awards during his lifetime, including the Sahitya Akademi award and the Padma Shri, for his contribution to Urdu literature.Azra Naqvi speaks to HTHT spoke to Azra Naqvi, a poet and translator, who knew Badr well, and performed with him on multiple occasions.Edited excerpts: Yeh zafrani pullover usi ka hissa hai — koi aur pehne toh dusra hi lage. (This saffron-coloured pullover belonged to her; on anyone else it looked different.)The girls in our college in Aligarh swooned over those lines; they became an instant hit when Bashir sahab wrote them back when I was still a teenager. That was his charm and his fandom. He was, in every sense, a poet of the masses. His style was singular — his shayari felt immediately relatable. Everyone who heard his verses identified with them.We lived in Aligarh, and my mother was a poet too. He knew my family and treated us like his own. I grew up listening to him at mushairas across the city. After I married, we moved to Saudi Arabia. We grew closer to him when he came there for a mushaira and we hosted him at our home.At the time I worked for an Urdu newspaper and interviewed him. Even in an interview he spoke so freely, which reflected the purity of his soul. He never spoke ill of competitors or contemporaries; when I asked about a particular critic, he replied with a one-liner: Ek shayari toh tameez se bol kar dikhaye (Let him recite one poem properly).He regularly attended mushairas around the world, especially in Riyadh, where people often invited him. Many of these gatherings were in homes where men and women sat separately or the women sat behind a veil. At one mushaira I was performing with him, but he refused to let me sit behind the veil. “How will she perform from behind curtains?” he asked, and made sure I sat right next to him. His gestures, as much as his words, showed how progressive he was. This is why generations loved his verses.Everyone writes couplets about the same emotions, but his shayari on love and loss reached deeply into people’s hearts. Every poet has written about love and separation, but his words touched lovers across the world:Ek samandar ke pyase kinare the hum, apna paigam lati thi mauj-e-rawan/ Aaj do rail ki patriyon ki tarah, sath chalna hai aur bolna tak nahi. (We were once like the thirsty shores of an ocean, waiting for waves to bring messages. Today we are like two railway tracks — running side by side but never speaking.)The first time I visited his home, I noticed a quilt-like hanging on the wall made of small square blocks. A fan had gifted it to him; each block was embroidered with one of his verses.I saw photographs from his last years after he was diagnosed with dementia. He was bedridden and had a caretaker. But that is not how I want to remember him. He was a lively, cheerful soul — the heart of every mehfil. He will live on in our memories, embodied by my favourite of his lines: Khuda aise ehsaas ka naam hai — rahe samne aur dikhai na de (God is the name of such a feeling: present before you, yet unseen).