Dil ki bisat kya thi nigah-e-jamal meN....

dil ki bisaat kyaa thii nigaah-e-jamaal meN
ek aaiinaa thaa TuuT gayaa dekh bhaal meN
(nigaah-e-jamaal: eye of beauty)

sabr aa hii jaye, gar ho basar ek haal meN
imkaaN ek aur zulm hai qaid-e-muhaal meN

aazurda is qadar huuN saraab-e-khayaal meN
jii chahtaa hai tum bhii na aao khayaal meN
(saraab: mirage)

tang aa ke toRtaa huuN tilism-e-khayaal ko
ya mutmaiin karo ki tumhiin ho khayaal meN

umr-e-do-roza vaaqai khwaab-o-khayaal thii
kuchh khwaab meN guzar gayii, baaqii khayaal meN

Seemab Akbarabadi's above-mentioned ghazal is one of my favourites. The first couplet is considered one of the ten most popular ashaa'r in Urdu poetry in the last century. Aashiq Husain 'Seemab' was born in Agra in 1880.

He was employed with railway but due to his passion for poetry quit the job and returned to Agra and published/edited well-known journals.

He had set up a full-fledged college of poetry 'Qasrul Adab' and had hundreds of disciples. Seemab had written 284 books in his life. He died in 1951.

His son Ejaz and later grandson Iftikhar Imam Siddiqui carried the legacy. The well-known Urdu magazine Shayar (or Shair as the magazine prefers) is regularly published from Mumbai and has completed seventy years.

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