Eh Mera Geet

Adhi Raati Des Chambe De - Loona 1

2010-05-16T22:30:00.000-07:00

The Chorus Of The Chambavali Women

At the midnight hour
in the land of the champa flower
the champa flowers
o the champa flowers
its flagrant fragrance
sweeps out in the direction
of the palace

In the palace
the queen lies awake
upon her bed
her eyes bereft of sleep
She tells the king
I must have a hundred flowers
of champa
I must have them soon

The king he gathers her
in his arms and says
Take heart, my heart
Let the morning dawn
And I'll bring them to you
But the queen she cannot wait
The king is in a dilemma
If he is gentle she may cry
If he is firm she might die

At the deadly midnight hour
in the land of the champa flower
the champa flowers
o the champa flowers
its perfume runs amok
causing a havoc of desire
in the land of the champa flower.

As Natti and Sutradhar are planning to leave they are held back by the sounds of a sweet song - the women of Chamba are heading that way, singing together in chorus.

Eh Kaun Su Des - Loona I

2010-05-16T22:07:00.000-07:00

What Is This Land?

What pleasant land is this
And which this river
That like a snake of fire
ravishes the pale valley
lying softly here?

This is Chamba, my beautiful
And Ravi is the river
Known in the heavens as Aravati
Daughter to the sage Pangi
Sister to Chandrabagh
On earth the daughter was suspected
And into a son made
Bitter was the price paid
for this silver river
by the queen, her mother
and the valley she named
Chamba after her.

Listen, my love
How lovely is the birdsong here
As if a lover is calling out
To his loved one
As if the hollow of a bamboo flute
Has struck the perfect note
As if a ripple of laughter has flown
From lovers upon a couch
Lovely like the first sigh,
of first time lovers
on their first mating
Or like the dying notes
of a sad song
steeped in melancholy.

Come, let’s fly heavenwards now
Come, for the sun has risen
It is time for us to go
To dissolve in this fragrance
And find our way back home.

This song is from the opening sequence of the play. Natti and Sutradhar, heavenly beings from Indra's court, introduce the readers to the beauty of the Chamba valley.

Loona: The telling of it here (Opening Notes)

2010-05-14T01:52:00.000-07:00

Loona is so multi-layered and nuanced that I have been wondering for sometime how to organize the material as I begin unfolding this story for myself (and for the few readers following this blog). I have not read the original in Punjabi so I cannot do a direct translation. What I am attempting here is simply a partial re-telling buttressed by a commentary. For a commentator there are many beguiling ways of presenting Loona, so for a while I was confused. But finally I have decided to stick to a direct and linear approach. Loona is written in eight parts – we’ll just take them sequentially one by one. To do anything else would be at the cost of the main story. Also although I have begun today I don’t know at what pace I will continue and over how many months this particular journey will be completed – in the circumstances it is best that the parts follow each other systematically.

For this discussion on Loona I draw upon two principal sources. Segments of the play have been rendered in song by Bhupinder and Mitalee Singh. I will be posting original transcreations of these, along with the audio tracks. For the rest of the commentary I draw upon Dr. B M Bhalla’s English translation of the work. Here and there, I have taken very minor liberties with Dr. Bhalla’s version only to make it more accessible to myself. For instance, in Dr. Bhalla’s version Loona is spelt as Luna. It is only a matter of spelling but Luna is close in spelling to the word ‘lunar’ and conjures up in my mind the vision of an ethereal moon maiden. ‘Loona’ on the other hand, due to its proximity with the Punjabi term for salt, loond, captures better the earthiness and vitality of Shiv's heroine.

Loona: Exploring Desire (Opening Notes)

2010-05-13T23:41:00.000-07:00

What fascinates me about Loona is the theme it sets out to explore. Nowhere is the consummate ease with which Shiv can inhabit all 360 degrees on the desire and suffering axis more apparent than it is in Loona. From the opening sequences in which Natti and Sutradhar, heavenly narrators from Indra’s court, make love in the forests we know that desire and yearning are the underlying theme of the narrative. The opening sequences are dense with metaphors and imagery. The Ravi river is a snake of fire, its forked fangs, ravishing the pale, moonlit valley below. The valley of Champa, is a riot of champa flowers blossoming in the deadly midnight hour, unleashing impossible desires. We are introduced to desire as the impulse hidden inside nature, the source of all creation.

And then there are the characters each engaged with his/her own tryst with the nature of desire. There is the old king Salwan battling his loss of libido and seeking a way into the sun of his own being through a new mating. There is Loona, reckless in her anger at being yoked to an older man and yearning for a love which can match hers in ardour and youthfulness. There is Ichran the unceremoniously abandoned wife of Salwan seeking to come to terms with no longer being an object of desire. And then there is the lofty Puran, who desires a love that transcends the physical and seeks a union only with infinitude.

It is very clear that the underlying theme is extremely important to Shiv and he has tried to be totally honest and sincere in his exploration. “It is difficult to walk naked,” he writes in his Introduction. “I have presented the characters in this book in their stark reality. I can’t detach myself from these characters. I leave it to readers to judge their frank reality and truth as they think fit.”

Loona: A New Look At An Old Story (Opening Notes)

2010-05-13T23:37:00.000-07:00

Loona, an epic play written in verse form, is perhaps Shiv Batalvi’s single most significant work. It won him the Sahitya Akademi award for literature at the age of twenty eight. The story of Loona was not a new one. It had been around forever, an integral part of the kathas and kissas of Punjabi folklore. Only it wasn’t the story of Loona – it was the story of Puran Bhagat, a prince turned yogi. In the story of Puran, Loona is the vamp, the beautiful and evil young step mother who attempts to seduce him and who when thwarted wreaks terrible revenge.

Shiv’s motivation for re-telling an oft told story was to cast it in a new light, to remove what he identified as the distorting prisms of gender and class discrimination. He writes in his Introduction to the play that stories written by court poets in the pay of the ancient rulers should not be taken without question. Aging kings unable to satisfy the young wives they brought home were likely to be victims of doubt and suspicion, while the multiplicity of progeny from different wives was also likely to lead to intrigue over property and inheritance. And in all these histories and stories it was inevitable, that the king be rendered in the most favourable light by the court poet. “How” asks Shiv “can a modern poet follow that tradition blindly when there is no finality about any issue? There is always another aspect....”

Not only does Shiv question Salwan, the elderly king’s right to treat the beautiful but low born Loona as his property and appropriate her as his wife, he also questions why in popular tradition yogis were always high born and their temptresses of the lower castes. He elaborates, “The condition of high birth was needed even by Rama, Buddha, Charpat and Puran. Not only this, in order to prove that they were really great, lower caste women like Loona were depicted as the embodiment of lust......to deceive the high born righteous followers off the spiritual path.” It is this two-fold discrimination against women and against the depressed classes that Batalvi takes on in his version of the epic.

In many senses Loona is a feminist recasting of the old story. In it we see not only Loona making a bold case for the right of the young woman to make her own choices and express her sexuality, but we see the different women characters whether it is Loona’s girlfriends, the old queen Ichran’s maid, Queen Ichran herself explore the many ways in which women were disenfranchised in the old orders (That their songs and words resonate still in less choate ways in the psyche of the modern day woman are another story). Loona is more wonderful for having been written by a man, for while the feminist point of view is strongly put across Shiv Batalvi retains complete empathy with the male characters in the drama. In Shiv's words, “I have tried to assuage the pain from the deep recesses of my soul where my feminism lay dormant. Also my manhood.”

Ek Kudi Jihda Naa Mohabbat

2009-11-18T19:50:00.000-08:00

So many of Shiv’s poems are about lost loves – about a girl called Maina who he met at a fair and who died an early death soon after, or about the girl who inspired Shikra Yaar who left him to get married and go off to America, and of other women he had known and lost. This poem, I like to think, is about the love he never found. Titled Ishtehar or Advertisement it is a search for a missing girl. The central refrain of the song is Gumm hai – this can translate as “Is lost” or it can be translated as the subtly different “Is missing”. I have bypassed both these options and chosen to translate it as “Where is she?” That makes a better song of it in English, to my mind. A recording of the song sung in Shiv’s own voice is available but I’m posting the version sung by Rabbi Shergill here. I was very taken by this song from the first time I heard it sung by Rabbi – at that time I didn’t know of Shiv Batalvi at all.

Ishtehar

Where is that girl called Love
Where is she?
She is simple and beautiful
She is simply beautiful
Where is she?

She has the beauty of a fairy,
the virtues of a Mary,
Lissom and willowy
She walks like poetry
Petals fall from her lips
When she laughs
She is barely there
But at a glance
She can read me

We have been separated
an eternity
Yet it seems like yesterday
It seems like today
It seems like just now
That she was here with me

What is this deception?
Why this trickery?
Now she is with me
Now she isn’t?
I search for her
In every face that passes me
Where is she?

Evening descends upon the bazaar
The streets become rife with smells
At the crossroads
restlessness and exhaustion collide
with the need for pleasure
And in that thronging madness
I stand all alone
her absence gnawing
at my insides

I wait for her to call out to me
Across the crowds of people
Over the milling odours and sounds
I feel she will call any moment
I feel she will call any day
I will recognize her
She will recognize me
But no one calls out
Only the din, the crowds
And no one out there
calling for me

I sense that she is there
Somewhere in this crowded world
Somewhere on these bustling streets
She walks past me
But lost in my search for her
I am unable to see
I stand there bereft
her absence eating into me.

Tell her to come and find me
Tell her to come for my sake
Tell her to come for her own sake
Tell her to come for love’s sake
Tell her to come for God’s sake
Tell her to come if she can hear me
Tell her to come even if she's dying
Tell her to keep the faith
Tell her to come once
Before this life, these songs
desert me
Tell her to come and stem
this pain

That girl called Love
Simple, beautiful
Simply beautiful
Where is she?

Ranjha or Heer?

2009-10-23T02:29:00.000-07:00

Much has been made of Shiv Batalvi’s reputation as a heartbroken, jilted lover and as a perennial ladies man. Professor S. Soze in his book on Shiv in the Sahitya Akademi’s Makers of Indian Literature series describes Shiv as a dashing Ranjha type figure. But to me Shiv comes across equally as Heer. In poem after poem he slips effortlessly into the female psyche and writes in a voice which is stunning in its authenticity.

The Ranjha who wrote,

“Mainu tera shabab leh baitha,
rang gora gulab leh baitha”

(Your beauty was my undoing,
it was your fair skin that did me in)

is also the Heer who wrote,

“Aape ni maen baalari,
Maen haale aap mataan jogi
Mat kihra es nu dave?
Aakh su ni maae ihnu
Rove buhl chith ke ni,
Jahg kithe sun na lave!”

(O mother, I’m helpless myself
how then do I give solace to him
Tell him to clench his lips
when he weeps
Lest the world hears him cry)

The Majnu who wrote

Aj din chadhiya tere rang varga

(Today, the morning awoke
wearing the colour of your skin)

Is also the Laila who sang –

Kore shagna di meri mehndi
Jaadu di ho jave ve.....

(Blessed is this mehndi,
that I wear, my beloved,
on the first
of every month
The pain of lost love
flows through it
and keep its ever fresh)

What distinguishes Shiv’s love poetry is that he is not scared of the intensity of love and is able to inhabit it fully. He captures both the impetuous ardour of the parwana, the moth and the slow burning of the shama, the flame - with an equal understanding and empathy. Indeed, I think if anyone is looking to anoint the patron saint of separated lovers, they needn’t look any further than Shiv Batalvi.

Virhon De Keede

2009-10-05T21:38:00.000-07:00

This is one of Shiv Batalvi’s best loved and most popular songs (you have to only hear it once to know why). But I found its meaning elusive to track down. For days on end I was stuck at the very beginning – at the phrase “Yaar adya”. Adya literally means stuck or obstinate and that’s where I was stuck till I figured that what Shiv was actually saying was “yaarariyan” - the word ‘yaar’ prolonged into an endearment to mean beloved. It’s a lovely usage isn’t it? Then there were other bits where I wasn’t sure if I had it correctly. But nevertheless, here’s the transcreation. The advantage to writing a blog, as opposed to writing a book say, is that it can be corrected at any time. So if you think I've got it wrong do tell me. Meanwhile, here's a song that grows more beautiful every time you hear it.

Virhon De Keede

Beloved
The pain of separation
will kill me, God willing
The worms of grief
will turn me into dust soon
The doors of these hazel eyes
will shut forever
This champa tree of memories
will dry up,
Its flowering youth wilt
and fall to the ground
A flash flood of tears
will sweep all traces
of me away

Beloved, God willing
The worms of separation
will get me soon.

At the slightest sign from you
I sigh so deeply
the shut book of my life
falls open again
Its pages fly free
as the cold breath
rushes through.
Blessed is this mehndi,
that I wear, my beloved,
on the first
of every month
The pain of lost love
flows through it
and keep its ever fresh.

Beloved, God willing,
The worms of separation
will get me soon.

Eh Mera Geet

2009-09-18T19:58:00.000-07:00

This Song of Mine

Let no one sing
This song of mine
This song is mine alone
I shall die singing it.

This song is darker
than the earth
Older than the sun
Lifetime after lifetime
its words have travelled
down with me
No one else
should bring them to their lips
This song is for me alone to sing
And then die singing it

This song is full of pain
Its sound is strange
Like autumn cranes shrieking
on distant mountains
Like a clamour of birds
piercing the forest dawn
Like a dark night wind
swiftly sighing through
tall grasses
This song is for me alone
to sing

When we die,
My songs and I,
The arbiters of separation
Will follow us
to our grave
In one voice they will marvel
“Only a few are given lives
like this, full of such pure,
undiluted pain”
Don’t attempt to sing
This song of mine

This song is mine,
Mine alone, to sing.

Inna Ankhiyaan Ch Pava Kivne Kajla

2009-09-16T23:12:00.000-07:00

I hesitate as I post this piece here. I was not aware of this song as being a Shiv Batalvi number till someone wrote in requesting for a translation. Then of course, I did a quick internet search and found it attributed to Shiv in more than one place. He was a versatile writer and I know for a fact that “Shaukan Mele De” - that other folksy number made popular by Surinder Kaur, is definitely by him. The Inna Akkhiyan Ch song is lovely and features in last year’s Abhay Deol starrer Oye Lucky Lucky Oye. When Surinder Kaur sings it in her koel of Punjab voice it comes across as a hauntingly beautiful melody but when I render it in English I find it is not as rich in metaphor and imagery as other Batalvi pieces and does not seem to contain that familiar inflection of pain either. It comes across as a bit flat in the transcreation. However, I’m posting it anyway. Chances are not all my transcreations will make for beautiful stand-alone pieces – many will remain simply as tools – a compass, a map, a torch, a rope – some help along the way as the reader makes his own journey into the heart of the original song.

How do I put kajal in these eyes?

How do I put kajal in these eyes?
You reside in there
My face is always turned towards you
Your name is ever on my lips
You live in my eyes, beloved
You are in the parting of my lips
as they break into a smile
When I laugh
you are the laughter
inside my laugh

Though the distance was long
You came nearer and nearer
You came in through the eyes
and began to live in my heart
When I talk of love
You reply oh so gently
How do I put kajal in these eyes
When you reside in there?

Bit by bit my life
Has taken the colour of love
I only ask to live it with you
Happiness has dawned
Sadness has fled from me
How do I put kajal in these eyes
When you reside in them?

and here's the full version:

Mere Ram Jeeo

2009-09-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

O Sweet Lord

What a season you chose
for your coming
O sweet lord
When the flowers have wilted
in the garden
O sweet lord

Where were you
when this garden was a tumult
of youthful passion?
Where were you
when the champa flowered
and spread its heady fragrance
everywhere?
Where were you
when body and heart
beat in unison
Where were you
in the blossoming season
my sweet lord?

Where were you
When I was younger
and my father was looking
for a groom?
Where were you
when the vatna
was being put?
Where were you
when I was leaving
for another’s home?
Where were you
in the flowering season
when the garden
was thirsting for rain?

Saawan after saawan
the seasons passed
Why did you not come then?
What a season you chose
for your coming
O sweet lord
When the flowers have wilted
in the garden
O sweet lord

Note to the Reader: The version of the poem transcreated here is somewhat different from the song by Chitra Singh below. While tracking Shiv’s work I have often come across more than one version of a particular piece.

Christopher Columbus, Shiv Kumar Batalvi, and I

2009-09-12T20:05:00.000-07:00

Two months ago while looking for a poem by Amrita Pritam on YouTube I chanced upon the poetry of Shiv Kumar Batalvi. The teeth haven’t stopped spilling out of my mouth since then. I feel like Christopher Columbus must have felt after discovering America. Silly man. He set off for someplace, reached someplace else and thought he had discovered it! Never mind that it had always existed and had long been home to races older and wiser than his. It is the same with me and SKB. I can’t get over the thrill of discovering him, notwithstanding the fact that his poetry has been around in this world for longer than I have been here.

They say the end of all exploration is the finding of oneself. I don’t know if Christopher Columbus, alighting off the Santa Maria found his own essential humanity mirrored in some Red Indian chief’s eyes. But I do know, as I embark upon this journey to transcreate as much as I can of Shiv Batalvi’s poetry into English, that a whole continent of resonance awaits me.

Umraan De Saravar

2009-09-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

Swans of Grief

Come song
Drink your fill today
from the lake of my life
Drink, my song,
of these waters of experience
as they glitter with pain
Tomorrow the swans of grief
may take wing
So drink your fill today
of this beautiful lake
dip your beak
into the pure radiance
of my pain

This lake is deceptive
Though it looks
as if it is there forever
It may dry up any day
or lose its sheen
Drink song
of these experiences
Tomorrow
it may be lost to you,
this lake of my life,
then don’t complain
O song,
drink your fill today

The swans of grief
I am told
are avaricious
They feed upon
broken, bleeding hearts
and make poems
of our tears
They gather from us the music
and take flight
never to return again.
O song,
drink your fill today.

Drink of this grief
I beg of you
It will turn to gold
upon your lips
Even as I die of this ache
You, my song, will live on
and I will live
in your shadow
Don’t let death
do us both in.

Drink o drink song
of this pool of sadness
this lake of experiences
before the swans of grief
take wing
I beseech you, my song
Drink your fill today

Jaach Mainu Aa Gayi

2009-09-10T22:42:00.000-07:00

This is a transcreation (again not a literal translation) of Shiv Batalvi's poem Jaach Mainu Aa Gayi.

I Have Learnt Now

I have learnt now
how to feed upon sorrow
and console the heart
by sipping at tears
o so slowly.
It is good that
you became another’s
The demon of possessing you
has left me.
I would willingly surrender
my breaths
but death too extracts
a price from the living.
I have no wish
to live on borrowed breaths
After I’m gone
who will repay them?
Friends,
don’t look for a cure
for Shiv’s grief
The rascal is in the mood
to cry today.

As sung by Chitra Singh:

Ki Pucchde Ho Haal

2009-09-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

What draws me to Shiv Batalvi’s poetry is his unflinching truthfulness. What keeps me rooted is the warm intimacy of his poetic voice, completely without artifices. In this attempt at transcreating his poem Ki Puchhde Ho Haal Fakiran Da I have again sacrificed exact meanings in order to capture the directness and beauty of how the original work feels in Punjabi.

Don’t Ask After Us Fakirs

Don’t ask after us
We are fakirs
We are waters separated
From source
We are rivers of loss

I know what they call life
Is a composition of colours
I did not realise
Adding the colour of love
Would discolour it.

Many loves were given to me
But not the love I craved
This was inscribed in four lines
Upon my palm
This, then, was my fate.

Our destiny comes entwined
With us
How then could I escape it?
Though I did not leave my home
Or roam for love in tatters
Being a forsaken lover
Was my fate

Now I worship pain
At sorrow’s feet I genuflect
The world calls me a heretic
Yet it listens to my songs
Again and again

In gatherings I come across
As too arrogant
It is the pride of knowing
How well I have loved
And how much I have suffered

You call yourselves
intellectuals
I call myself a lover
Let’s go to the people now
And ask them
Whose truth they believe in.

To hear this in Shiv's own voice:

Bhatti Valliye

2009-09-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

I have just woken up to the beauty of Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s poetry in Punjabi. Well better late than never. As my father used to often say, “jab jago tab savera”. Since I’m the kind of bird that sings at dawn, bear with me as I post another trans-creation, quick on the heels of the last one. This one is based on Shiv’s poem Peeran Da Paraaga (Pan of Sorrows). There is a song based on it sung by Asa Singh Mastana, among others, called Bhatti Waliye. Again, this is not a direct translation. I have tried to capture in my rendering the spirit of the piece, not its exact words. Words and phrases don’t translate well across languages, emotions and ideas do. So here it is:

Tender of The Fire

O tender of the fire
Roast my bundle of sorrows
in your flame
In tears I will pay you

The evening is setting
The cows have come home
from grazing the fallows
The birds are squawking
The shadows are falling
Hurry, please it’s time
for me to go.

O tender of the fire
O woman with the scent
of the champa flower
my sorrows are at your feet
tend to them sweet

Quick, set my grief
to roast
the road is difficult
the distance long
to the village
where my companions
have all gone
The bundle is at your feet

O tender of the fire
O woman with the scent
of the champa flower
my sorrows are at your feet
tend to them sweet

Why is it as my turn came
your fire lost its heat?
The wood is damp,
The container wet
The embers are sputtering
The sparks are dying
My bundle at your feet

O tender of the fire
O woman with the scent
of the champa flower
my sorrows are all yours
tend to them sweet

I do not ask for much
My request is small
Deal with me quickly
And set me free
Roast my grief well
Give me the charred remains
I have no heart to haggle further
Take this bundle at your feet

O tender of the fire
O woman with the scent
of the champa flower
my sorrows seek your ministration
tend to them sweet

The wind has gone to sleep
done with its weeping
Upon the stars in the sky
a slow fever is creeping
Like a wedding procession
without a bridegroom
my life has lost
its enthusiasm for breathing

Hurry sweet, hurry please
Give me my release
In tears I shall repay you

O tender of the fire
O woman with the scent
of the champa flower
my sorrows lie at your feet
tend to them sweet

To hear the song as sung by Asa Singh Mastana:

Shikra Yaar

2009-09-10T21:44:00.000-07:00

I have just had a moment of supreme revelation – I have discovered the poetry of Punjabi poet Shiv Kumar Batalvi and I have this overwhelming urge to transcreate right away my favourite piece, Shikra Yaar, into English. My own audacity at trying to translate from Punjabi (a tongue I have a relationship with but it’s not my mother, more like say a grandmother-in-law) almost stops me, but not quite. I recall Coleman Barks who has done the best Rumi verses in English that I have read. He says of his translation process – “I’ll try to describe what I do. I look at one text in English and write another.” I at least understand Punjabi – not all of it, not all the time- but I understand Punjabi, though I don’t speak it. And I can truthfully claim to have heard Jagjit Singh’s mellifluous rendering of the poem so many times that it has seeped under my skin and this transcreation comes from some place within:

Hawk Lover

Mother o mother
I fell in love with a hawk
On his head was a plume
On his feet bells
He came pecking for grain
And I was lost

I don’t know whether
It was the sharp sunlight
of his presence,
Or his thirst for scents
Or that he was born
of a fair mother,
his cheeks all rosy,
But I was lost

His eyes danced
like an evening in spring
The cloud of his hair
was a darkling monsoon
His lips wore
the pink of an autumn
morning
And I was lost

Awash with fragrances
his body was spring,
his breath a whisper
of flowers,
His arms a forest
of sandalwood
And I was lost.

His words pleasing
as the purvia breeze
His songs, borrowed from
some koel friend
His smile was fleeting,
like a white bagula
in the rice field,
gone at the merest hint
of anything
And I was lost.

I laid a bed for him
in the moonlight
and awaited his footstep
on my rooftop
Now my body
wears the stains
of our lovemaking
And I am lost.

The corners of my eyes
hurt
from the tears flooding them
All night I wept
as I thought of
how thoroughly he took me
and how completely
I was lost

Next morning
I scrubbed and scrubbed
with vatna
and bathed myself
with cooling water
Still the embers burst
from under my skin
My hands grew tired
with the effort
And I knew I was lost.

With my hands
I made choori to feed him
But in it
he showed no interest
It was my soul he wanted
Upon the flesh of my heart
he fed and flew away
never to come again.
O mother, I am lost.

Mother o mother
I took a hawk for a lover
He came looking for grain
On his head was a plume
On his feet he wore bells
Upon the flesh of my heart
he has fed and flown away
Never to return again.
Mother o mother, I am lost.

This is not a literal translation. To hear the original sung in Punjabi by Jagjit Singh:

To watch a video by Hans Raj Hans:

Shiv

2009-09-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

Shiv Kumar Batalvi (1936-1973) has been variously described as the Devdas and Keats of Punjabi poetry. His poetry explores the themes of love, loss and longing from a passionately personal vantage point. Shiv’s poetic voice is unique in its combination of metaphor and melancholy, imagery and intensity. During his brief lifetime he was the darling of Punjabi audiences. He was the youngest recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1967, for his epic verse Loona , considered a masterpiece in modern Punjabi literature, which also created the genre of the modern Punjabi kissa. After his death his iconic and legendary status has continued to grow. Many of his poems have been sung by Deedar Singh Pardesi, Jagjit Singh-Chitra Singh, and Surinder Kaur-Prakash Kaur. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's rendition of one of his poem "Maye ni Maye" is another popular number. Rabbi Shergill’s first album features, his poem, "Ishtihar". Punjabi folk singer, Hans Raj Hans also did a popular album, ‘Gham’, on the poetry of Shiv Kumar. In 2005, a compilation album was released, titled, Ek Kudi Jida Naa Mohabbat... 'Shiv Kumar Batalvi, with numbers sung by Mahendra Kapoor, Jagjit Singh and Asa Singh Mastana. The song “ Akhyian Wich Tu Vasda” in the film Lucky Oye is based on a poem by Shiv as is "Aaj din chariya tere rang warga" in the film Love Aaj Kal.

Watch a live interview with the poet, recorded by BBC London three years before his death: