Shiv Kumar Batalvi: The Poet Who Gave Us ‘Ikk Kudi’, Turned Heartbreak Into Art, And Wrote Every Line As If He Were Bleeding

“ਇਕ

ਕੁੜੀ ਜਿਦਾ ਨਾਮ ਮੁਹੱਬਤ ਸੀ… ਗੁਮ ਹੈ ਗੁਮ ਹੈ ਗੁਮ ਹੈ…” A girl whose name was Love… lost, lost, forever lost. I grew up reading Shiv Kumar Batalvi, long before I understood what heartbreak truly meant. His poetry reached me early—too early, perhaps—but it stayed. With age, those same verses began to feel heavier, sharper, more personal. Shiv doesn’t just leave you in awe; he leaves you bruised, strengthened, hopeful, undone. He understands a lover’s heart the way few writers ever have. He doesn’t explain pain. He inhabits it. Reading him feels like reading letters he never intended to survive. And yet, here we are—still opening them, still finding ourselves inside.

A Love Letter That Was Never Answered

Before he was a poet, before his name became shorthand for unfulfilled love, Shiv was just a young man in Batala, hopelessly in love with a girl named Maina. She was beautiful, soft-spoken, and—at least in his mind—inevitable. Fate disagreed. Her family married her to someone else. Most people move on. Shiv immortalised. She became Love itself in his poetry—lost, wandering, irretrievable. “ਇਕ ਕੁੜੀ ਜਿਦਾ ਨਾਮ ਮੁਹੱਬਤ ਸੀ… ਗੁਮ ਹੈ ਗੁਮ ਹੈ ਗੁਮ ਹੈ…” This wasn’t a phase. It was a fracture that never healed.

Two Loves, Two Losses

Maina was not his only heartbreak. After her, Shiv became engaged again. This time, fate was crueller. His fiancée fell seriously ill and died before they could marry. Two loves. Two losses. From that point on, Shiv did not write poetry to impress or to publish. He wrote to survive. His words weren’t shaped—they were bled. Love, for him, was never safe territory. It was a wound he kept reopening because silence hurt more.

An Outsider in His Own Time

Punjabi literature in the 1960s was loud with politics—revolution, protest, collective anger. Shiv chose a quieter rebellion: the inner collapse of a single heart. Critics called his work soft. Too personal. Too indulgent. Leftist groups dismissed him for ignoring social issues. In retaliation, recordings were erased. Personal diaries were destroyed. Yet some fragments survived—unfinished lines that feel like someone interrupted mid-confession. “ਅੱਜ ਦਿਨ ਚੜ੍ਹ ਤੇਰੇ ਰੰਗ ਵਰਗਾ…” Today is painted only in your colours. Even half a sentence from him feels complete.

Loona and the Courage to Empathise

In 1967, at just 28, Shiv became the youngest recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award for Loona, a modern retelling of an ancient Punjabi legend. What made it radical wasn’t style—it was compassion. He gave voice to Loona, traditionally painted as a villain, and reframed her as a woman wronged by society. Conservative circles were shaken. But Shiv proved something vital: he wasn’t just a poet of romance. He was a poet of empathy. He gave dignity to the shamed and the silenced.

The Man Beyond the Melancholy

It’s easy to imagine Shiv as permanently brooding. Those who knew him say otherwise. He was magnetic—witty, mischievous, alive. He could make a room laugh and then, without warning, leave it in tears with a single verse. But intensity has its cost. He drank heavily, perhaps to dull feelings that never learned moderation. Restlessness clung to him. His body suffered what his heart refused to release.

Knowing the End Was Near

Shiv Kumar Batalvi died at 37, his body ravaged by cirrhosis of the liver. Days before his death, he wrote verses that read like farewells. “ਕੀ ਪੁੱਛਦੇ ਹਾਲ ਫਕੀਰਾ…” Why ask the state of a fakir who spends nights awake, crying? He knew. And still, he wrote. Pain never stopped being useful to him.

The Poem That Still Finds Us: Ikk Kudi

There’s a reason Ikk Kudi refuses to age. इक कुड़ी जिहदा नाम मुहब्बत गुम है गुम है गुम है! A girl whose name is love, is missing, is missing, is missing. Love isn’t an emotion here. It’s a person—simple, beautiful, gone. He describes her like a missing notice, as if hoping someone, somewhere, might have seen her. सूरत ओसडी - परियां वर्गी सीरत दी ओ - मरियम लगडी She looks like fairies, Her nature like Mariam. ਹਸਦੀ ਹੈ ਤਾਂ - ਫੂਲ ਨ ਝੜਦੇ ਤੁਰਦੀ ਹੈ ਤਾਂ - ਗ਼ਜ਼ਲ ਹੈ ਲਗਦੀ When she laughs, flowers fall. When she walks, she looks like a ghazal. It’s devastating because it’s tender. Because nothing dramatic happens. She simply disappears—like most loves do.

Writing Like He Was Bleeding

“Mainu dass kitho labhda ae sukh, mainu saun da changa rog pai gaya ae.” Tell me, where can I find peace? I’ve caught the beautiful disease of sleeplessness. Shiv didn’t romanticise pain from a distance. He lived inside it and reported back. Displacement from Partition, repeated losses, professional rejection—everything fed the same fire. His debut Piran Da Paraga (A Handful of Pain) announced exactly what he was offering. No promises of healing. Only recognition.

A Legacy That Refuses Silence

Decades later, his words are sung by legends, quoted in films, whispered by people who don’t even know where they first heard them. He belongs to both sides of the border. To anyone who has loved without guarantees. Shiv Kumar Batalvi made it acceptable to be soft in a hard world. He made heartbreak articulate. He reminded us that feeling deeply is not a flaw.

The Poet Who Was Love

Shiv didn’t just write about love. He was love—raw, unfiltered, inconvenient, unforgettable. Perhaps that’s why he couldn’t stay long. The world is rarely kind to those who feel this much. But as long as someone recites— “ਇਕ ਕੁੜੀ ਜਿਦਾ ਨਾਮ ਮੁਹੱਬਤ ਸੀ…” —Shiv Kumar Batalvi will never truly die.