GHALIB died unsung at the age of 72 this month 141 years ago in a rented premises in Delhi. He lived on a barely sufficient stipend dispensed by Nawab of Rampur.

Ghalib recreated himself as a super-poet in the next century and is vibrantly alive ever since in the hearts and minds of poetry lovers around the world.

Ghalib is a superman in the philosophic concept expounded by the great German philosopher, Frederich Neitzche “Man wants to perfect himself, recreate himself, to become a creator rather than a mere creature.”

Ghalib is the only poet of the East whose diction was larger than his native language, i.e. Urdu.

He, therefore, coined beautiful expressions by mingling Urdu with Persian, the other language he equally mastered and produced classic poetry in.

Ghalib's poetry has enormous shades and colours. Corporeal love and wordly pleasures, ecstacy and joy, pain and sorrow, divinity and spirituality, religion and mysticism or the intricate philosophy of human existence -- nothing could escape from Ghalib's poetic repertoire. Ghalib was not being vainglorious when he acclaimed daringly in his verse

From hidden reaches do these subjects come into my thought; Ghalib, the scratching sound of the pen is the call of angels.

HAROON R. SIDDIQI
Karachi