Google doodle today has honored the Mughal poet, Mirza Ghalib on his 220th birthday anniversary. He was a prominent Urdu and Persian-language poet, who existed during the Mughal era, Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan was born in Agra on 27 December 1797. Mirza Ghalib is considered a prodigy, who began writing poems when he was merely 11 years old. Mirza is known around the world for his Urdu Ghazals, even though he was also proficient in Turkish and Persian. His poems have many thematic elements that are universal, and take a very realistic view point of the life. There’s no glamour or anything fantastical about his verses, even though they’re one of the most beautiful writing that one is to ever read.
Mirza Ghalib was married at an early age, and stayed in Delhi. He wrote several poems there, which dealt with the pain of going through the life, and themes that were seldom written about in the literature of that time. And even though the Ghazals are in Urdu, they’re so universal in how they deal with Humanity and transcend the language barrier quite easily, without the difficulty of several interpretations. Mirza was very well regarded in the era, and was presented with the title of Dabir-ul-Mulk by Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II. He was also an integral part of the Mughal court.
However, he hasn’t been regarded as well as some other poets of the era, and he even had difficulty sustaining his own life during the decline of the empire. There is common acceptance that he should be considered among the greatest poets of the mughal empire and that even though his poems deal with harsh reality of life, it much still be read because of the beauty in the lines and truth that they reveal about everyone, in whichever era they live.