A 10-minute drive from Humayun's Tomb is Ghalib Academy, where renowned Urdu poet Mirza
Ghalib was a witness to the First War of Independence and was in miserable state as most of his colleagues and friends had died in the revolt.
William Dalrymple, the author of The Last Mughal, quoted a letter Ghalib wrote: 'What grief haven't I suffered: grief in death, in separation, in loss of income, and in honour? Besides the tragic events in the Red Fort, so many of my Delhi friends have been killed… How can I forget them? How can I ever bring them back… relatives, friends, students, lovers. Now every one of them is gone.
'It is so terrible to mourn for so many. My God! So many of my friends and relatives have died that if now I were to die, not a single soul would be left to mourn for me,' the great poet added.
According to Dalrymple's book, Ghalib was protected because his muhalla (area) Ballimaran housed the hakim and several senior courtiers of the loyalist Maharaja of Patiala, who had sent troops and supplies to the British and who arranged for guards to ensure looters did not attack the street.
Thanks to the Maharaja's guards, Ghalib was unhurt -- almost the only member of the courtly elite to survive the fall of Delhi with his property, such as it was, intact.
Ghalib wrote about the freedom struggle in his book Dastanbuy and died in 1869 a friend-less man.
"Ghalib's poems will never die," says Shamim Haider Naqvi, librarian at Ghalib Academy. "He will always remembered by future generations."
But isn't Urdu a dying language? Naqvi disagrees: "I have myself taught 25 people; Urdu will never die. In any film, television serials and drama, you will find Urdu words. It can never die, just like Ghalib's poems."
Image: Shamim Haider Naqvi
Also see: CPI-M to counter India's official history
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