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Bashir Badr, the much-feted and beloved Urdu poet with an immense mass following, passed away on Thursday. He was 91 and ailing from dementia and other age-related issues.

Bashir Badr passed away at the age of 91 in Bhopal after suffering from dementia for several years. (HT file)Who was Bashir Badr?Born on February 15, 1935, in what was then the United Province in pre-independent India, Badr was a keen student of the ghazal. Like his contemporary, Nasir Kazmi (older to Badr by a decade), Badr used everyday language to great effect, ensuring that his verses spoke directly to the listener.

An alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University, Badr authored several books of ghazals, literary criticism of the form, and taught at Meerut University for several years.

Badr won several awards during his lifetime, including the Sahitya Akademi award and the Padma Shri, for his contribution to Urdu literature.

HT spoke to Azra Naqvi, a poet and translator, who knew Badr well, and performed with him on multiple occasions.

Edited excerpts: Yeh zafrani pullover usi ka hissa hai — koi aur pehne toh dusra hi lage. (This saffron-coloured pullover belonged to her; on anyone else it looked different.)

The girls in our college in Aligarh swooned over those lines; they became an instant hit when Bashir sahab wrote them back when I was still a teenager. That was his charm and his fandom. He was, in every sense, a poet of the masses. His style was singular — his shayari felt immediately relatable. Everyone who heard his verses identified with them.

We lived in Aligarh, and my mother was a poet too. He knew my family and treated us like his own. I grew up listening to him at mushairas across the city. After I married, we moved to Saudi Arabia. We grew closer to him when he came there for a mushaira and we hosted him at our home.

Everyone writes couplets about the same emotions, but his shayari on love and loss reached deeply into people’s hearts. Every poet has written about love and separation, but his words touched lovers across the world:

Ek samandar ke pyase kinare the hum, apna paigam lati thi mauj-e-rawan/ Aaj do rail ki patriyon ki tarah, sath chalna hai aur bolna tak nahi. (We were once like the thirsty shores of an ocean, waiting for waves to bring messages. Today we are like two railway tracks — running side by side but never speaking.)

The first time I visited his home, I noticed a quilt-like hanging on the wall made of small square blocks. A fan had gifted it to him; each block was embroidered with one of his verses.

I saw photographs from his last years after he was diagnosed with dementia. He was bedridden and had a caretaker. But that is not how I want to remember him. He was a lively, cheerful soul — the heart of every mehfil. He will live on in our memories, embodied by my favourite of his lines: Khuda aise ehsaas ka naam hai — rahe samne aur dikhai na de (God is the name of such a feeling: present before you, yet unseen).