Daagh Dehlvi

Nawab Mirza Khan “Daagh” Dehlvi (1831-1905) was raised in the Red Fort household of Bahadur Shah Zafar, left Delhi after 1857, and ended as court poet in Hyderabad. He wrote in a deliberately plain, spoken Urdu at a time when ornament was expected, and his speciality was wit rather than anguish — which is why his couplets about evasiveness and half-commitment still read as modern. Verses here are checked against his collected ghazals, with Devanagari and translation.