Mirza Ghalib

Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797–1869) is the supreme poet of the Urdu ghazal, writing through the last decades of Mughal Delhi and living to see the city broken in 1857. He wrote in Persian and Urdu, was often in debt, frequently in trouble, and never modest about his own gift. What keeps him quoted two centuries later is a voice that can hold wit and despair in the same couplet. Because he is the default name attached to any good couplet in South Asia, a great deal of shayari circulates under his name that is not his: we quote from the authenticated Divan-e-Ghalib with Devanagari and transliteration, and we say plainly when a beloved couplet cannot be found there.