.

Simple things used to make him upset, many times he walked out of the Nawab's court. Using this technique, a person ascribes to oneself an unconventional aspect of a person or society, and then plays out its results, either in action or in verse.

Khushwant Singh's famous novel Delhi: A Novel gives very interesting details about the fictional life and adventures of the great poet.

These upheavals, along with his own personal losses, gave his poetry its unmatched depth and pathos.

Mir’s early life was marked by hardship. He is regarded as a pioneer who helped shape the ghazal into its most enduring form. A life without love is an ordeal and losing one's heart in love is the real art. Distressed to witness the plundering of his beloved Delhi, he gave vent to his feelings through some of his couplets.

کیا بود و باش پوچھے ہو پورب کے ساکنو

ہم کو غریب جان کے ہنس ہنس پکار کے

دلّی جو ایک شہر تھا عالم میں انتخاب

رہتے تھے منتخب ہی جہاں روزگار کے

جس کو فلک نے لوٹ کے ویران کر دیا

ہم رہنے والے ہیں اسی اجڑے دیار کے

Mir migrated to Lucknow in 1782 and remained there for the remainder of his life.

Samsamudaula gave him a scholarship of one rupee per day, but this did not continue for long because in 1739, Nadir Shah attacked Delhi in which Samsamudaula was killed. While other poets often adorned their verses with elaborate imagery, Mir’s genius lay in expressing profound feelings in the simplest words. Here are two couplets by Mirza Ghalib on this matter.

Ghalib and Zauq were contemporary rivals but both of them believed the superiority of Mir and also acknowledged Mir's superiority in their poetry.

Some of his impeccable couplets are:

At a higher spiritual level, the subject of Mir's poem is not a woman but God.

Mir speaks of man's interaction with the Divine. His masnavi Mu'amlat-e-Ishq (The Stages of Love) is one of the greatest known love poems in Urdu literature.

Mir lived at a time when Urdu language and poetry was at a formative stage – and Mir's instinctive aesthetic sense helped him strike a balance between the indigenous expression and new enrichment coming in from Persian imagery and idiom, to constitute the new elite language known as Rekhta or Hindui.

Basing his language on his native Hindustani, he leavened it with a sprinkling of Persian diction and phraseology, and created a poetic language at once simple, natural and elegant, which was to guide generations of future poets.

The death of his family members, together with earlier setbacks (including the traumatic stages in Delhi), lend a strong pathos to much of Mir's writing – and indeed Mir is noted for his poetry of pathos and melancholy.

Mir and Mirza Ghalib

Mir's famous contemporary, also an Urdu poet of no inconsiderable repute, was Mirza Rafi Sauda.

His verses, filled with raw emotion and simplicity of language, struck directly at the human heart.

He later moved to Lucknow after Delhi was devastated by invasions and political turmoil. While on his death bed, his father instructed Meer to "Adopt the path of love. In Delhi’s vibrant mushairas, Mir quickly gained recognition for his ghazals. In his last years Mir was very isolated.

Muhammad Hassan wrote a letter to his uncle criticizing Meer. His health failed, and the untimely deaths of his daughter, son and wife caused him great distress.

He died, of a purgative overdose, on Friday, 21 September 1810.

It may be noted that Ghalib himself acknowledged, through some of his couplets, that Mir was indeed a genius who deserved respect. Meer left Agra for Delhi in search of livelihood . After staying in Agra for few days, Meer again went to Delhi. His elder step-brother also treated him badly. The marker of his burial place was removed in modern times when a railway was built over his grave.

His complete works, Kulliaat, consist of six Diwans containing 13,585 couplets, comprising all kinds of poetic forms: ghazal, masnavi, qasida, rubai, mustezaad, satire, etc.