Google Doodle on Wednesday celebrated the birthday of Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib on his 220th birth anniversary.
Mirza Ghalib, whose contribution to Urdu literature was perhaps as significant as that of Shakespeare to English, was born in Agra on December 27. Honoured with titles like Dabir-ul-Mulk and Najm-ud-Daula, he is widely regarded as the last great poet of the Mughal era.
A post on Google’s blog describes his writing as one “characterised by a lingering sadness borne of a tumultuous and often tragic life — from being orphaned at an early age, to losing all of his seven children in their infancy, to the political upheaval that surrounded the fall of Mughal rule in India.”
Apart from his ghazals, Ghalib is also recognised as a gifted letter writer. In fact, it is in his letters that he portrays the spirit of his age, its political, social and cultural facets, particularly the events following the great mutiny of 1857.
Ghalib died in 1869 and the house where he lived in Delhi has been turned into a memorial known as “Ghalib ki Haveli”.
