Bashir Badr: A forgotten legend

Bashir Badr the legendary poet has been forgotten by the Urdu world. He is living a life of solitude in Bhopal these days. He is now suffering from dementia and his memory is slowly fading away. But still, his love for poetry remains undying. However, when others recite his poetry in front of him, he gets enchanted and doesn’t hesitate to give ‘daad’ on the poetry. Bashir Badr is now in a condition where he finds it very hard to speak even a word.

Bashir Badr was born on the February 15th, 1935 at Ayodhya. He did B.A. M.A. and PhD. from Aligarh Muslim University. He worked as a lecturer in the Aligarh Muslim University and later as the lecturer and head of the department of Meerut College, Meerut for 17 yrs. He knows Persian, Hindi and English as well. He is said to have started writing poetry at an early age of seven.

He has seven collections of Ghazals: ‘Ikai’, ‘Image’, ‘Aamad’, ‘Aahat’, ‘Kulliyate Bashir Badr’, etc. He also has 2 books of literary criticism, ‘Azadi Ke Bad Urdu Ghazals Ka Tanqidi Mutala’ and ‘Biswin Sadi Mein Ghazal’. He also brought out a collection of Urdu Ghazals in the Devanagari script, titled ‘Ujale Apni Yadon ke’.

He has been honoured with the Padmashree award. He has been bestowed with the Meer Academy Award, Poet of the year’80 New York, etc.

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