Shaista Fatima/ New Delhi

Today marks the 225th birth anniversary of the legendary poet Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, popularly known as Ghalib.

He is decidedly the most read and the most quoted Indian poet. His poetry is at par with folklore as people quote it everywhere. 

Awaz the Voice brings its readers the poet's best and most popular love couplets. 

The couplet above roughly translates as "it takes years for a lover's wish to come true but then I cannot live for so long...", a fun fact about this couplet according to the website Rekhta is "This ghazal is popularly sung and known with radiif "hone tak". However, in diwan of Gaalib, the ghazal is mentioned with radiif "hote tak".

"I have many aspirations, wishes and desires that are worth dying for, I have died many times and yet so much is yet to be fulfilled (desires)"

"It was not my destiny to have a lover, even if I had lived longer, it would have ended in vain"

It is said that one will get luxuries in heaven, Ghalib here says "I am aware of the realities of the heavens, it is a faux way of keeping one's heart happy."

"It is love that made me a nincompoop, otherwise, I was once a useful fellow"

Ghalib was smitten by his senior Mir Taqi Mir and often used to introduce him in his couplets, he here says, "O Ghalib, you are not the only one who has mastered Urdu poetry, It is said Mir who once lived was a doyen too."

ALSO READ: Mirza Ghalib 225th Birth Anniversary: Timelessness of the great poet