Personal life

Personal life

He met a girl named Maina at a fair in Baijnath. When he went back to look for her in her hometown, he heard the news of her death and wrote his elegy Maina. This episode was to prefigure numerous other partings that would serve as material to distil into poems. Perhaps the most celebrated such episode is his fascination for Gurbaksh Singh's daughter who left for the US and married someone else. When he heard of the birth of her first child, Shiv wrote 'Main ek shikra yaar banaya', perhaps his most famous love poem. It's said that when she had her second child, someone asked Shiv whether he would write another poem. Shiv replied 'Have I become responsible for her? Am I to write a poem on her every time she gives birth to a child?' Sounds much better in Punjabi (main oda theka leya hoyaa? Oho bacche banayi jave te main ode te kavita banayi javan?).

Shiv's wife Aruna was a Brahmin from Kir Mangyal in district Gurdaspur. By all accounts they had a happy marriage: they had two children, Meharbaan (b. Apr. 12, 1968) and Puja (b. Sep. 23, 1969) whom Shiv loved immensely.

By 1968 he had moved to Chandigarh, but both Batala and Chandigarh became soulless in his eyes. Chandigarh brought him fame, but scathing criticism as well. Shiv replied with an article titled 'My hostile critics'. Meanwhile his epilepsy worsened and he had a serious attack while at a store in Chandigarh's sector 22....