Sumit Paul
To know a person, one has to swallow the whole world,’ wrote the ever-polemic writer Salman Rushdie. But to know a man like Sahir Ludhianvi, whose 100th birth anniversary falls on March 8, even the world is not enough. One has to swallow the whole universe! Sahir remained an enigma till he breathed his last in 1980. ‘Ik muamma hoon main khud ke liye bhi/Mujhe samjhegi duniya mere jaane ke baad hi,’ (I’m a conundrum even to my own self/The world will understand me once I bid adieu to it), Sahir sent this couplet to his Jalandhar-born friend and composer Muhammad Zahoor Khayyam ‘Hashmi’.