Balraj Komal: The Poet Who Whispered Revolution Through Partition’s Pain

Visualise this: a sleepless night in Delhi, a restless child asking impossible questions, and a tired father who could have closed his eyes. Instead, Balraj Komal picked up his pen. Born in 1928 in Sialkot, Punjab, Komal entered a world already trembling with change. He was not destined to become a poet by birth or circumstance. He was simply Balraj, a boy with gentle eyes and a heart that absorbed every whisper of pain around him.

As India’s independence approached, the Partition tore through his childhood like a blade through silk. His family, like millions of others, fled from Sialkot to Delhi, carrying only memories and questions that had no answers. Komal grew up to teach English at Delhi University, but his real education came from the streets, the silences, and the stories that nobody else bothered to record. His 1948 poem “A Girl Alone” captured something raw and unbearable: a young girl, orphaned by Partition violence, begging a stranger to become her family. “Be anyone of mine, Anyone,” she pleads. These words do not merely describe tragedy; they evoke it.

They are tragedy itself, speaking in the voice of innocence that should never have known such loneliness. Komal wrote eight volumes of poetry in Urdu and Hindi, but his work was never about quantity or fame. It was about creating a sanctuary where wounded souls could finally rest, where children could ask their questions without being called foolish, and where gentleness survived despite everything trying to crush it.

The Education Officer Who Chose Poetry Over Promotion

Most people are unaware that Balraj Komal walked away from comfort. As a respected education officer in Delhi, he had security, respect, and a predictable future. Yet something gnawed at him. The world around him was obsessed with loudness, with revolutionary slogans and grand gestures. Komal felt suffocated by the noise. He chose instead to write quietly, nurturing Urdu literature from the shadows and helping young writers who would never see their names in print.

There exists a beautiful story, rarely mentioned in official biographies. One night, exhausted from work, Komal could not sleep because his young son kept asking questions. “Why is the moon so far away?” the child wondered. Another father might have grown irritated. Komal listened. By morning, he had composed a poem inspired by that innocent curiosity, that refusal to accept the world as it appeared.

The next day, children in his neighbourhood launched paper boats on puddles after the rain, their laughter echoing through the streets. Komal stood watching them, his tired eyes suddenly alive again. His poetry emerged from these moments, not from grand theories or literary movements. He understood violence deeply, having witnessed the Partition’s brutality firsthand.

But his pen never hardened into bitterness. In “Saba’s Hands Are Now Yellow,” he depicted a bride’s transition from girlhood to womanhood, using the colour yellow to symbolise both joy and the quiet sacrifices that women often make. Komal mentored countless struggling writers, encouraging them when his own confidence faltered, believing in their dreams even when nobody else did.

Fighting Softness in a World That Demanded Rage

Balraj Komal’s most significant battle was not against poverty or obscurity. It was against the temptation to become hard. Modern Urdu poetry in his era thundered with protest and revolutionary fervor. Poets shouted about injustice, about class struggle, about political upheaval. Komal whispered instead. He let children narrate the human condition. He let the brides speak about the price of growing up.

He let lonely souls admit their desperate need for connection. Critics sometimes dismissed him as too gentle, too removed from the real struggles of society. They failed to understand that his gentleness was, in itself, a form of resistance. After fleeing Sialkot in 1947, Komal faced financial uncertainty and profound displacement. There were moments when he doubted whether his voice mattered at all.

Yet he continued writing, creating what he called poetry that “communicates before it is understood.” His collection “Parindon Bhara Asman” (Sky Full of Birds), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1985, became a testament to resilience. Each poem was a bird refusing to be caged, a fragment of his spirit that would not surrender to despair. Komal’s use of colours in his work carried deeper meanings.

Yellow was not just joy but also longing. Red was not just passion but also the wounds that never quite healed. He sat with ordinary people, recorded their anonymous stories, and found poetry in what others considered mundane. His message remained constant: the most significant triumph is not applause or recognition, but the gentle peace that settles after every storm passes.

The Legacy That Lives in Every Paper Boat

Balraj Komal received the Padma Shri in 2011 and the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1985. His books, including “Meri Nazmen,” “Parindon Bhara Asman,” and “Agala Waraq,” are studied in universities. But his real legacy cannot be measured in awards or citations. It lives in the tenderness he brought to a brutal world, in his refusal to let trauma destroy his capacity for wonder. Komal believed that literature could repair what violence had broken.

He used poetry to stitch together hope, to connect strangers across divides of religion and geography, to make wounded hearts sing again. As a mentor and teacher, he helped elevate the modern Urdu Nazm in India, proving that innovation did not require abandoning compassion. His verses created bridges between generations and communities that history had torn apart. Even today, his influence echoes in unexpected places.

Children still sail paper boats after rain, not knowing they are participating in a tradition immortalised by Komal. Brides still contemplate the meaning of yellow on their hands. Readers around the world discover his work and feel less alone in their struggles. Komal once wrote that anyone who finds joy and claps their hands “is nothing but a fool.”

It was his way of saying that wisdom and wonder are inseparable, that maintaining innocence requires courage. His life proved that the softest voices can inspire for generations, that quiet struggles and uncelebrated victories matter just as much as headlines and monuments. Wonder endures in every tender line he wrote, and every forgotten story finds its home in the gentle, luminous poetry of Balraj Komal.

Also Read: Bahadur Shah Zafar: The Emperor Who Lost Everything But Refused to Stop Writing Poetry

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