Google Doodle on Wednesday celebrated the birthday of Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib on his 220th birth anniversary.
Google dedicated its doodle to the most iconic poet commonly known as Ghalib, to mark his birth anniversary.
Born in Uttar Pradesh, during the reign of Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah, Ghalib (meaning conqueror) showed a gift for language at an early age and was educated in Persian, Urdu, and Arabic.
He was honoured with titles like Dabir-ul-Mulk and Najm-ud-Daula, he is widely regarded as the last great poet of the Mughal era.
In a reference to that, the doodle sees Ghalib, with his pen and paper, knitting his imaginations, with a backdrop of buildings of Mughal architecture.
Apart from his ghazals, Ghalib is also recognised as a gifted letter writer. In fact, it is in his letters that he portrays the spirit of his age, its political, social and cultural facets, particularly the events following the great mutiny of 1857.
According to its blog, Google said, “His verse is characterized by a lingering sadness borne of a tumultuous and often tragic life - from being orphaned at an early age, to losing all of his seven children in their infancy, to the political upheaval that surrounded the fall of Mughal rule in India. He struggled financially, never holding a regular paying job but instead depending on patronage from royalty and more affluent friends.”
Ghalib died in 1869 and the house where he lived in Delhi has been turned into a memorial known as “Ghalib ki Haveli”.
