Lala Madhav Ram Jauhar

Lala Madhav Ram Jauhar — pen name Jauhar — was a classical Urdu poet of the nineteenth century and a contemporary of Mirza Ghalib. He held a highly respected post in the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, placing him at the heart of Delhi's literary world in its final Mughal years. A Hindu poet writing fluent, graceful Urdu, he became known for ghazals of love, longing, and the beloved's glance — couplets in which a signal before the gathering, a withheld meeting, or a hidden love that cannot stay hidden carries the whole poem. About forty of his ghazals and 174 of his couplets survive, along with his prose work Insha-e-Madhoram. He lived through the passing of the Mughal order into British rule, and his verse keeps the courtly grace of that world while speaking plainly of separation and unmet desire. Jauhar died in 1889. His couplets remain widely quoted, including one carried into the film Prem Kahani (1975).