Shiv Falls in Love with Maina

[BoxerBunty]

Around this period, 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 likhda rehma?).

In 1965 Shiv won the Sahitya Akademi award for his verse-drama Loona. He married on Feb 5, 1967
His wife Aruna was a Brahmin from Kir Mangyal in district Gurdaspur. By all accounts Shiv had a happy marriage. He had two children, Meharbaan (b. Apr. 12, 1968) and Puja (b. Sep. 23, 1969) whom he loved immensely.