NEW Delhi, May 29 -- Bashir Badr, the much-feted and beloved Urdu poet with an immense mass following, passed away on Tuesday. He was 91 and ailing from dementia and other age-related issues. Badr was born on February 15, 1935, in what was then the United Province in pre-independent India. He was a keen student of the ghazal, a form of metered literary story-telling structured as couplets. The ghazal accommodated a wide range of emotive issues from the spiritual to the amorous, and its most famous exponents in India thrived in the 19th and 20th centuries: Mirza Ghalib, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, to name just a few. Badr's ghazals, however, belonged to the Nayi Ghazal movement in Urdu poetry. Like his contemporary, Nasir Kazmi (older to Badr by a decade), Badr used everyday language to great effect, ensuring that his verses spoke directly to the listener. An alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University, Badr authored several books of ghazals, literary criticism of the form, and even taught at Meerut University for several years. After his home-and much of his unpublished writing-was burnt down during the communal riots of 1987, he encapsulated the devastating loss that he faced in a memorable couplet: Log toot jaate hain ek ghar banane mein/ tum taras nahi khaate bastiyan jalaane mein (People break when making a single home/ You didn't feel any qualm in setting entire localities ablaze). In response to the riots, he moved to Bhopal where he met his future wife, Rahat. Such was his popularity that in 1972, the then President of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto quoted him when Pakistan and India signed the Shimla agreement, signalling the end of the Indo-Pak war: Dushmani jam kar karo lekin yeh gunjaish rahein/ Jab kabhi hum dost ho jayein, toh sharminda na ho (We can pursue enmity with all our might but let us leave a little room/ When we become friends again, we must not feel ashamed). His popularity also crossed over to the Hindi film industry, with filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj and lyricist Varun Grover using his couplets in their works. Badr won several awards during his lifetime, including the Sahitya Akademi award and the Padma Shri, for his contribution to Urdu literature. Hindustan Times spoke to Azra Naqvi, a poet and translator, who knew Badr well, and performed with him on multiple occasions. Read excerpts of her eulogy below: Yeh zafrani pullover usi ka hissa hai/ koi jo dusra pahane to dusra hi lage (This saffron-coloured pullover belongs only to her/ If someone else dons it, it looks entirely different). The girls in our college in Aligarh swooned over these lines that became a raging hit as soon as Bashir sahab wrote them when I was still a teenager. That was his charm and fandom. He was, in every sense of the word, a poet of the masses. His style was strangely unique in a way that his shayari felt relatable. Everyone who heard his verses, identified with them. We used to live in Aligarh where my mother was also a poet. He knew my family and treated us like children. I grew up listening to his shayari at mushairas (gatherings) across the city. After I got married, we moved to Saudi Arabia. We got to know him more closely when he came there for a mushaira and we hosted him at our home. I used to work for an Urdu newspaper at the time and interviewed him for it. Even for an interview, he spoke so freely which reflected the purity of his soul. He never spoke ill of his competitors and contemporaries, although when I asked him a question about a particular critic, he threw a one liner back at me: Ek shayari toh tameez se bol kar dikhaye (Let him recite one poem properly). He regularly attended mushairas across the world, especially in Riyadh where people would invite him. Many of these were in homes where men and women would either sit separately or the women would sit behind a veil. At one such mushaira I was performing with him, but he refused to let me sit behind the veil. "How will she perform from behind curtains," he said and made sure I sat right next to him. Not just his words, his gestures also showed how progressive he was. This was also why people across generations loved with his verses. Everyone writes couplets on the same set of issues and emotions, but his shayari on love and loss touched everyone deeply. Every poet has written about love and separation, but his words touched lovers across the world: Ek samandar ke pyase kinare the hum, apna paigam lati thi mauj-e-rawan/ Aaj do rail ki patriyon ki tarah, sath chalna hai aur bolna tak nahi. (We were once like the thirsty shores of an ocean, waiting for waves to bring messages/ Today, we are like railway tracks that run parallel but never talk). When I visited his home for the first time, he had a beautiful quilt-like hanging on his wall with small square blocks. I asked about it and he told me a fan had gifted it to him. Each block was embroidered with one of his verses. I saw some photos of his last few years after he was diagnosed with dementia. He was bedridden and had a caretaker stay with him. But that is absolutely not how I want to remember him. He was a lively cheerful soul and the soul of every mehfil. He will live forever in our memories, encapsulating my all-time favourite shayari of his: Khuda aise ehsaas ka naam hai/ rahe samne aur dikhai na de (God is the name of such a feeling that he is in front of you and yet cannot be seen)....