Ishar Singh (poet)

But he lived in a time and place where culture was primarily transmitted by oral means, and where poetry was one of the chief forms of public entertainment.

But he showed no interest in money himself, instead displaying a prodigious early aptitude for poetry while studying at Sukho Khalsa High School.

[1] At 16 he moved to study at the prestigious Khalsa College in Amritsar, where he recited his religious poems every week in the gurdwaras of Sikhism's holiest city.

It was in that year that he entered a competition held by Charan Singh Shahid, editor of the weekly satirical journal Mauji, inviting humorous poems on the subject of Fashiondaar Vauti (Fashionable Wife).

Ishar Singh used his piercing wit to puncture the pomposity of the rich and powerful, and to expose popular prejudices and injustices, many of which had been entrenched in the Indian psyche for centuries.

One of his chief patrons was the Maharajah of Patiala Yadavindra Singh, but his poems were appreciated by a wide strata of society, and he was always at pains to retain the common touch.

He was handed this title by the Chief Minister of the Punjab, Pratap Singh Kairon, when he first read out Mera Marna on All India Radio.

[6] But it was a reputation he truly earned among his rivals after they set him the daunting challenge of turning his poetic wit to the most sombre event in Sikh history – the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur.

In 1675, the religion's ninth founding Guru was publicly executed in the main thoroughfare in Delhi – at the behest of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb - for refusing to convert to Islam.

On the anniversary of the martyrdom nearly 300 years later, Ishar Singh rose to the challenge, and delivered his poem to a serious-minded audience in a Delhi maidan.

[7] In a delicate balancing act of tone and judgement, Ishar Singh lampooned the brutal and bloody intolerance of the Islamic rulers, while venerating the sanctity of the Guru's ultimate sacrifice.

And when his son subsequently took him to report the theft at the police station, Ishar Singh could not even recall the colour of his own turban, jacket and shoes - such had been his dedication to his art that morning.

His eldest son, Hardit Singh (1919–1993), set up the successful Delhi-based firm Ditz Electricals, which still manufactures and supplies household appliances around India to this day.

Narinjan Singh regularly recited his own compositions - as well as those of his father - at social gatherings and kavi darbars, first in Delhi, then in Nairobi where he later moved, and finally, towards the end of his life, when he lived in Derby in the UK.