Ibteda - Where it all started

The year was 1999. Place was IIT Roorkee, Rajendra Bhawan, Room no F-66. A friend of mine bought a book called "sher-o-shairy". Out of curiosity, I borrowed it and started flipping through pages. I read a few, marked a few and hated a few but basically I was hooked to the book. A few months later, I was going to home. On my way to home in vacations as usual I was alone. I never had any friends with me unlike, junta going to Kanpur and Patna. So, I always use to have a lot of cassettes, a walkman, a good novel. This time a I bought Mirza Ghalib from Railway wheeler shop worth Rs 75/- just to see what the hype was about.

When I reached Kota next morning, I had not slept one wink all night, I was reading this Ghalib book and something in me changed forever. I started reading more and more. Every visit I made to the market, I came back with a book. I started collecting them, soon I had with me (including Ghalib) Meer, Majrooh, Majaz, Momin, Iqbal, Faiz, Firaq, Faraz, Ameer Minai, Qateel Shifai, Nazeer, Sauda, Jaan Nisar Akhtar, Daag, Zauq, Jigar, Shakeel, Sahir... and a few more.
Though I avoid cliches but as they say, I never came back to normalcy again, I was sucked into this mysterious and wonderful world of said words, unsaid emotions, eternal sayings, undying philosophies, unmatched humor, twisted analogies. I became a die hard. I became a Ghazal fan. and one fine day, I became a Shayar.