Early Life and Career
Ishar Singh was born on 12 December 1892 in Kaneti, near Rawalpindi, in the Potwar plateau of the Punjab. The area was then part of British India, but is now in Pakistan.
He was the younger of two sons of Dhera Singh 'Shah', a wealthy money lender. But he showed no interest in money himself, instead displaying a prodigious early aptitude for poetry while studying at Sukho Khalsa High School. He was aged just 13 when his first poetic collection, Naurangiya Alum, was published locally by his headmaster. 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.
He was married at 17 and moved to Karachi three years later to take his first job, a clerical role in the Post Office. This marked the beginning of a long career in the service, which he would combine with his ever burgeoning literary success. From Karachi he transferred to Lahore, considered the hub of Punjabi poetry, before moving on to work as a postmaster in his home district of Rawalpindi.
All the while he wrote poetry in his spare time, publishing his works in local journals and reading them out at public functions. These earlier compositions were serious in tone, usually on religious matters. He also composed romantic and melancholic works, which he was to later look back on with embarrassment.
It was not until 1928 that he finally realised his true talent – which was to make people laugh. 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 beat 69 other entrants - many of greater fame - to the first prize of two sovereigns. The award marked a turning point in his life, highlighting fresh possibilities beyond the Post Office, and from then onwards his poems always looked to the lighter side of life.
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