બરકત વિરાણી 'બેફામ'

Barkatali Ghulamhussain Virani, who wrote as ‘Befaam’ — “the unrestrained” — was born in the village of Ghanghali near Sihor in Bhavnagar district and composed his first ghazal at fourteen. He abandoned his matriculation in 1942 to join the Quit India movement, then moved to Mumbai in 1945 at the urging of the ghazal master Shayda, whose daughter Ruqaiya he later married. He spent his working life at All India Radio while writing lyrics for Gujarati films such as Akhand Saubhagyavati (1963) and Kulvadhu (1977), and his ghazal collections — Mansar (1960), Ghata (1970), Pyas (1980) and Parab — made him one of the poets who carried the Gujarati ghazal from the mushaira into the concert hall. His signature was the closing couplet: having once ended a ghazal on his own death, he made the habit a discipline, and generations of listeners came to wait for the maqta where Befaam would meet his grave with a straight face and a wry smile. He died in Mumbai on 2 January 1994.