After leaving S.N. College, Shiv Kumar realised that writing and composing poems is his actual passion, and from that time he constantly gave importance to his artistic desires. During the decade of 1960, Shiv explored literature of four different languages- Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi and English. Shiv resigned his job in the Revenue Department of Patwari office in 1961 and remained unemployed till 1966, and successfully established himself as a poet. Shiv never asked for any financial help from his family during this period, he survived and managed his financial needs through royalty from his works. His bohemian lifestyle was the reason he always had differences with his father. Most of the days in the first five years of this decade, Shiv used to stay at his friends’ places.
In the first five years of this decade, Shiv Kumar published five of his anthologies; Peeran da Paraga (The Scarf-full of Sorrows) (1960), Lajwanti (Touch Me Not) (1961), Atte Dian Chirian (The Sparrows of Dough) (1962), Mainu Vida Karo (Bid Me Farewell) (1963), Birha Tu Sultaan (1964) and Loona (1965). Shiv was now a famous personality in Mushairas (Oriature) and he made a good number of friends from the poetry circle of Punjab. The biggest contribution to his success was the tale of Loona, for which he was awarded with the Sahitya Academy Award, and till date, he is known as the youngest recipient (28 years old) of this award. Shiv Kumar used ‘Shiv’ as his pen name, and belonging to Batala, he was known as Batalvi. People in Chandigarh started denoting him as Shiv Kumar Batalvi. But Shiv used to write his name as Shiv Kumar in his anthologies.
In 1966, again because of the pressure from his family Shiv accepted the job of Clerk in Batala’s branch of State Bank of India. On 5th February 1967, Shiv married Aruna, a brahmin girl of Gurdaspur. They had two kids, Meharbaan (1968) and Pooja (1969). In 1968 Shiv got transferred to Chandigarh, where he had the same old attitude towards his job. He used to live in a rental apartment and go to work around 3 days a week.
By the end of this decade, people started denoting him as the Living Legend, he earned immense respect and no Mushaira was considered to be complete without him. Shiv’s presence was the reason for large gatherings in every literary event. In every event Shiv performed at the last segment because no audience used to stay after his performance.
Balwant Gargi, one of the greatest authors in Punjabi Literature once shared his experience of attending a Kavi Darbaar where Shiv had a performance, his words were, “This mushaira was organized by Principal O. P. Sharma on a very large scale on the occasion of Guru Nanak’s 500th birthday. As soon as we appeared on the stage, a wave of excitement ran through the audience on seeing Shiv. They welcomed him with a loud round of applause. When he stood up to recite his poetry, a trance-like silence dominated the hall. He read his poem, Safar (a travel). The vibrations of his enchanting and soft tunes touched the hearts of everyone present. Suddenly he raised the pitch of his voice. He was challenging Nanak. A poet was addressing another poet. He was saying to Guru Nanak: “See how far your nation has travelled after you. Today they have travelled from your name to the sword”. Shiv’s voice was resonating in the hall. He was standing tall and there was a prophet-like grandeur in his voice, when the poem ended the girls started shouting for him to sing “Kee puchdey o haal faqeeran da (What is the point of asking us faqirs how are we doing?) … Shiv smiled and switching his mood he then sang the poem that he had sung hundreds of time and each time it had won the hearts of his audience … When Shiv left the microphone after reading three poems, no other poet could get the attention of the audience. The spell had broken and people had lost their interest in the Kavi Darbaar.”
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