Bashir Badr, master Urdu poet of love and melancholy, passes away

NEW DELHI/BHOPAL: Bashir Badr, whose Urdu poetry seamlessly blended the personal with the universal, whose self-assured, almost playful, ghazal recitals made him a major star at mushairas home and abroad, and who wrote without rancor despite his home being burnt down during the 1987 Meerut communal riots, passed away at his residence in Bhopal on Thursday. He was 91.