Ghulam Nabi Khayal was a Kashmiri poet and essayist who lived from 1939 to 2023. His writing appeared in Kashmiri, Urdu and English, placing him within a multilingual literary environment. A biography of Khayal therefore concerns several forms of writing and several readerships, rather than assuming that a regional author’s entire work belongs to only one language. [1]

Essays and poetry

The Sahitya Akademi’s award record identifies Gaashir Munaar, an essay collection, with the Kashmiri award for 1975. Naming the form matters: an honour for essays should not be presented as an award for a poetry collection simply because its author also wrote poems. Author, title, genre and date are separate bibliographical fields. [2]

An essay develops an argument or observation through prose, whereas a poem organizes language through its own formal and expressive choices. A writer can work across both without one form being merely a lesser version of the other. This range is part of understanding Khayal’s place in literary life.

Language and readership

Writing in more than one language can connect different audiences with regional subjects. It also creates a need for precise records. An original English work, a translation of a Kashmiri work and an Urdu article are different publications even when the same writer is involved.

Titles can appear in several Roman spellings when catalogued outside their original script. A search should therefore keep the author’s identity and the source’s title form together. Apparent spelling differences are not enough to prove that two records concern different books.

A literary biography

Read Khayal beside Rahman Rahi, Mahjoor and the Kashmiri-language entry to connect individual work with the broader language environment. Award records supply useful anchors but cannot summarize an entire career. The accompanying image is explicitly a literary-context illustration when no verified freely licensed portrait is supplied. It is not a likeness of the author or evidence that he wrote the pictured manuscript. The Srinagar point gives regional context only, without claiming a verified birthplace or residence. Original essays and poems should be consulted through identified editions rather than reconstructed from a short encyclopedia profile.

Image and map record

Image: Petar Miloševi? via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Recorded capture date: 2017-01-27 11:47:09. Resized and converted to WebP; image content unchanged. This is a dated view, not confirmation of the site’s present appearance.

Map marker: 34.083, 74.797. Labelled regional/locality context marker; not a verified public entrance, pickup point, birthplace, residence, venue, trailhead, crop boundary or visitor route. View location on OpenStreetMap · View Google Maps · Google directions · OpenStreetMap directions.

Research checked: 15 October 2026. For a visit, confirm current access, transport and opening information with the relevant authorities. This encyclopedia profile provides geographical and historical context.