Gaalibnama : Ek Albela Shaayar Ni Anokhi Daastaan

Mirza Abdullah Baig (Ghalib's father) married Izzat-ut-Nisa Begum, an ethnic Kashmiri,[9] and then lived at the house of his father-in-law, Ghalib's grandfather. He was employed first by the Nawab of Lucknow and then the Nizam of Hyderabad, Deccan. He died in a battle in 1803 in Alwar and was buried at Rajgarh (Alwar, Rajasthan),[10] when Ghalib was a little over 5 years old. He was then raised by his Uncle Mirza Nasrullah Baig Khan, but in 1806, Nasrullah fell off an elephant and died from related injuries.[11] In 1810, at the age of thirteen, Ghalib married Umrao Begum, daughter of Nawab Ilahi Bakhsh (brother of the Nawab of Ferozepur Jhirka and Loharu).[12] He soon moved to Delhi, along with his younger brother, Mirza Yousuf, who had developed schizophrenia at a young age and later died in Delhi during the chaos of 1857.[10] None of his seven children survived beyond infancy. After his marriage, he settled in Delhi. In one of his letters, he describes his marriage as the second imprisonment after the initial confinement that was life itself. The idea that life is one continuous painful struggle that can end only when life itself ends, is a recurring theme in his poetry.