:rabb: :rabb: was born on 23 July 1936, village Bara Pind Lohtian, Shakargarh Tehsil, (now in Punjab province, Pakistan), to Pandit Krishan Gopal, village tehsildar in the revenue department, and Shanti Devi, a housewife. His family moved to Batala Gurdaspur district after partition of India, where his father continued his work as a patwari and young Shiv received his primary education . He completed his matriculation in 1953, from Punjab University[disambiguation needed], and enrolled in the F.Sc. program at Baring Union Christian College, Batala, though before completing his degree he moved to S.N. College, Qadian, where he joined the Arts program more suited to his persona, though he left that too in the second year. Thereafter he joined a school at Baijnath, Himachal Pradesh to do a diploma in Civil Engineering, here again he left it in the middle . Next he studied for sometime at Govt. Ripudaman College, Nabha.He fell in love with the daughter of the noted Punjabi writer Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari who was married off to a UK citizen because of caste differences between the two.He remained unlucky in love, and bereavement for love loss reflected intensely in his poetry. Later in life, his father got a job as patwari at Qadian, it was during this period, that he produced some of his best work. His first anthology of poems was published in 1960, titled Piran da Paraga (The Scarf of Sorrows), which became an instant success. In 1965, he became the youngest recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1967, for his magnum opus, a verse play Loona (1965). His poetry recitations, and singing his own verse, made him and his work even more popular amongst the masses. In early 1967, he got married, and in 1968, he shifted to Chandigarh, where he joined the State Bank of India, as a PRO. In the following years, bad health plagued him, though he continued to write prolifically. His writings have always been open about his pronounced death wish, and on 7 May 1973, he died at his residence of father-in-law, at Kirri Mangyal, Pathankot, due to of liver cirrhosis as a result of chronic alcoholism, all of 36 years.