বাংলা 
English 
Moksed Ali Shah, alias Mokchhed Ali Shah
My mind is a born simpleton
it plays its tricks along the easy path
- Fakir Moksed Ali Shah
One day in 1954, when the young Moksed Ali Shah went to sing with the Bauls at the mazar shrine beside the High Court in Dhaka, a handful of zealots and some ordinary people called in the police and attacked their gathering; they returned to Kushtia. That was a time when Baul songs were held in social contempt - and yet Moksed Ali Shah was then a student of Kushtia Government College. He was the first formally educated Baul of the Lalon tradition.
Born in Harishankarpur in Kushtia town, Moksed Ali Shah was drawn to Baul songs from his very childhood. While at college, listening to Lalon's songs from eminent figures, he found himself entwined with the Bauls. He was a pioneer in popularising, spreading and establishing Lalon's songs. For a time he performed Lalon's songs on Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra. After independence he worked as a staff artiste of the Radio Bangladesh Transcription Service, but a few years later he gave everything up and returned once more to Kushtia.
Alongside singing Lalon's songs he composed songs of his own. Of his many songs - inspirational and Baul songs together - nearly sixty have been collected. He translated quite a few of Lalon's songs into English, which later came to be regarded as good translations. His disciples numbered over a hundred, among them the veteran Baul Khoda Boksh Shah, who later received the Ekushey Padak for his work on Lalon's songs. We probably never paid enough attention to this gifted artiste who moved with ease through almost every branch of the arts - which is why, perhaps, even today we have not been able to give Moksed Ali Shah the honour he deserves.
And so, in the closing years of his short life, this aggrieved, exceptional artiste withdrew himself from every means of publicity; he went into self-imposed exile. Irregularity and despair did not let him live long. Finally, on 17 June 1981, this mystic artiste-sage died of a heart attack.
Moksed Ali Shah's daughter Rushia Khanam has kept walking, unceasingly, along the very path her father left behind, singing Lalon's songs just as he did -
To whom shall I speak the words of my heart
who is there in this world?
I think so - and I see no other way.
In 2007 the Lalon Academy posthumously awarded Moksed Ali Shah the Lalon Sammanna Padak (Lalon Honour Medal) for his outstanding contribution to Lalon's songs.
