Showing results for "Sahir" in Literature & Fiction

This book is about Sahir Ludhianvi, one of the greatest poets and lyricists of Hindi films. Sahir Ludhianvi, whose original name was Abdul Hayee, wrote poems that were different from his contemporaries who limited themselves to singing paeans on god, beauty, or wine. Instead, his poems were about other things: declining values of society, the meaninglessness of war and the subsummation of love by consumerism.

Sahir Ludhianvi can be called the poet with a “social conscience” as is evident from his poetry in which social concerns are often the dominant themes. Through his poetry he lamented the decline of morality in society, discrimination against women, futility of war, and attacked the rise of the self-appointed custodians of religion and power-hungry politicians. Born into a Muslim family on March 8, 1921, his real name was Abdul Hayee and Sahir Ludhianvi was his pen name. Sahir's childhood was marked by the separation of his parents and the unfair treatment of his mother.

Talkhiyan literally means ‘bitterness’ and was written in the poet’s student days. He discovered his unique style of expression by weaving his poetry with shades of bitterness that captured the decadence of the contemporary world. His romanticism was not in praising beauty or the consuming passion of love, but in sensitively urging the reader to empathise with other challenges of the world. His heart went out to the suffering of people in war, debt, poverty, homelessness, political conflict and gender inequality.