Sahir Ludhianvi - The People's Poet

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HarperCollins, Dec 11, 2013 - Performing Arts - 340 pages

Sahir Ludhianvi is probably the only songwriter in Hindi films whose poetry was accepted in its purest form and incorporated as a film song. So great was his stature as an Urdu poet that he never had to mould his poetry to suit the demands of film songwriting; instead, producers and composers adapted their requirements to his poetry. His songs in films like Pyaasa, Naya Daur and Phir Subah Hogi have attained the status of classics. This exhaustive biography traces the poet's rich life, from his troubled childhood and his equally troubled love relationships, to his rise as one of the pre-eminent personalities of the Progressive Writers Movement and his journey as lyricist through the golden era of Hindi film music, the 1950s and 1960s.
 

Contents

Introduction
1701
Prologue
1707
A Bittersweet Inheritance
1708
Alma Martyr
1723
Of Poetry and Progressive Literature
1738
Partition Woes
1757
Bada Songwriter Banoonga
1770
The Lyrical Platinum Standard
1783
New Peaks New Associations
1867
On His Own Terms
1881
The Poet as a Peoples Conscience
1898
A Man of Contradictions
1924
A PoetLyricist Like No Other
1936
Epilogue
1948
Timeline
1950
List of Film Songs Select Bibliography
1952

Finding Love in the Shadow of Oedipus
1800
The Chopras Come Calling
1832
Good but Only Kabhi Kabhie
1853
Index of Poems and Film Songs
Acknowledgements

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About the author (2013)

Akshay Manwani's first book, Sahir Ludhianvi: The People's Poet, was critically acclaimed and has been a bestseller. He writes on Indian cinema and popular culture for a variety of publications such as the Caravan, The Indian Quarterly, Scroll.in, Mint, Business Standard and Mumbai Mirror.

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