Firaq Gorakhpuri

Firaq Gorakhpuri's real name was Raghupati Sahay. He was born in 1896 in Gorakhpur, India. He left his imprint on three important genres of Urdu poetry - ghazal, nazm and rubaayee. He wrote more than 40,000 couplets. He was a poet of love and beauty. His poems are published in three anthologies - Rooh-o-Qaayanat, Gul-e-Ra'naa, Nagma-numaa. He passed away in 1982.

He was selected for the Provincial Civil Service (P.C.S.) and the Indian Civil Service (I.C.S.), but he resigned to follow Mahatma Gandhi's Non-cooperation movement, for which he went to jail. Later, he joined Allahabad University as a lecturer in English literature. It was there that he wrote most of his Urdu poetry, including his magnum opus Gul-e-Naghma which earned him the highest literary award of India, the Jnanpith Award, and also the 1960 Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu. During his life, he was given the positions of Research Professor at the University Grants Commission and Producer Emeritus by All India Radio. After a long illness, he died on 3 March 1982, in New Delhi.

As a distinguished poet, Firaq Gorakhpuri was well-versed in all traditional metrical forms such as ghazal, nazm, rubaai and qat'aa. He was a prolific writer, having written more than a dozen volumes of Urdu poetry, a half dozen of Urdu prose, several volumes on literary themes in Hindi, as well as four volumes of English prose on literary and cultural subjects.

His biography, Firaq Gorakhpuri: The Poet of Pain & Ecstasy, written by his nephew Ajai Mansingh will be published by Roli Books in 2015.^[The book included anecdotes from his life and translations of some of his best work.

ये तो नहीं कि ग़म नहीं
हाँ! मेरी आँख नम नहीं 

तुम भी तो तुम नहीं हो आज 
हम भी तो आज हम नहीं 

अब न खुशी की है खुशी
ग़म भी अब तो ग़म नहीं 

मेरी नशिस्त है ज़मीं 
खुल्द नहीं इरम नहीं 

क़ीमत-ए-हुस्न दो जहाँ 
कोई बड़ी रक़म नहीं 

लेते हैं मोल दो जहाँ 
दाम नहीं दिरम नहीं

सोम-ओ-सलात से फ़िराक़ 
मेरे गुनाह कम नहीं 

मौत अगरचे मौत है
मौत से ज़ीस्त कम नहीं