Gulzar was born in Dina (District Jhelum, now in Pakistan) in 1934. After partition, the family split and moved to Delhi and Mumbai. Partition and the horrors of partition significantly influenced young Gulzar, and later in his life, he published short stories and a novel about this apocalyptic...

Javed Akhtar was born in Gwalior. There is hardly any other Urdu poet connected to such eminent and epoch-making personalities on either side of his birth—maternal and paternal—where the legacy of poetry and knowledge is continuous and uninterrupted. Who wouldn’t know Allama Fazle Haq Khairabadi?...

Poet Shahryar was born in 1936 in a small town near Bareilly, and early in his life, he came under the influence of Khaleelur Rehman Azmi, a prominent Urdu critic and poet. He joined the Aligarh Muslim University, where he earned his doctoral degree. Shahryar started his career at the Anjuman...