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Tanvir Naqvi

Urdu poet and lyricist; wrote all twelve songs of Anmol Ghadi (1919-1972)

Tanvir Naqvi, born Syed Khursheed Ali, wrote all twelve songs of Anmol Ghadi. That is worth stopping on: film scores were routinely split between two or three lyricists then and almost always are now, and twelve songs from one pen is most of why this one sounds like a single piece of work rather than a collection. Awaaz De Kahan Hai is his line. He came into Hindi cinema with Swami (1941), and after partition moved to Pakistan, where he wrote the lyrics for Teri Yaad, the first Pakistani feature film, and later Aye Raah-e-Haq Ke Shaheedo, which is still sung there as a national song - so the same poet wrote one of undivided India's best-loved film scores and one of Pakistan's patriotic standards. Sources disagree about where he was born: the encyclopaedia article says Lahore and a Dawn retrospective says Abadan, in Iran.