Modern · 1879–1941 · Badaun – Hyderabad
Shaukat Ali Khan, known as Fani Badayuni, made melancholy his whole subject. Where others wrote of sorrow as a passing weather, Fani lived inside it, and his ghazals turn despair into a strange, sustained beauty. He spent his last years in Hyderabad, mourned as the purest poet of grief in modern Urdu.
ik muamma hai samajhne ka na samjhaane ka
zindagi kaahe ko hai khwaab hai deewaane ka
har nafas umr-e-guzashta ki hai miyyat Fani
zindagi naam hai mar mar ke jiye jaane ka
duniya meri bala jaane mehngi hai ya sasti
main khud bhi to nahin apna khareedaar zindagi
Fani duniya mein tumhaara koi hamdam hi nahin
kis se kahiye ki teri yaad bhula di hai mujhe
ye dard hi hai jo ab tak sambhaale baiTha hai
na ho ye dard to bikhra hua ye dil bhi nahin
tanhaai ki ek raat thi aur main tha Fani
sadiyon mein guzar paayi vo lamhon ki kahaani
maut maangi thi ilaahi ye to kya bhej diya
zindagi bhej di parwaane ke saath aa ke yahaan
aankh jo kuchh dekhti hai lab pe aa sakta nahin
mahv-e-hairat hoon ki duniya kya se kya ho jaayegi