Avijit Ghosh & Jamal Ayub | TNN (THE TIMES OF INDIA; August 12, 2020)

New Delhi/Indore: He wrote stirring couplets that even politicians quoted in Parliament. And his poems of ardour and abandon made him a major crowd puller. Rahat Indori, one of the most-quoted Urdu poets of his generation, who also frequently collaborated with producer-director Vidhu Vinod Chopra, passed away following a string of heart attacks in Indore on Tuesday. He was 70.

“After the first attack, he seemed to be stabilising. But two more attacks followed,” Dr Vinod Bhandari, director, Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences told TOI. A social media regular with over 860k followers on Twitter, the poet had tweeted on Tuesday that he was Coronavirus positive. In his last tweet, he requested people not to call him, saying he would update his status. He was also a diabetic and had cardiac issues. His death was widely mourned.

Indori’s association with Hindi cinema was fruitful but not memorable. He wrote lyrics in over 20 films and worked with Vidhu Vinod Chopra for Kareeb (1998), Mission Kashmir (2000) and Munnabhai MBBS (2003). Bumbro bumbro was one of his biggest hits.

The son of a textile mill employee, Indori was a PhD in Urdu literature. He taught at Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya for many years. He was married to fellow poet Anjum Rehbar. “He was a poet of mushairas, whose work was much loved by audience but he never lowered his standard please them,” says poet Hasan Kamal.