Arzoo Lakhnavi

Syed Anwar Hussain 'Arzoo' Lakhnavi (1873–1951) was a leading poet of the Lucknow school of Urdu poetry. Born in Lucknow into a cultured, well-off literary family, he was the son of Mir Zakir Hussain 'Yas' and the younger brother of Mir Yusuf Hussain 'Qayas', both poets. Educated at home and later in Arabic and Persian under Lucknow scholars, he wrote his first marsiya at twelve and became a disciple of Syed Zaman Ali 'Jalal' Lakhnavi, succeeding him as guide to Jalal's disciples. Though he wrote in nearly every genre — marsiya, qasida, masnavi, rubai, naat and more — he is remembered above all for his ghazals, collected in Fughan-e-Arzoo, Jahan-e-Arzoo and Nishan-e-Arzoo. His hallmark was plain, conversational language: he brought the ghazal closer to everyday speech without abandoning its Lucknow elegance. In 1942 he moved to Bombay and became one of the first mainstream Urdu poets to write for Hindi cinema, later migrating to Karachi, where he joined Radio Pakistan and died in 1951.