A people's poet signs out: Rahat Indori dies during Covid-19 treatment

Rahat Indori, the celebrated Urdu poet, died at Indore’s Sri Aurobindo Hospital on Tuesday evening. He was 70. Indori was admitted to the hospital in the morning after testing positive for Covid-19, but later succumbed to a cardiac arrest, his son, Satlaj, confirmed.

Born Rahat Qureshi in a village on the outskirts of Indore, Indori started out as a painter, working on hoardings and film posters. Later, he completed his PhD in Urdu literature and took up the role of an Urdu professor at the University of Indore. However, his deep interest in poetry, coupled with a sound education in Urdu, meant that he eventually gave up his teaching job to become a poet. 

The decision to switch careers proved to be an inspired one. Soon, sometime in the early 1980s, Indori’s work made it to local newspapers, magazines and the radio. As luck would have it, one of Indori’s couplets reached T-Series’ Gulshan Kumar, who, impressed by the poet’s writing, invited him to Mumbai to record a song for one of his films.

One of Indori’s early hits was “Aaj humne dil ka har kissa” from the film Sir. The song was composed by Anu Malik and sung by Kumar Sanu and Alka Yagnik. Later, he penned lyrics for popular Bollywood flicks such as Ishq, Mission Kashmir and Munnabhai MBBS.

From Parliament to social media, Rahat Indori's poetry appeals to all

In his later years, Indori’s couplets often became a rage on social media. He leveraged the power of Twitter quite brilliantly, often commenting on current issues in his imitable, rustic style. He shot to national fame in June last year, when Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra recited one of his couplets — “Agar Khilaaf Hain Hone Do” (If They Are Against, Let Them Be) — in Parliament. Moitra was subsequently lauded for her powerful speech, and the couplet, written by Indori over three decades ago, became a rallying cry for people taking part in protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

Indori’s popularity among the younger generation — one of his poems, “Bulati Hai Magar Jaane Ka Nahi”, went viral on TikTok earlier this year — was, perhaps, a reason why he didn’t always appeal to the purists. 

His writing was mostly uncomplicated and relatable, a style that found an instant resonance with the youth. Such was his sway over the social media savvy that he was twice invited to The Kapil Sharma Show — a playground normally reserved for rich and famous film stars, not humble and unflashy poets.

But more than anything else, Indori’s true greatness lay in the fact that his poems were always open to interpretation — he often said that he wrote without an audience or context in mind. People found their own meanings.