Shakeel Badayuni, the famous song-writer, was famous as ‘Shayar-e-Shabab’, or poet of youth. Shakeel, who stole Mushairas with his Ghazals and unique recitation, received five rupees as his first ever compensation. It happened in 1937, when he was doing BA from Aligarh Muslim University, a noble from Ichhra district organized a Mushaira, and Shakeel was showered with praises, and was handed over five rupees in an envelope.
Many years later, Shakeel quit his job in Delhi at the invitation of filmmaker Kardar and went to Bombay, stirring the film industry with his songs. Shakeel and music composer Naushad’s duo was a huge hit, and Naushad never wanted him to work with anyone else. Naushad would give him five thousand rupees for each song. With each film being a hit, Naushad would increase his own remuneration but not Shakeel's. As Guru Dutt entrusted Abrar Alvi to direct the film ‘Chaudhavin Ka Chand’, he brought in Shakeel as the lyricist. When Guru Dutt asked about compensation, Shakeel simply asked for Rs. 5,000 to write a song. Guru Dutt smiled and offered him Rs. 25,000 for each song. Along with the success of film songs, Shakeel was also a coveted performer in Mushairas. He was invited to so many Mushairas that he had grown sick of them. In a private letter of his from 1958, he writes, “Ab ye aalam ho gaya hai ki Mushairo.n ke naam se chiD jata hun. Shayar ban kar khud ko public property samajhne lagaa hun”.

At the age of 13, Ghalib relocated from Agra to Delhi, and moved from one rented house to the other. His last house was a mosque-adjacent, three-room house in Gali Qasim Jan, Balli Maran, Chandni Chowk, Delhi, where Ghalib spent the last nine years of his life, and became the one house which largely came to be known after him. It is now known as Ghalib Ki Haveli. Maulana Hali writes in his remarkable book "Yadgar-e-Ghalib" that Ghalib also stayed at the house of his friend Miyan Kale Khan for some time. At one time, it had become a depot for household fuel-wood. In 1997, the Archaeological Survey of India acquired it and declared it a Heritage Site. Behind this, were the efforts of Firoz Bakht, a well-known literary and social figure from Delhi, and Ateeb Siddiqui, a lawyer, who filed a petition in the court to make the mansion a heritage site. After a long legal battle, on August 8, 1997, Justice Chandra Mohan Nayyar finally delivered a landmark judgment ordering the Delhi government to preserve Ghalib's house within six months, and exemplify it at the level that the great poet truly deserved.

Izhar Asar (1929-2011), with his multifaceted and unalike personality, was the first writer to regularly write science fiction in Urdu. Even though he had studied only up to the matriculate, he went on to write about a thousand scientific, social and detective novels in Urdu and Hindi. Interestingly, he practiced the dance form of Kathak for many years, did stage shows, and even taught Kathak to others. He wrote 200 scientific articles which were published in Indian and Pakistani journals. Additionally, collections of his articles were also published, namely ‘Science Kya Hai?’ and ‘Aaj Ki Science’. He was also a poet and tried to dovetail scientific thought and imagery in his poems. Most of the poems in his poetry collection "La Shirk" are based on scientific motifs. He wrote Shama group’s detective novel ‘Mujrim’, under the pen-name ‘Qanuun-Waala’. One of his radio dramas, "Teesri Aankh", became immensely popular and was broadcasted on all the stations of All India Radio. He also published magazines and digests and did ghostwriting for TV serials.

Main to Aflaak ke aage kaa parindaa huu.n Asar
Baal-e-Jibriil bhii shaamil hai mire Shah-par mein

Josh Malihabadi spent a few years at Shalimar Studios in Pune and wrote songs for a few films there. Josh wrote six of the seven songs in the famous 1944 film "Man Ki Jeet ", based on the famous English writer Thomas Hardy's novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", which was directed by W. Z. Ahmed. In this movie, one of his songs, ‘Morey Jubna Ka Dekho Ubhar’, sung by Zuhra Bai Ambalewali became very popular.
Although the government at the time considered it obscene and banned the song from being aired on All India Radio, the similes given to the beloved’s beauty in this song were extremely novel:
Jaise Bhanvro.n ki jhoom
Jaise sawan ki dhoom
Jaise sagar ki bhor
Jaise uDta chakor
Jaise naddi ki mauj
Jaise turko.n ki fauj
In a remarkably similar manner, years later, Javed Akhtar wrote the song ‘Ek laDki ko dekha to aisa laga’ for the movie "1942 A Love Story".
The songs that Josh wrote were never pre-composed to the tune, for he would always write the lyrics first with respect to the situation in the film. It was the task of the music composer and the film’s director to put his lyrics to music.