This book is a collection of poems and ghazals recited at the All India Urdu Mushaira held in Chennai in 2005, featuring works by renowned poets.

Rahat Indori is a well-known Urdu shayar and lyrics writer. He was born in 1950 in Indore and did his basic education from there. He completed his MA in Urdu literature from Bhopal and achieved his PhD from Bhuj University of Madhya Pradesh. His childhood was a tough one as the family was going through a financial crisis, so he began to work as a sign-painter at the tender age of ten.
Rahat took up a teacher’s job in Urdu literature at IK College, Indore and got engrossed in mushairas and began to get invitations from everywhere in India and abroad. He was a good student and also the captain of the football and hockey teams at school and college levels. He recited his first sher in his college days when he was only 19. 

He is the recipient of a number of national and international awards for Urdu sher-o-shayari. He is also a popular lyrics writer in the Hindi film industry.

A widely-acclaimed shayar, who was felicitated with the Sahitya Academy Award and Padamshree, Bashir Badr did B.A., M.A. and Ph. D. from Aligarh Muslim University. He was also felicitated by the UP Urdu Academy four times and once by the Bihar Urdu Academy. He worked as a lecturer at the Aligarh Muslim University and later, joined the Meerut College in the same capacity. He then proceeded to become the head of the department of the same college and continued in that capacity for a period of 17 years. He is well-versed in Persian, Hindi and English. Presently, he lives in Bhopal. Bashir Badr has over 18,000 couplets to his credit and a large number of Urdu Ghazals too. He is a poet, who has majority of his poetry sung and recited among Urdu shayars. He has come out with more than seven collections of poems in Urdu and one in Hindi. He has also written two 2 books of as a literary critic; Azadi Ke Bad Urdu Ghazals Ka Tanqidi Mutala and Biswin Sadi Mein Ghazal. He also introduced a collection of Urdu ghazals in the Devnagari script titled; Ujaale Apani Yaadon Ke. A collection of his ghazals has been published in Guajarati script. Some of his works have also been translated into English and French. An award winning collection of 69 ghazals is the jewel in the poetic crown of Bashir Badr. One of his collections entitled; Kulliyat-e-Bashir Badr has been published from Pakistan. The content in his ghazals is in highly contemporary Urdu and can therefore be easily understood and appreciated by a vast majority of people, without any difficulty. His ghazals are primarily an expression of anguished love; in them are also expressed the mysteries of life.

Manzar Bhopali, whose real name is Syed Ali Raza, is a well-known Indian Urdu poet. He was born on 29 December 1959 in Amravati, Madhya Pradesh, and at a young age moved with his family to Bhopal, where he received his early upbringing and education. He completed his M.A. in Urdu. His literary inclination was inherited; his father, Mir Abbas Ali, was associated with literature and was a poet, while his grandfather, Mir Khairat Ali, was a renowned hakim (traditional physician) of his time.
Manzar Bhopali began writing poetry at the age of fourteen and participated in a mushaira for the first time at seventeen. He received poetic guidance from Raza Rampuri. Primarily a ghazal poet, he has also experimented with other poetic genres. His melodious voice and impactful recitation are considered his distinctive hallmarks.
Over a poetic journey spanning more than three decades, he has authored more than a dozen books in Urdu and Hindi. Notable among them are Yeh Sadi Hamari Hai, Zindagi, Lahoo-rang Mausam, Lava, Manzar Ek Bulandi Par, and Udaas Kyun Ho. He has participated in thousands of mushairas across five continents and more than two dozen countries. After attending the first International Mushaira in Karachi in 1987, he undertook literary tours to numerous countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and England.
In recognition of his literary contributions, he has received several honours in India and abroad, including honorary citizenship of Louisville (USA) and the “Pride of Madhya Pradesh” Award conferred by the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 2018. Manzar Bhopali is still regarded as a respected, popular, and powerful voice of Urdu mushairas on the global stage.

Nida Fazli was a writer, poet, songwriter, dialogue writer and journalist of Urdu and Hindi who gave Urdu poetry a tone and style which was seldom considered by the elites of Urdu literature before him. Nida Fazli was born in Delhi on October 12, 1938. His real name was Muqtada Hassan. His father Murtaza Hassan was a poet and his pseudonym was Dua Dabaiwi. Which created a passion for poetry in Nada from a young age. He received his early education in Gwalior and obtained MA degrees in Urdu and Hindi from Vikram University, Ujjain. After that, Nida’s father decided to move to Pakistan. Nida ran away from home and did not go to Pakistan. After being separated from his family, Nida continued his struggle alone. And he spent his time only in reading and poetry. While scoring through the poetry universe, he realized that there is one thing lacking in the poetic capital of Urdu and that is that such poetry is fun to listen to but it does not support individual emotions. His restlessness reached a crescendo when one of his college girls, Miss Tandon, who had become emotionally attached to him, died in an accident. Nida was very shocked by this but he could not find a single poem in the treasure of Urdu literature to side with his grief. He found an expression to his emotion in one of Surdas’s poems, and that is where he found his own diction, accent, and tone.

A new poetic idiom of Urdu came into existence in his poetry which attracted and influenced the new generation. His expression is as simple as the adages of the saints, possessing a poetic glory and sweetness like folk songs. He addresses common people in and through his poems. He not only retrieved the Sant-tradition but also pointed out new possibilities in Urdu prose literature by adding contemporary linguistic intelligence. About his poetry, Nida asserted, “My poetry not only values the relationship between literature and its readers, but also makes its social context its standard. My poetry is about moving out of closed rooms and moving on with life."

After graduating, he stumbled for a few days in Delhi and elsewhere in search of work and then moved to Bombay in 1964. In Bombay, he had to struggle hard at first. He read magazines like Dharmayug and Blitz and worked in newspapers. At the same time, he became known in the literary circles. He had written most of the poems, lyrics and songs of his first collection of poems “Lafzon Ka Pul” before coming to Bombay and people were attracted to his fresh expression. This book came out in 1971 and was an instant hit. He also became a popular lyricist, his connection with the film industry started when Kamal Amrohi directed his film Razia Sultan and let him write two songs in it. After that, he started working as a lyricist and dialogue writer in various films. However, he did not have a success like that of a Sahir, Majrooh, Gulzar or Akhtarul Iman.

Later many of his poetry collections made the scene like ‘Mor Nach’, ‘Ankh aur Khwab Ke darmiyan’, ‘Shahr tu mere sath chal’, ‘Shahr mein Gaon’, ‘Zindagi Ki Taraf’ and many more. His prose writings include two autobiographical novels ‘Diwaron Ke Bich’, and ‘Diwaron ke Bahar’. Nida was awarded the Sahtia Academy Award in 1998 for her book "Khoya Hua Sa Kuch". In 2013, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. He was awarded the Screen Award for the film "Sur". In addition, various state Urdu academies also gave him awards. His poetry has been translated into various national and foreign languages.

In his poetry, the values of Kabir's philosophy of life, which are higher than the prevailing philosophy of religiosity and whose essence is in human sympathy, are prominent. But the whole universe is a family. The moon, the stars, the trees, the rivers, the birds, and man are all related to each other, but these relationships are now breaking down and values are declining. In such a situation, it is the duty of today's writer and poet to try to reconnect these relationships and prevent the remaining ones from breaking up. The work is now the responsibility of writers and poets. Nida Fazli died of a heart attack in February 2016.