Gopaldas Neeraj

Gopaldas Saxena 'Neeraj, (popularly known as Niraj or Neeraj) (born 1925) is a poet and author of Hindi literature. He is also a famous poet of english Kavi Sammelan. He was born in the village of Puravali near Mahewa of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, India on 4 January 1924. He wrote under the pen name "Neeraj". His style is considered easy to understand, but has also been compared with high quality Hindi literature. He was awarded Padma Shri in 1991 and Padma Bhushan in 2007.

Besides writing, he earned his living teaching in a college and was a Professor of Hindi Literature in Dharma Samaj College, Aligarh. Several of his poems and songs have been used in Hindi movies and are considered famous. He wrote songs for several Hindi Movies and attained a unique position as a songwriter who wrote with equal facility in both hindi and Urdu.

In the television interview, Gopaldas Neeraj called himself an unlucky poet which led to his stopping himself from writing film songs and confining himself to just writing and getting his poems published. The reason for this mentioned by him was that at least two or three prominent Music Directors of the Hindi Film Industry for whom he wrote very successful and popular songs, had expired. He mentioned the death of Jaikishan of the Music Duo Shankar-Jaikishan as well as of S.D.Burman or Sachin Dev Burman, for both of whom he had written highly popular film songs. The deaths of these Music Directors when they as well as Gopaldas Neeraj were at the peak of their popularity, left him very depressed and he made a decision to quit the film industry.

Neeraj (given name)

Neeraj or Niraj (Devanagari: नीरज nīraj) is an Indian masculine given name. The Sanskrit word nīraja is a compound of nīra 'water' and -ja 'born' and has the primary meaning of 'lotus'. The same Sanskrit word can also be a compound of nis- 'without' (which takes the form nī- because of sandhi with the following word) and raja 'dust', 'emotion', with the overall meaning 'free from dust' or 'free from passion'

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