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Anand Bakshi (July 21, 1930 Rawalpindi—30 March 2002 Mumbai) was a popular Indian poet and lyricist.

Anand Bakshi was born in Rawalpindi, now in Pakistan, on Monday, 21 July 1930. His ancestors were from Kuri, near Rawalpindi, and had origins in region of Kashmir. His mother, Sumitra, died when he was 10. Bakshi's family migrated to India on 2 October 1947, in the aftermath of the partition, when he was just 16 years old.

On 15 November 1947, he joined the Corps of Signals, got trained at Jabalpur and was later employed as a switch board operator. He would spend much of the next 10 years of his life in and out of the army as he tried, and failed, to break into Bombay's film industry. In his spare time he would write songs and sing to friends.

Anand Bakshi came to Bollywood to get a career for himself in singing but ended up becoming more successful in writing lyrics. He got his first break in films in 1956 when Bhagwan Dada signed him to write four songs for Brij Mohan’s Bhala Aadmi, from which he went on to work as a lyricist for over 300 films in the course of his life.

After writing for several movies for many years, he got his real breakthrough in 1967 with the movie Milan (starring Sunil Dutt). With this, he got opportunities to write for star music composers in Indian cinema. He established himself as a versatile lyricist with the song Dum Maro Dum in the movie Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1972). After this, he wrote memorable lyrics in many movies including Bobby and Amar Prem (1971),Sholay (1975), Hum(1990), Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), Taal (1999), Mohabbatein (2000), Gadar - Ek Prem Katha (2001) - to mention a few.

Late in his life, he suffered from heart and lung disease as a consequence of life-long smoking. In April 2001, he caught a bacterial infection at Nanavati Hospital, during a routine minor heart surgery. He finally died of organ failure on 30 March 2002 at Mumbai's Nanavati Hospital, at the age of 72.

The last released movie with lyrics by Anand Bakshi was Meri Biwi Ka Jawaab Nahin (2004).

Bakshi was a permanent ingredient as a lyricist in all movies directed by Subhash Ghai from the time of his third movie, Gautam Govinda (1979). Anand Bakshi wrote lyrics for a total of 13 movies directed by Subhash Ghai, the final beingYaadein (2001).

Another big director Bakshi constantly wrote for in the 1990s was Yash Chopra. Their association gave such hits as Chandni (1989) and Dil to Pagal Hai (1997). Bakshi also wrote lyrics for all of Chopra's director/story writer/producer-son, Aditya Chopra's movies, and the same for Rajiv Rai.

Bakshi received 40 Filmfare nominations, and won four Filmfare awards as best lyricist. The songs were:

• Aadmi Musafir Hain in Apnapan (1977)
• Tere Mere Beech in Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981)
• Tujhe Dekha in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995)
• Ishq Bina in Taal (1999).

Bakshi wrote the most lyrics -- for more than 250 movies -- with the music directors duo Laxmikant Pyarelal as the movies' composers. Not coincidentally, he was the lyricist on all the occasions they won the Filmfare award for Best Music Director, except their first award winning album, Dosti, for which the lyrics were written by Majrooh Sultanpuri. Bakshi also wrote the lyrics for many films whose music was composed by Rahul Dev Burman and their association resulted in many hit songs.

He also won many Ruby Film Awards, Aashirwad Film Awards, Sushma Shama Awards, 3 Screen awards, and Zee & Stardust Hero Honda Awards.

Bakshi won an award from the SPCA for his hard-hitting lyrics for the song Nafrat Ki Duniya Chhodke Pyar Ki Duniya Mein from the film Haathi Mere Saathi.

• Anand Bakshi wrote the lyrics for the very first films of several of today's stars, including Sunny Deol, Jackie Shroff, Kamal Hassan, Rishi Kapoor, Amrita Singh, and Uday Chopra, among several others.

• He worked with several music directors who were the sons of the music directors that he had worked with in his early days: SD and RD Burman, Chitragupt and Anand Milind, Kalyanji-Anandji and Viju Shah, Roshan and Rajesh Roshan, Nadeem-Shravan and Sanjeev Darshan. He also worked with father-son pairs of film directors like Manmohan Desai and Ketan Desai, and Yash and Aditya Chopra.

• He wrote the first recorded songs of playback singers Shailender Singh, Kumar Sanu, Kavita Krishnamurthy and S. P. Balasubramaniam, to name a few.

• Stars like Dev Anand, Dharmendra, Jeetendra, Sunny Deol, Raj Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor, Sunil Dutt, Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Rajendra Kumar, Ajay Devgan, Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla opted for Anand Bakshi when they started their own film production companies.

• Anand Bakshi at the Internet Movie Database
• Filmfare awards
• Screen India