Gopaldas Neeraj

Gopaldas Saxena was born on 4 January 1925 in the village of Puravali, near Mahewa in Etawah district of Uttar Pradesh, India. Besides writing, he earned his living teaching in a college and was a professor of Hindi Literature in Dharma Samaj College, Aligarh.^[6][7]

Several poems and songs written by Neeraj have been used in Hindi movies. He wrote songs for several Hindi films and was proficient in both Hindi and Urdu. In a television interview, Neeraj called himself an unlucky poet who had to concentrate on the poetry form instead of writing songs for films.^{[citation needed]} His career as a film lyricist ended when he became depressed by the deaths of some of the film music directors with whom he had worked.^[8] He noted in particular the deaths of Jaikishan of the music duo Shankar–Jaikishan, and S. D. Burman, for both of whom he had written highly popular film songs.^[6]

He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1991^[9] and Padma Bhushan in 2007.^[10]

His poems collection is named as Kavyanjali, which was published in 2014.

Neeraj died, aged 93, on 19 July 2018 in New Delhi. He had been admitted to hospital with a lung infection.^[11]

Some of the popular film songs written by Neeraj include: