Abdul Hayee, who wrote as Sahir Ludhianvi, was born at Ludhiana in 1921 to a landowning family and grew up in a bitter custody dispute between his parents which marked everything he wrote.
His collection Talkhiyaan, bitternesses, published in 1945 when he was twenty-four, made him a major Urdu poet before he had written a film song.
He went to Lahore, edited literary journals, and left for India in 1949 after a warrant was issued against him for the political content of what he published.
In Bombay he became the only lyricist of his era whose name was billed above the composer's and who was paid accordingly. He insisted the words came first.
His film lyrics carry the politics of the poetry undiluted: Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahan hain, a song about prostitution and national pride, sits inside a commercial film and indicts the country that made it.
His long association with Amrita Pritam was conducted in the open and neither of them married the other.
Talkhiyan, published in 1945, made his name before he had written a film song, and the bitterness in the title is the register he kept for forty years.
He wrote lyrics that carried politics into commercial Hindi cinema, on war, poverty and hypocrisy, and he insisted on his name being credited, which changed the standing of the film lyricist.
He left Lahore in 1949 and settled in Bombay. He was from Ludhiana and the college he attended there now carries his name.