Hyderabad: Popular Urdu poet and lyricist from Pakistan, Naseer Turabi passed away on Sunday evening in Karachi, sources said. He was 75.
It is known that the poet suffered paralysis attack a couple of years ago. He has been ill through out last year and fell into comatose state.
Turabi was born in Hyderabad on June 15, 1945. His father, Allama Rasheed Turabi was a renowned religious scholar, who practiced the Shia branch of Islam. The family moved to Pakistan post-partition.
He did his master’s in mass communication from Karachi University in 1968 but began to write poetry in 1962. His popular ghazal ‘Woh Humsafar Tha’, originally written on the separation of Bangladesh (East Pakistan) in 1971, later became a household name after being used in Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan starrer Pakistani soap “Hamsafar”.
Turabi published his first poetry collection Aks-e-Faryadi much later in 2000 and Laraib in 2017. Apart from ‘Woh Humsafar Tha’, Turabi also composed lyrics to several popular Pakistani TV shows and films. His book, Sheiryaat (Poetics) published in 2012, elevated him as an erudite poet and scholar. He is also one of the few who wrote in Persian.
