शौकत थानवी

Shaukat Thanvi (1904–1963), born Muhammad Umer in Vrindavan, was one of Urdu's most celebrated humorists — and, for a memorable stretch in the 1940s, a film lyricist and story writer. His pen name came from Thana Bhawan, his family's ancestral town in Uttar Pradesh. Largely self-taught, he entered journalism in 1928 with the Lucknow newspaper Hamdam, and when a radio station opened in Lucknow in 1938 he became one of its most popular writer-broadcasters, famed for his comic talks. In 1943, at the urging of playwright Imtiaz Ali Taj, he joined Pancholi Art Pictures in Lahore as a story and songwriter; his film-song credits from that year, such as 'Ho Sajanva Ho Balamva' and 'Jhalak Dikha Kar Chipi Chandni' (1943), date from this stint. After Partition he settled in Lahore, worked with Radio Pakistan, and from 1957 wrote the beloved humour column 'Vaghaira Vaghaira' for Daily Jang. A prodigiously prolific author of some sixty books of satire, sketches, plays and fiction, he received Pakistan's Tamgha-e-Imtiaz shortly before his death in May 1963.