Shakeel Badayuni, one of the famous Urdu poet, lyricist and songwriter of Bollywood was born today on 3rd August 1916. He was 3 times recipient of Filmfare Best Lyricist Award.

Shakeel Badayuni was born in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh to Mohammed Jamaal Ahmed Sokhta Qadiri. His father always wanted that Shakeel should be strong in academic to have a great career ahead. For this, he arranged Arabic, Urdu, Persian, and Hindi tuition for Shakeel at home.

In 1936, Shakeel left for Aligarh to pursue higher studies and this is where he started participating in inter-college, inter-university mushairas and won frequently. During his Aligarh days, Badauni also started learning Urdu poetry formally from Hakim Abdul Waheed 'Ashk' Bijnori.

Shakeel moved to Bombay in 1944, where he got his maiden break to write lyrics for the film Dard. The very first song that Shakeel wrote for Dard was "Hum dard ka afsana duniya ko suna denge". Together, he and Naushad became one of the most sought after composer/lyricist duos in the industry. Among the scores, they churned out together, are those of Deedar, Baiju Bawra, Mother India, and Mughal-e-Azam that stand out.

Shakeel worked with other composers too, and had the honour of being the only lyricist to have received three Filmfare Awards consecutively – for the title songs, "Chaudhvi ka chand ho ya aftab ho" (1961), "Husn wale tera jawab nahin" for Gharana (1962); and "Kahin deep jale kahin dil" for Bees Saal Baad (1963).

The Indian government had honored him with the title Geet Kar-e-Azam. A part of the series 100 Years of Indian Cinema, India Postal Department has issued 500 Paise commemorative postage stamp in 2013.

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