Qamar Jalalabadi Biography 
Qamar Jalalabadi was a popular Indian poet and lyricist of Hindi movies. He was born as Om Prakash Bhandari in a Punjabi family in 1917 in the Jalalabad town. “Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu” and “Aaiye meherbaan, baithiye janejaan….” – both belonging to the movie Howrah Bridge brought him instant stardom in the late 1950’s. He was an acclaimed Shayar also and has performed at several mushairas all over India.
Born in Jalalabad town near Amritsar, he started writing in Urdu at the age of 7. But he didn’t receive any encouragement from his family. Once a wandering minstrel poet named Amar met him in his hometown and discovered the real talent of young Qamar. The pen name, Qamar was also given by this wandering poet. It was a general trend to add the name of hometown along with the name of poets and thus Jalalabadi became a part of his name, the name by which he was known later. His real name was Om Prakash Bhandari. He completed matriculation from Amritsar and started his career as a journalist writing for Lahore based newspapers like Daily Milap, DailyPratap, Nirala and Star Sahakar.
Qamar Jalalabadi came to Pune in the early 1940s to join film industry. His first film was Zamindar released in 1942. “Duniya me garibonko aaraam nahi milta" sung by Shamshad Begum became popular. He relocated to Mumbai and worked as a lyricist for four decades or so. He has also worked with all leading composers of Bollywood during this time. The noted song aired on AIR till now, “Aaj pahli taarik hai” sung by Kishore Kumar was penned by Qamar. He was one of the founder members of Film Writers Association and IPRS in Mumbai. He had close relationship with many noted film personalities like Kalyanji, Anandji and O.P Nayyar.
Published: N/A
Updated: March 26, 2014
