"Dua-e-lafz-Shayari"

John Elia was born on December 14, 1931 in an illustrious family of Amroha, Uttar Pradesh. He was the youngest of hissiblings. His father, Allama Shafiq Hasan Elia, was deeplyinvolved in artliterature, Joan Elia was a Pakistani Urdu poet,philosopher,
biographer and scholar. He was widely praised for his unique style of writing.

He was the brother of renowned journalistand psychoanalyst Rais Amrohvi and journalist and world-renowned philosopher Syed Muhammad Taqi, and husband of
famous columnist Zahida Hina. He was a man of letters, wellversed in Arabic, English, Persian, Sanskrit and Hebrew.literary environment modeled him along the same lines, andhe wrote his first Urdu couplet when he was just 8.His first poetry collection Shayad (an Urdu word which means"Maybe") was published in 1991,when he was 60.

The poetrypresented in this collection added John Elia name in the Urdu literary canon forever. The second collection of his poetry Ya'ani was published
posthumously in 2003 . Afterwords John Elia trustworthycompanion Khalid Ansari has compiled and published his three consecutive collections, “Gumaan” (an Urdu word which means"Illusion") in 2004, “Lekin” 2006 and “Goya” 2008, one more
collection ‘Kyon’ is now under processing. He also edited Urdu literary magazine "Insha", where he came to know of another prolific Urdu writer Zahida Hina, and
finally married her. John Elia and Zahida were divorced in mid 1980s. This left John Elia devastated and alone. He became alcoholic and depressed. 

John Elia died after a protracted illness on November 8,2002 in Karachi.