One little trick I use on my mum is sing a line or a stanza from a ghazal or a song she likes while she is cooking and leave. She goes around the house singing in her sweet, Hindustani- classical trained voice, chirping for next 2 hrs. It's like my home comes to life! What a joy!
I inherited this love for Urdu poetry from my mother and unfortunately enough, not her voice (that doesn't prevent me from singing anyway). I certainly can't write because of so many rules for it. You see, it requires special talent to look at the world in most basic forms and metaphorize with something completely different. Like here, the poet calls himself as useless as a handful of dust,'musht-e-gubaar', Irshaad!!
-Muztar Khairaabadi
Rekhta offers an excellent database for Urdu related things- especially the dictionary! Yes! Being a native Hindi speaker, I would have been paralyzed without it. I think the cause of it is because Urdu is largely made p of words from a lot of languages, mostly middle-eastern, which we don't use in India generally. It is very much like colloquial Hindi sans poetic/aesthetic/sexy words. I said colloquial. With voices like Mehdi Hasan, Ghulam Ali and Noor Jahan, these epic works were immortalized in numerous Bollywood and Pakistani movies.
Another thing I like about Ghazal and Sher is their dissection of an emotion. I will explain. If I have to tell my boyfriend to break up if he is not paying attention to me. My best (utterly dry and non-poetic but sad) way is,"Stop leaving me hanging off your word. Let's finish this off once and for all". And this is how Ahmed Faraz said it:
Or talk about the arrogance of man. Every particle shines with His glow (and yet!) every breath says that God exists because of I exist! (yup! Arrogant. But I do believe in it as a partial atheist):
Last example. And this entire ghazal is particularly dear to me because it rejoices romance from the woman's perspective and very cutely recalls stuff like,say, hesitation the man felt on their first night together. That is something really audacious for a woman being from Indian subcontinent (Pakistan) during the 1980's. Nevertheless, if it results in such beautiful work, I am all for it. Listen to Mallika-e-tarannum sing it:
I inherited this love for Urdu poetry from my mother and unfortunately enough, not her voice (that doesn't prevent me from singing anyway). I certainly can't write because of so many rules for it. You see, it requires special talent to look at the world in most basic forms and metaphorize with something completely different. Like here, the poet calls himself as useless as a handful of dust,'musht-e-gubaar', Irshaad!!
na kisī kī aañkh kā nuur huuñ na kisī ke dil kā qarār huuñ
jo kisī ke kaam na aa sake maiñ vo ek musht-e-ġhubār huuñ
Rekhta offers an excellent database for Urdu related things- especially the dictionary! Yes! Being a native Hindi speaker, I would have been paralyzed without it. I think the cause of it is because Urdu is largely made p of words from a lot of languages, mostly middle-eastern, which we don't use in India generally. It is very much like colloquial Hindi sans poetic/aesthetic/sexy words. I said colloquial. With voices like Mehdi Hasan, Ghulam Ali and Noor Jahan, these epic works were immortalized in numerous Bollywood and Pakistani movies.
Another thing I like about Ghazal and Sher is their dissection of an emotion. I will explain. If I have to tell my boyfriend to break up if he is not paying attention to me. My best (utterly dry and non-poetic but sad) way is,"Stop leaving me hanging off your word. Let's finish this off once and for all". And this is how Ahmed Faraz said it:
ab tak dil-e-ḳhush-fahm ko tujh se haiñ ummīdeñ
ye āḳhirī sham.eñ bhī bujhāne ke liye aa
Or talk about the arrogance of man. Every particle shines with His glow (and yet!) every breath says that God exists because of I exist! (yup! Arrogant. But I do believe in it as a partial atheist):
har zarra chamaktā hai anvār-e-ilāhī se
har saañs ye kahtī hai ham haiñ to ḳhudā bhī hai
वो मेरे नज़दीक आते आते हया से इक दिन सिमट गये थे मेरे खयालों में आज तक वो बदन की डाली लचक रही है
How do I resist smiling at this and accept that they want to remove Urdu from NCERT syllabus! And of course, how are they going to teach students about 'Inqalab Zindabad' ? I just cannot consent to this! #NotInMyName
Haha that is cute :)
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