COLUMN: THE 'RESTLESS HEART'
In this grim atmosphere of a worldwide pandemic and the numbing effect of lockdowns, reading Mirza Asadullah Khan...
Mehr Afshan Farooqi
COLUMN: ANCHORS OF REALITY
Alam’s canvas is both vast and complex. What distinguishes his storytelling is the simultaneity of conscious and...
COLUMN: MODERNISM AND MYSTICISM
Words are the medium of expression for humans ... but words also put limitations, boundaries. God is free from...
COLUMN: GHALIB’S FAVOURITE GHAZAL
In the course of my journey with Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib’s Divans, I noticed how he carefully chose verses ...
COLUMN: LANGUAGE, VOICE AND EXPRESSION
Hujum-i-fikr se dil misl-i-mauj larze hai Keh shishah nazuk-o-sehba-i-abginah gudaz [The heart pulses with a storm
COLUMN: A BOUQUET OF POETRY
Have you ever looked at your bookshelf and noticed how many titles by women have made it there? Not many, I would...
COLUMN: GHALIB’S ‘UNCREATED’ GARDEN
“Hoon garmi-i-nishat-i-tasavvur se naghma sanj/ Main andalib-i-gulshan-i-na afridah hoon” [I sing from the...
COLUMN: GHALIB’S UNEXPLORED VISTAS
There are oceans of writing in Urdu and Persian that haven’t been translated into other languages. A slew of...
COLUMN: THE POETRY OF YASMEEN HAMEED
Yasmeen Hameed has published five collections of poems from 1988 to 2012 and edited anthologies of Pakistani Urdu...
COLUMN: WILL THIS LANGUAGE EVER BE MINE?
Living and teaching in the United States for the last 20 years in departments of languages and cultures, I have...
COLUMN: A PRICELESS PEARL
Don’t be awed by Urfi because he is from Shiraz Don’t be captivated by Zulali because he is from Khwansar Come...
COLUMN: GARDENS OF THE HEART
Garden imagery can be allegorical, metaphorical or simply romantic. In classical Persian and Urdu ghazal, the garden...
COLUMN: SAQI: LARGER THAN LIFE
I like the musical, poetic quality of the name ‘Saqi Farooqi’. Who would choose such an outlandish name for...
COLUMN: URDU IN AMERICAN ACADEMIA
At the Annual Conference on South Asia held at the University of Wisconsin, a highlight for Urduwallahs used to be...
COLUMN: LITERARY HISTORY: DO WE NEED IT?
History is temporal. The historical model tends to build walls between eras, creating boxes of time. Literary texts...
COLUMN: THE PARI WITHIN THE GLASS
Some months ago I wrote about Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib’s fascination with silence, discussing a ghazal from his...
COLUMN: THE TASTE OF LANGUAGE
Last month I attended a symposium enticingly titled “What is a poem?” The organisers had posed the following...
COLUMN: The intricacies of silence
Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib often questions the capacity of words to express thoughts, asking if silence ...
The enigmatic storyteller
On reading Chiragh-i-Shab-i-Afsana — Asif Farrukhi’s tribute to the late, great, Intizar Husain
The heart beats on
On Intizar Husain’s legacy of cultural wisdom and poets who mourned migration in ways similar to his