When Jameel Akhtar took on the Herculean task of interviewing Qurratulain Hyder at length, her initial reaction was, ‘I don’t give interviews. I’m fed up with people. All those stupid boring questions, the same old stuff repeated over and over again, talking rot—No! No!’
For avid readers of Urdu who may not be its scholars, Urdu prose, especially,
genres such as short stories and novels mostly trigger the names of Prem Chand, Qurratulain Haider, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai, Rajender Singh Bedi, Krishan Chandar and the like.
The All India Progressive Writers’ Movement (AIPWM) has engendered much interest among scholars and academics. Most histories and critical estimations of Urdu literature dwell on the radicalization it brought about.
2017
Tum Kabir (2017) is the seventh col-lection of poems of Fatima Riaz—a celebrated Progressive Urdu writer of Pakistan who challenged both the traditional form and idioms that have dominated Urdu poetry since its inception.
In his important essay, ‘The Task of the Translator’, German philosopher Walter Benjamin argues that the aim of translation is not to convey the literal meaning of the original, but rather to show how two languages are related to one another through their connection to a greater, imaginary language.
A biography of Faiz in English has long been overdue. There has been a biography in Urdu by the distinguished Russian Writer/Urdu scholar Ludmila Vasilyeva, friend and translator of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Faiz: Hayat Aur Takhleeqat,
This is an endearing biography of Raghupati Sahay or ‘Firaq Gorakhpuri’ one of the great Urdu poets of the last century. Written by a close relative it is an admiring but not uncritical portrait of the poet and largely based on conversations with and personal diaries and letters of the poet’s other close relatives.
David J. Matthews’s translation of the Urdu and Persian verses by Iqbal opens up a world of ideas and events that Iqbal has witnessed/thought about in his works. The text of each poem included in this book is followed by a brief commentary to showcase the historical and the literary context.
Majmua-e-Jeelani Bano (2017) is a compilation of short stories and letters of Jeelani Bano, one of the important literary voices of Urdu literature of the twentieth century. A recipient of Padma Shri, the highest civilian award, Bano has about 22 books to her credit and has dabbled in varied genres from short story to novel, stories for children and writing for television.
With the title, Nasir Abbas Nayyar throws a gauntlet in front of readers—it is not appropriate to think of him, Miraji, as a person, an individual, a shakhs. Nayyar qualifies this statement with the subtitle: readings of Miraji’s poetry and prose.
Is newspaper column an art or science? Probably a column doesn’t fall in either of these two categories that have been traditionally in vogue to define diverse, though not antagonist, serious productions of the human mind.
Naiyer Masud’s short stories bring to mind the writings of mavericks like Haruki Murakami, Jose Saramago, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Walser, Jorge Luis Borges and many more. However, he carves out a separate place for himself within the literary oeuvre.
Mark Twain is believed to have said, ‘Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug, push it a little, weaken it a little, century by century, but only humour can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.’
2017
Julien Columeau has been critically praised for the elasticity he brings to his adopted language through his narrative style and content. Though his stories are first written in French, his natural language, he finds it similar to a Baroque painter’s exercise to transfer them to Urdu and in this translation, he recreates and rewrites his stories.
A book of eight chapters, Rohzin or The Melancholy of the Soul, by Rahman Abbas is a veritable feast for the mind. In Urdu ‘rohzin’ is a word that the author coins to signify the souls of people hurt by witnessing the betrayal of their parents with their partners.
This is a book that raises interesting ques- tions. As for example, why do so many Indians try to enter the eccentric world of the Guinness Book of Records? It is after all an intriguing and bewildering fact that so many Indians try to establish world records in the zaniest of categories every year.
As a child I used to be fascinated by the street magicians (madåri) in my hometown of Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh. At the sound of their dugdugi drum I was pulled like all the neighbourhood children to watch the show. The magician would sit down, put his hand into his bag of tricks and say, ‘I have something amazing to show you…’
The title of this book reminded me of a conversation I had over kathis in Nizam, New Market, one evening with a non-Bengali friend who loves Calcutta, knows about it as much as anyone else and would not exchange living in it for another. The city had just been renamed and my friend felt betrayed.
Sir John Marshall, then Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, used the term ‘Indus civilization’ for the culture discovered at Harappa and Mohenjodaro, a term doubly apt because of the geographical context implied in the name ‘Indus’ and the presence of cities implied in the word ‘civilization’.
Admittedly, archaeology cannot answer questions relating to faith, or questions such as whether Rama was an historical figure, or problems about locating his birthplace. However, archaeology can answer with a considerable degree of certainty, many questions about various past activities of people, for which material evidence is available.