Urdu Poetry

"Look at me as a picture of inspiration
Rising up with each defeat, such is my destiny." 

"Mujhe dekho hasrat ki tasveer hoon main
Jo ban ban ke bigdi wo taqdeer hu main."

Singer: Talat Mahmood. (Born in Lucknow, India, February 24, 1924)
Poet: Majrooh Sultanpuri.
Translation from Urdu: Sahar Zaman

Allama Muhammad Iqbal was a great poet and philosopher of the 20th century. The impacts of his everlasting poetry were very deep on contemporary Urdu poets as well as later poets. Jaan Faisalabadi was one of those poets in whose poetry we observe the rays of thoughts and literary styles of Iqbal. Jaan Faisalabadi was born on April 14, 1928, in a village in district Faisalabad. His poetry has national, religious, and reformative aspects. His poetry also has romantic and realistic elements. His first poetry collection, "Jirs-o-Rubab," was published in 2007. Then "Dast-e-Kaleem" in 2008, "Yad-e-Beiza" in 2012, and "Dard-o-Darmaan" in 2016. After reading Jan Faisalabadi's poetry, there were signs of conscious imitation in his words. In this research paper, the researcher has analyzed Jan Faisalabadi's poetry in the background of the impacts of Iqbal's poetry and his universal thoughts.

In this paper, I offer an alternative perspective to appreciate Rich’s translations of Ghalib’s ghazals. For those who adhere to the principle of faithfulness, Rich’s creative adaptations may be considered unacceptable or controversial. However, it is crucial to understand that Rich embraced the request of Ahmad, who encouraged Rich and other poets to create ‘versions’ in response to Ghalib’s Urdu ghazals, prioritizing the production of poetry instead of academic translations. Reading her translations, it is evident that she endeavored to engage with Ghalib’s poetic spirit, transcending time and space, to draw some inspiration for a new mode of poetry while challenging the patriarchal system of signification. Moreover, it is undeniable that her translation experiences played a crucial role in her creation of American ghazals, such as “Ghazals: Homage to Ghalib” and “The Blue Ghazals,” as she sought to represent ‘the untranslatable’ aspects of American women’s lives. Thus, raising a reasonable doubt about previous studies which have analyzed Rich’s ghazals in the context of Ghalib’s influence, I will explore the originality of Rich’s ghazals, examining how they evolved from creative adaptations to original ghazals. Specifically, I will show that Rich’s ghazals are several steps removed from Ghalib’s Urdu ghazals except for retaining five couplets, thence making it more appropriate to identify them as American ghazals. I will conclude this paper with a positive assessment that Rich polished the rusted mirror of the Urdu Ghazal both inside and outside to reflect the disorder of American society in her time, just as Ghalib polished the rusted mirror of the Persian Ghazal to reflect the tumult of Mughal-Indian society as it transitioned into a British colony in his time.

Urdu literature written in the second half of the nineteenth century in North India has often been characterised in terms of rupture, reshaping, and loss of the legacies of the past. In this essay, I argue that such literary-historical framing not only limits our understanding of thriving Urdu aesthetic production in colonial North India, but also misrepresents a vibrant literary culture that continued to resist the colonial aesthetic valuations by drawing on the legacies of the past much more aggressively. To demonstrate this, I examine here Munshī Gobind Prasād Faẓā's striking Urdu retelling of Niz̤ āmī Ganjavī's Persian poem, Ḳhusrau o Shīrīn, in the larger context of the colonial aesthetic politics. Through examining Faẓā's maṡnavī (a poem in rhyming couplets) in the framework of anti-colonial resistance, I argue that Urdu maṡnavī writers engaged the notion of temporality through drawing on the deep memory of the Persianate past in the form of the maṡnavī and presented it as a counter-narrative to the poetics of orphaned newness that were becoming a gold standard in other literary forms at the time. In this essay, I highlight the unique cultural work that the form of Urdu maṡnavī did in addressing, and even overcoming, the proverbial death of a literary culture that remained thriving till deep into the twentieth century.

This research explores the life and literary contributions of Nand Lal Talib, a prominent Kashmiri poet from old city of Srinagar who significantly impacted Urdu poetry while maintaining his distinct Kashmiri sensibility. Talib's works showcase a remarkable mastery of language, drawing from both classical Urdu and Persian traditions, while addressing diverse themes including personal emotions, social issues, and national identity. His poetic legacy, shaped by his mentorship under Allama Kaifi, includes profound narrative poetry and lyrical ghazals. Talib's essays and literary critiques reveal his intellectual prowess, authenticity in poetry and critiquing the artificiality in contemporary trends. His metrical translations of Lalla Ded’s mystic sayings and his analysis of Ghalib's work highlight his critical engagement with Kashmiri and broader Urdu literary traditions. Despite his immense contributions, Talib remained humble, allowing his work to speak for itself. This paper aims to highlight  Talib's role in bridging the gap between Kashmiri and Urdu literary worlds.

Gilgit Baltistan is an administrative unit under the control of IRP since 1947.Prior to partition of India Gilgit Baltistan was a heterogeneous dispensation some parts were in form of princely states,others were under direct rule of Maharaja of Kashmir and still other ateas enjoyed a tribal set ups.Being a Muslim majority region the indigenous population opted to affiliate themselves with Pakistan through accession deeds by princely states and through revolt in areas which were under direct control of Maharaja of Kashmir.Sincethen they are loyal to Pakistan and expect that sooner or later they would be i institutional part of Pakistan and at the par with other provinces once the issue of Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India is resolved as per vires of the UN resolutions on Kashmir

The present paper follows the journey of the Romanian verb "a bate" (to beat, to hurt, to fight etc.) through the depths of language, uncovering its many uses. Bridging cultural and linguistic distances, it also explores the contextual requirements and changes that happen in Hindi when wanting to obtain the same meanings as those conveyed by the Romanian verb. In addition, it reflects on how a social media post that starts out as a topic for ridicule may become a source for semantic analyses.

Poetic art in Urdu seems to be stunned in Balochistan as the multilingual environment of the province is completely overflowing with the poetic creation of the native languages. Amid such circumstances, Atta Shad proved to be the shining star in Urdu poetry as he introduced new trends in it. His mastery in the field of lexical choice is pretty enough to prove himself as a real morphologist. He lines are the reflection of nature, its beauty and Ata Shad's close association with natural object which can best be observed in Balochistan. A point worth mentioning about Ata Shad's poetic qualities is that his work is a window through which one can peep into Balochistan. The present study presents a true picture of Atta Shad's personality and his poetic works while at a time exploring the effects of poetic power on his personality. The study is likely to pave way for future researchers to explore Ata Shad as a person and a poet in the same shell.

This research aims to explore the intersection of dramatic monologue and modern Urdu poetry, investigating how this unique form of expression has evolved and been employed by poets in the contemporary Urdu literary landscape. Through a comparative analysis of selected works, the study will delve into the thematic, structural, and stylistic elements that characterize the fusion of dramatic monologue and Urdu poetic traditions. The goal is to unravel the nuanced ways in which poets utilize this form to engage with socio-cultural realities, individual experiences, and introspective narratives, shedding light on the dynamic relationship between dramatic monologue and the evolution of Urdu poetry. It employ a qualitative approach, utilizing close textual analysis of selected works of modern Urdu poets known for their adept use of dramatic monologue among them most prominent poets are N.

In the latter part of the 20th century, there has been a growing interest in understanding the intricacies of meaning transfer within translated texts across different languages. This research article delves into the nuanced process of reconciling meaning in texts translated from Urdu to English and vice versa. In this intricate journey of translation, a portion of the original meaning often undergoes transformations and is occasionally lost. Our study examines this phenomenon by focusing on two renowned literary works: The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak (originally written in 2010 and translated into English in 2017) and La-Hasil by Umera Ahmad (originally published in 2006 and translated into English in 2011). We apply the theoretical framework developed by Karpinski and Basile (2021) and focus on the dynamics of power relations between genders within these translated texts, with a particular emphasis on cultural-specific references (CSRs). By exploring the influence of CSRs on the representation of gender-related power dynamics, we aim to shed light on the intricate challenges translators face in maintaining cultural nuances while making the text accessible to a broader audience. This research not only contributes to the field of translation studies but also offers valuable insights for future researchers and translators, especially in the context of less-explored translations of Urdu literature. This study paves the way for a deeper understanding of the translation process and its implications for cross-cultural communication by examining the complexities of meaning
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reconciliation and the impact of cultural-specific references on gender-related themes.

This paper delineates the socio-historical imagination underpinning the works of Miraji, one of the pioneers of Urdu poetic modernism. It argues that the 'modernism' attributed to Miraji's poetry is best understood as the culmination of, as well as a veritable departure from, a specific diachronic movement internal to the history of modern Urdu literature. Presenting the idea of 'naturalness' as one of the principal catalysts of this internal movement, this paper demonstrates how Miraji attempted to reorient the trajectory of modern Urdu poetry by adopting an equivocal poetic language, which challenged the moral, social, and political imports of this politicoaesthetic discourse of 'naturalness'.

This paper is an attempt to highlight those Islamist elements who long before the establishment of country sowed the seeds of different variants of Islam from which we can not get rid of. Even today, we are endorsing our version of Islam while labeling the other version as infidel.

Imagery, in literary or poetic sense, is the author's use of description and vivid language, deepening the reader's understanding of the work, by appealing to the senses. It is an important poetic element. Through the poetic imagery , a poet tries to create a picture in the mind of reader or a mental image through the figural language. There are main five types of imagery, relate to the five senses. Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, a well-known Urdu Poet and short story writer, used poetic imagery in his poems very nicely. He wrote Ghazals too. His poetic books including "Jalal o Jamal, Rim jhim, Dasht-e-Wafa, Dharkanen, Gardaab, Muheet" are very famous due to his rhythmic poetry. Qasmi was impressed by Dr. Muhammad Iqbal. Like Iqbal, He used metaphor based on sun, moon, stars and space & time. His language and style is compatible with modern thoughts. His poetry has sensory expressions. There are many poems of Ahamd Nadeem qasmi, which have beautiful imagery like "Sham Kab Aa Gayi, Jadeed Insan, Neya Saal" etc but here are specially his two poems has been mentioned for poetic imagery analyses.

It is almost half a century ago, when spatial turn took place in humanities in western theory. Exploring the spatiality and mapping out the landscapes of literature and literary production has been on the go since. But spatiality and mapping could not attract the attention of Urdu research and literary analysis. Iqbal, the national poet of Pakistan, who remains always in literary, political and everyday discussions, has never been, to the best of my knowledge, studied spatially. This article uses the methods of geocriticism and maps out the space and places in Urdu poetry of Iqbal. By analyzing the quantitative data of places referenced in Iqbal's poetry, this study aims to delineate his mental geography. The historical contexts of these places within the Urdu literary world are examined to understand their evolution. This study demonstrates how Iqbal utilized places to evoke the past, comprehend the present, and situate the Islamic public.

From esteemed writers to lay readers, Afzal Saahir’s words captivate everyone. In the 1990s, very few people read Punjabi poetry at a university or college event. Some of the Punjabi poets complained that they were treated as outcasts. Saahir was an exception. His charm in the company of senior Urdu poets was contagious. The appreciation he used to receive from diverse audiences was reassuring.

The autistic experience has been widely medicalized, pathologized, mischaracterized, and misunderstood. Through this series of essays, I attempt to paint an alternative picture of (an) autistic life—one not defined by deficits, but (at the risk of sounding cliché) differences—by re-storying autism through an Autistic Poetic.

Autistic Poetics, or the poetry of autistic existence, offers to our imagination a new way of relating to the world—alternative pictures of what it means to be human and all the possibilities therein. Autists, as human beings who often express being more at home with the earth-others and more-than-human world, can offer our writings as a bridge between the categorizing language of the nonautistic neuromajority and the sensing, silent language of the natural world. Through my autistic readings and reflections on poems from Mary Oliver's Dream Work, I explore what an Autistic Poetic has to reveal about our relationship to one another and the earth.

The Qaumi Tanzeem has played a great role in my life. I must say living in Qaumi Tanzeem and Sabzi Bagh, which has a large Muslim population, I never felt discriminated.

(Source: Abhay Kumar, "Where I lived and Breathed Urdu", The Qaumi Tanzeem, Clarion India, May 7, 2022. )

Recent scholarship in Islamic studies has proposed ambiguity, especially in the form of literary metaphor and paradox, as integral to pre-modern Islam. However, literary ambiguity has also afforded an interpretive lens for articulations of modern Muslim identity. This article analyzes how two metaphors for the self-the nightingale and the falcon-function in Persian and Urdu ghazals of Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), for whom the resources of pre-modern Sufi poetry, especially ambiguity and paradox, become a method of meaning-making for the modern era. Iqbal's use of these metaphors presents a nuanced view of the tensions between the inheritances of tradition and the demands of modernity for South Asian Muslims in the colonial era, and allows us to attend to the intersections of religion, literature, and politics in modern Islamic thought from the point of view of languages, genres, and geographies that remain marginal to the field of Islamic Studies.

From the Love Studio ASMA ABBAS What does love study under conditions of its unrequitedness? How can it at once cease to be an object and resist inversion into an idealized subject as the only way to survive? Against the purities, scarcities, redemptions, settlements, and requitals that make it a conscript of anti-politics of various kinds, love somehow continues to profess and remain a partisan to politics and its possibility, producing the world and often disappearing from it. When so much of that love is waiting to be spoken to, or called back from disappearance, the we and the I must make room for a forgotten you to be spoken to, heard from, grieved with, and offered a world in common. Even speaking as or for oneself in these conditions requires speaking to oneself, as if one were, just for a moment, the beloved, and not the accu(r)sed. This musing's own form and tone is an invitation to that moment, to a political method that counters the shared premises of racism, misogyny, fascism, capital, and the colony, lest our theories and practices claim further casualties: not even the beloved is safe from the wrath of that which seeks the final solution or last apology, encloses in words without excess, and squares away in smug, swift action, which is its own special curse. THE ADAMANT HEARTIST "She was a dil phaink. She was a heartist like that." 1 When religious fundamentalists in Pakistan ran a "Say No to Valentine's Day" campaign in 2013, Sabeen Mahmud heartfully countered it with "Pyaar Hone Dain" ("Let Love Happen"). Two years later, she was killed in cold blood on her way home from one of her many attempts at alleviating intellectual poverty in Pakistan. (This particular forum was on the state repression of the Baloch people and the silence around their disappearance and murder.) Her killer confessed, and was involved also in massacres of Muslim minority sects and the murder of an American woman academic working in Karachi the same month, "We shot her for holding a Valentine's Day rally." The battle in which Sabeen and her killers met had nothing to do with a silly corporate holiday, and it was not even the same battle for each. For Sabeen, as for other casualties of these wars, love itself was the point of contention, their love against terror's soldiering in the name of some love. Two months after her death, her organization PeaceNiche brought a number of Pakistani activists, musicians, artists,

The present study was an attempt to analyse the psychological disorder of Khafqan mentioned in Urdu poetry. For this, 17 Urdu couplets were sampled and analysed to identify the features of the concept of Khafqan. Each couplet was analysed considering three points: 1. what is the meaning of Khafqan in the couplet, 2. what reasons of Khafqan are given in the couplet, 3. is there any treatment suggested for Khafqan in the couplet. With the help of this analysis, a list of 17 symptoms, 5 causes and 4 treatments of Khafqan has been compiled. The characteristics of Khafqan that came to light from the analysis of the sampled couplets suggest that in today’s term it can be labelled as the broader category of Anxiety disorders. It has symptoms of 'Panic Disorder', 'Specific Phobia', 'Generalized Anxiety Disorder' and some symptoms of 'Obsessive Compulsive Disorder'

Abstract: No Messiah For Broken Glass
Ali Shehzad Zaidi
SUNY Canton
This article discusses three poems by the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz who spent five years in solitary confinement in Pakistan. Imprisonment was the seminal experience that ignited his creativity and shaped his poetry. Liberated from the mundane happenstance of the everyday, Faiz discovered the magical present to which the mystics beckon. Confinement heightened his senses, integrating them into poetry of pain and longing. Paradoxically, the years of confinement became a source of joy. Among the key images in these poems of Faiz: green water evokes revival and regeneration; the city of thieves recalls the kleptocracy into which Pakistan has devolved; and the faded curtains evoke the interminable cultural and religious confinement of Pakistanis. The walnut leaves, used to induce abortion, hint at their stillborn dreams and aspirations, as well as the loveless marriage between the people and their rulers. Faiz celebrates remembrance leads to healing and recovery. At a time when the Urdu language is being stripped of much of its Persian vocabulary and imaginative content, Faiz represents a vital connection both to the ancient civilizations in the territories of what is now Pakistan as well as a bridge between Pakistan and the world.

Sahir Ludhianvi took his role as a lyricist seriously. 'Bada songwriter banooga' (I will become a major songwriter), he declared as he headed towards Bombay, the film capital of north India, to realise that dream. And he did indeed become the preeminent songwriter of his time.

It's quite interesting to do a comparative study of two Romantic poets from two different languages and literatures and draw similarities and dissimilarities between their thought patterns, literary beliefs/schools of thoughts, romantic characteristics, concerns and themes etc... John Keats is the most Romantic English poet ever; likewise, Akhtar Shirani is the most Romantic poet, Urdu has ever produced. Romantic movement in English literature reached its climax in the early nineteenth century; a century before it set forth in Urdu. Still the two Romantic poets have striking similarities in the romantic characteristics of their poetry, like fervent imagination, quest for beauty, escapism, sensuousness, medievalism, nostalgia, supernaturalism etc. This article aims at a comparative study of Keats's and Shirani's imagery. Both Keats's and Shirani's poetry carves out pictures with words. Both romantic poets have employed all sorts of imageries like concrete imagery, empathic imagery, kinesthetic & synesthetic imageries....

This research explored the translation of the Urdu poem "Jawab-e-Shikwa"
by Muhammad Iqbal into English, focusing on two versions by Altaf
Hussain and Frances W. Pritchett. The study employed the Vinay and
Darbelnet model to analyze translation strategies such as equivalence,
modulation, and oblique translation. The analysis revealed differences in
linguistic accuracy, cultural relevance, and literary style between the two
translations. Through a qualitative and quantitative approach, the study
aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the impact of translation
on the interpretation of "Jawab-e-Shikwa" in both Urdu and Englishspeaking contexts. From the Result of the analysis it was found that Hussain
employed an oblique translation approach with techniques such as
equivalence and modulation, capturing the essence of the original poem with
a sense-for-sense translation. Pritchett, on the other hand, adopted a direct
translation strategy, offering a word-for-word rendition that maintains clarity
but may lack the nuanced impact of the Urdu original. Both translations
effectively conveyed the overall meaning of the poem, Hussain's version
demonstrated a greater adherence to the cultural and literary nuances of the
original Urdu, providing a more intricate and contextually rich interpretation.
Pritchett's literal approach, while clear and accurate, may compromise the
poetic and cultural depth inherent in Iqbal's work.

This article is a sequel to my article on female duets and multi-singer songs in Hindi films. This article lists the all-male songs with two or more singers. As I pointed out in the earlier article, my article intends to be an exhaustive list, but due to the vast sea of Hindi film songs, it may have many missing songs. As in the earlier article, I will append a list (not intended to be exclusive) of Marathi male duets.

Halat e hazir mein aik nazar mashray ki taraf dheka jaye to bohat he mayuskun halat hai. or agar makhsose khas aik taraf tawaja ki jaye aik rishty ki taraf jo k eis dunya ki bunyad hai who bohat bohat mushkil halat sy guzar raha hai, dunya ki shorowat jahan biwi or shohar sy hoe te , wohe rishta aj dunya ki sub sy akhri priority ban gaya hai. Azwa jisy quran ny aik dusry k saqoon ka bais kaha hai aj aik dusry sy sub sy ziada bysaqooni mehsos karty hai, jis wajohat beshumar hai khuch bhari khuch choti , jo k itni bhh choti nahe hai , acha khasa asar rakhte hai magar kheny ko choti hai.

Building on eighteenth-century philosophical traditions, Victorian aesthetics were often posed as an antidote to the vicissitudes of the Industrial Revolution and the political and economic demands of the marketplace, and in most cultures undergoing modernization the Beautiful has often functioned in opposition to the forces of power and instrumentality and their corrosive effects on social life. Readers of 19 will be familiar with the Victorian environment-the workhouses, the poverty, the invention and technology, the urbanization, the Empire. By the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Islamic world saw the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the effects of European colonization, and modernizing forces in China led to the greatest rejection of a 3000-year-old tradition in world history. This Forum contribution compares Western, Islamic, and Chinese aesthetics. My argument is that since the nineteenth century, modern aesthetics have typically functioned dialectically against the constraints of scarcity, exploitation, and tyranny, and that within them Nature and the natural world play a particularly valuable role, one that is threatened today in the market failure of global warming and unsustainability.

This article is intended to provide fairly exhaustive lists of the all-female duets and multi-singer songs (two singers, three-singers and four-singers) in Hindi films, arranged alphabetically and with an index of the singers at the end. Of course, the stock of Hindi film music is so vast that it is possible there may be many songs missing, especially in the very old and very new categories. And I hope there is a minimum of errors in the list.