Plans to meet Urdu text book shortage in India

It is a very good development, books should be available and cheap enough that students can afford it.


Jamia to help schools meet Urdu text shortage


STUDENTS at Urdu-medium schools have something to smile about for the NCERT, in collaboration with Jamia Milia Islamia, is on track to have all textbooks translated to Urdu.

Urdu-medium schools in Delhi have been facing a severe shortage of texts in the past few years.

It will be three years before every textbook is available in Urdu, but by the time the academic session begins next month, textbooks for classes I, III, VI, IX and XI will be available in Urdu.

"Our experts consider that access to education in a child's mother tongue can go a long way in enhancing his chances of success..." NCERT spokesperson Ashish Bahad said.

Textbooks for classes II, IV, VII, X and XII will hit the market in 2007-08, and texts for classes V and VIII the following year.

"Researchers worldwide have shown that students learn much better if they are taught in their mother tongue. For example Papua New Guinea, which has the highest linguistic diversity in the world, has been able to educate children in 400 different languages at the primary education level. In such cases, students can pick up other languages such as English more easily if taught suitably at a later stage," Dr Anita Rampal, an NCERT expert on primary education, said.

The NCERT move is in consonance with the spirit of the National Curriculum Framework.

"We plan to collaborate extensively with the Urdu Council Association and the Urdu Press to publicise the newly commissioned textbooks," Bahad added.

Hali's home to house Sufi museum

Hali was not a Sufi poet but a very modern man, who lived in the time, and did his bit to reform and modernize the Muslim community of the South Asia. Congratulations to all the people who are trying to preserve his house.

Link to one of his article in Urdu is given below:


Scholars and Sufi experts, who deliberated over romantic and spiritual aspects of Amir Khusro's poetry, have suggested setting up of a Sufi museum in Panipat and a cultural centre in Panchkula in Haryana dedicated to the 13th century Urdu-Persian poet known for his innovative literature and music.

The two-day national seminar on Khusro, which concluded here last evening, recommended that the proposed Sufi museum be built in the premises of the ancestral house of 18th century Urdu poet Hali in Panipat.

The premises, presently occupied by a retired state employee who had migrated from Pakistan after the partition of the country, would be acquired by the Haryana government and converted into a museum with a library on Sufism, Haryana Urdu Akademi Secretary Kashmiri Lal Zakir told a news agency.

The occupant of the house, which was fortunately intact in its original form, had agreed to vacate it after getting a plot in lieu of it, said Zakir who was recently honoured with the Padmashri Award.

The proposed cultural centre dedicated to Khusro at Panchkula would work for the promotion of the pluralistic Indian culture with special emphasis on the publication of the poet's work in Urdu and its translations in Hindi and Punjabi, he added.

Khusro--immortalised by several of his popular Sufi songs and compositions like ''chhap tilak sab chhini re mose naina milai ke,' in India, Pakistan and several other countries where Persian is understood--had expressed his love for Hindustani culture in his works by taking Indian customs, festivals, seasons and even birds in the ambit of his poetry.

The experts also called for the publication and translation of the poet's verses in these languages.

They also called for an effort to work upon an ''authentic biography'' of Amir Khusro based on his own writings. The existing biographical works on the poet were neither scholarly nor reliable, Zakir said.

Besides, publication of an ''authentic'' collection of Khusro's Persian poetry was another recommendation by the participants in the seminar organised by the Haryana Urdu Akademi in collaboration with Chandigarh Doordarshan. There was no authentic anthology of his Persian poetry available at present, he added.

Eminent Urdu, Persian, Sanskrit and Hindi scholars had been invited to present their papers on the life, poetry and other contributions of Amir Khusro, considered to be the first poet of Khari Boli, which later developed into Urdu.

''It was way back in 1975 that a national seminar was held at Delhi to commemorate the 700th death anniversary of Khusro. But after that not much effort was made to highlight the contribution of this great Sufi by any prominent organisation,'' said Zakir.

However, it was heartening that research work was being done on the life and contribution of Khusro in Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, he added.

The two-day programme commenced with the rendition of some of the choicest Sufi compositions of the poet.

Zakir and Sahitya Akademi Award winner Ghulam Nabi Khayal were honoured with ''awards of excellence'' on the occasion for their contribution to the Urdu literature.

http://www.urdustan.com/urduclassic/natural.html

Ajeeb aadmi tha woh : kaifi azmi

Ajeeb aadmi tha woh

Mohabbaton ka geet tha,
bagaawaton ka rang tha
Kabhi woh sirf phool tha,
kabhi woh sirf aag tha
Ajeeb aadmi tha woh



Ajeeb Aadmi Tha Woh: Tributes paid to Kaifi Azmi


Lucknow, June 11: Kaifi Azmi was the common man’s poet. On the one hand, he wrote about the poorest of classes, narrating their suffering with extreme reality and on the other, he could also create dreams for those who loved romance in Urdu poetry. This was the opinion of the speakers at the seminar on Life and Contribution of Kaifi Azmi, organised by the Hindi Urdu Sahitya Award Committee at the Hotel Gemini Continental in the city on Sunday.

Speakers at the seminar included Kaifi’s daughter and actor Shabana Azmi, actor Farooque Sheikh and Governor of Haryana AR Kidwai. Speaking about the legendary poet, who, along with Hindi poet Ramkumar Verma is the theme of this year’s literary meet by the committee, actor Farooque Sheikh said that while a common man may take to poetry as a part-time hobby, for Kaifi, his poetry was his passion and his entire personality surrounded his passion.

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Sheikh said that it is this passion which made Kaifi’s poetry true to life and appealed to the masses.

Shabana Azmi too shared her opinion about her late father. Azmi said that Kaifi was a poet of all classes and to make his poems closer to reality, he preferred spending time with diffent types of people.

She said that Kaifi had always been close to his roots even in his poetry and this was the reason why during his last days, he got a school, a tailoring centre and a computer centre opened up at his village Mijwan in Azamgarh, which he wanted to develop as a model village. Shabana also read out a few lines penned by Kaifi and also poet Javed Akhtar’s couplet ‘Ajeeb aadmi tha woh’ dedicated to Kaifi Azmi.

Other speakers included the Governor of Haryana, AR Kidwai who said that he was amongst the lucky few who had managed to be in Kaifi’s company from 1941 to 1945 in Mumbai and would always cherish those days. He said that even today, whenever he reads Kaifi’s nazms, he feels the closeness and affinity he shared with the poet. Calling Kaifi a progressive writer and a socialist revolutionary, Kidwai said that Kaifi’s works promised to bring a change in society.

The head of the department of Urdu at Jamia Millia Islamia, Prof Qaziurrehman Qureshi also shared his views. Those present included theatre personality Salim Arif, but the absence of those associated with the Progressive Writers Association and IPTA as speakers was conspicious. The secretary of the Hindi Urdu Sahitya Awards Committee, Athar Nabi conducted the programme.

The three-day function will conclude with a seminar on Hindi poet Dr Ram Kumar Verma, which would be held at the Rai Umanath Bali Auditorium on Monday.

Shakespeare in Urdu

Shakespeare gets an Urdu revamp
By Alison Dayani, Birmingham Mail

HUNDREDS of Birmingham schoolchildren are to be treated to the magic of Shakespeare - in Urdu.

A short version of A Midsummer Night's Dream with an Asian twist has been organised by Stratford-upon-Avon's Royal Shakespeare Company as part of a creative schools project.

The play, in English and seven Indian languages, including Hindu and Urdu, aims to appeal to the many Asian schoolchildren who speak English as a second language.

It features actors from across India and Sri Lanka who are performing the unusual version of the play as part of the REST's Complete Works Festival this summer nigh Warwickshire town.

Youngsters can see the play outdoors at Birmingham University's Wintergreen Gardens on Tuesday.

http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk

Parveen Shakir translated

Parveen Shakir made a name for herself in a very short amount of time, even 12 years after her death her fan club continues to grow:




Poems by Parveen Shakir
(translated from Urdu into English by Dr. Mahmudul Hasani)
Yemen Times Staff


Dr. Mahmudul Hasani, Head, English Department, University of Science and Technology, Sana’a
[Translator’s Introduction: Parveen Shakir (1952-1994) is a confessional poet par excellence. She lays bare her heart and makes a clean breast of all she has done and endured. Her poetry is highly subjective and an expression of her feelings, sentiments and moods. Her command of language enables her to bring forth perfect poetry out of personal trauma.

Khushbu (Fragrance), her first collection of poems, consists of both ghazals and nazms. These are the confessions of an adolescent girl nurturing fond hopes and romantic dreams, far too romantic in a world of grim realities, and they lay bare a psyche, which is both enigmatic and unpredictable. For instance,

A whole lifetime is required to know full
well what beauty is,
For girls do not reveal themselves in
momentary encounters.

And elsewhere:

Strange are the sorrows of girls; their joys
far stranger
they laugh and giggle even as their eyes
moisten.

“Fragrance” has long been a powerful symbol for the evanescent and elusive lover/beloved. But here, unlike elsewhere, flower symbolizes the one loves deeply and sincerely only to suffer from neglect and mortification, being left to dry and wither. The delicacy and subtlety of feeling and emotion, and the handling of words with a touch as smooth and delicate as silk make Parveen Shakir’s poetry “a thing of beauty” which “is a joy forever”.

Love – fancy, fantasy, ecstasy of union, pangs of parting indifference and fickleness from the beloved, and other nuances of fascination with the opposite sex – has been the predominant theme of poetry, particularly the ghazal. A ghazal is an expression of love, passion, heartache, the indifference of “la belle dame sans merci,” of dejection and frustration, of longing and languor. We get all these things in Parveen Shakir’s poetry. The only difference here is that she looks at things from her own, i.e., her female perspective – a perspective which has hitherto been lacking in Urdu poetry. Parveen Shakir is extremely deft at handling the delicate and brittle theme of love. She makes use of irony and sarcasm but her tone seldom sounds harsh or brusque. Look for instance at the following lines:

I am the bride whom on the first night
someone unveils and tells:
“All I have is yours alone
save only my heart”.

Resting his head on my shoulder today
he wept for someone to his heart’s content

Her subsequent collections – Sadbarg (Hundred Leaves), Khud Kalami (Soliloquy), Inkar (Denial), and her posthumous collection Kaf-e A’ina – emerge from the debris of her shattered dreams. They are expressions of devastation and disillusionment, of a heart crushed by betrayal and a mind too shocked to reconcile and come to terms with the world of difference between then and now. The insensitivity and fickleness of one’s beloved is a recurrent theme. It emerges as the leitmotif in all her later poems. Although a fairly common subject, this universal, eternal heartache turns into fine, delicate poetry in her hands.

Parveen Shakir is not a confessional poet a la Sylvia Plath, whom she certainly may have read during her college years. Parveen Shakir’s milieu is an altogether different one – comparatively more prohibitive, more oppressive, and more claustrophobic. Yet she is not as egocentric or suicidal as Plath. Though her personal tragedy is ubiquitous in her poems, she moves from personal to general and universal concerns and empathizes with the lesser mortals who do not share her privileges. This empathy and commiseration over the sufferings of others mitigates her own.

The beloved in Parveen Shakir’s poetry has often been compared to fragrance and clouds, both evanescent and elusive. The following lines, the most popular in her oeuvre, powerfully capture this imagery:

He is the fragrance that will disperse in the
wind.
Now the question is what will become of
the flower.

And elsewhere:

Call him a cloud or a star or a breeze.
He seemed elusive in the substance of her being.

Her later poems portray moods of isolation, betrayal, and resignation. A few of them are striking expressions of maternal feelings and the experiences of motherhood. Poems about her only son, Murad convey with great sensitivity the mother-son relationship in which the son, again like the beloved, moves slowly but surely away from his doting mother who, as she grows older, wants the care and attention of her son. In one such poem she says:

I don’t care a damn for the dark.
On each and every gloomy path
of all the forthcoming nights,
there shines a moon
—your cute, lovely face.

Though her work abounds in poetry about the female psyche and predicament, very few of her poems display the brash outspokenness of overtly feminist poems. The one that comes closest to what might be called feminist is “ Bashir ki Gharvali” (Bashir’s Wife). Here she fulfils the criterion of a “ true wit” who, according to Alexander Pope, excels in the description of “what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed”.

Parveen Shakir passed her life in a brisk, nay breezy way, as if she were in a hurry to meet a literal deadline. She leaped into fame when just out of her teens, became a college English teacher, passed her Civil Services examinations gloriously, got married, gave birth to her only child, a son, got separated, became a celebrity in her early twenties, rose to the rank of commissioner, wrote her own epitaph and an obituary of sorts, got her complete works published and that too coincidentally entitled “ Mah-e-Tamam” (The Full Moon), as if she had some prescience of impending death, as if she somehow knew that the clock of life was ticking a bit too fast and would come full circle shortly. The demise of the 42-year-old poet in a car accident in the wee hours of a late December morning left the Urdu world shell- shocked. Reality came to her in blows and so did death.
Parveen Shakir carved a niche for herself in Urdu poetry. The poems she has left behind are treasured assets of Urdu literature. In her death Urdu lost a poet of tremendous potential.

Your Attitude
Your attitude toward me has been like
a seasoned diplomat’s toward a young journalist
—every statement heedful of its implications
and possible repercussions,
every word carefully weighed
(the issue lost in the quagmire of quotations).
Nothing that he says should turn out to be
an arrow recoiling on himself
(which he may have to repent).

Kanras
The eyes downcast,
the tone enervated,
sentences uttered in fragments,
lashes covered in dust
and sunburnt face.
Bowing his unkempt head has come a long lost friend.
The heart is tempted to take hold of his hand,
to rush immediately to kiss his brow,
and never allow him to go back alone.
But deep within me someone whispers:
all this is feigned, phantasm, facade,
Don’t ever believe!
Don’t ever believe!