Urdu poetry is often considered synonymous with love. Various shades of love, ranging from physical to metaphysical; all the nuances of the experience of love, ranging from disappointment to ...

“Urdu khatre mein nahin hai, Urdu toh qatre qatre mein hai (Urdu is not in danger. It is present everywhere),” actor Javed Jaffrey had eloquently said last year at Jashn-e-Rekhta, an annual event to ...

It’s on a Tuesday evening in January, under a canopy of incandescent bulbs, that I receive my first lesson in Urdu: the difference between alcohol and mirages.I am part of a small mehfil gathered in ...

Being organised by the state government’s language department, the classes have been drawing a diverse group of participants in Ludhiana Eager-to-learn students greeted teachers at the ...

It's well past midnight, yet the Sheikh Rashid Auditorium in Dubai crackles with infectious energy. Renowned Pakistani poet Abbas Tabish commands the stage, reciting his verses as applause erupts like ...

The four designated stages inside the crowded stadium complex in the heart of the busy capital weren’t enough. So poetry lovers also took to the footpaths and the spaces in between, turning them into ...

A nomad interested in twisting the kaleidoscope of science and looking for new patterns Once every week, some smart marketing kid wakes up an old ghost and sends roaming across the vast landscape of ...

He would easily pass for a Pakistani or an Arab. That was why I ignored him when I first spotted him at Karachi airport while looking for an Italian gentleman. I was a bit late and feared he might ...

That L.K. Advani and some other leading lights from the Hindutva repertory were praising an Urdu musical play made me sit up. They always undermined it as a language of Muslims, deliberately linking a ...

Fathahiyab rehe ye umid vaar.... Says the Urdu poster of UDF candidate P.B. Abdul Razak in Majeshwaram, which means, “the state should progress, the government should continue, the constituency should ...