Urdu poetry still inspires people. While finding a sher or shayar is an issue, some platforms are giving a renewed push to a tradition in crisis.

While Meena Kumari earned the title of Bollywood’s Tragedy Queen for her melancholic characters, her real life mirrored much ...

From melancholic ghazals to magnetic film lyrics and contemporary indie playlists, younger generations are rediscovering the lyrical power of Urdu.

Braj Bhasha controversy teaches us that languages are not just means of communication—they are repositories of memory, ...

Purani Dilli to Ayodhya, Fouzia Dastango is reimagining Hindu epics to Meena Kumari’s story in Urdu. Crowds love it.

Zaban-e-Urdu hai jiska naam, Woh Hindustan ki jaan hai.” The language called Urdu is the life of Hindustan. Prologue: A ...

Arabic and Persian not only shaped the literary culture of thetime but also influenced the direction in which it developed.

CM Naim’s translation of 19th-century reformer Ashrafunnisa Begum’s biography was published in 2021. Naim, a translator and ...

Beyond her celebrated image as the “Tragedy Queen” of Hindi cinema, Meena Kumari was an accomplished poet. She wrote under ...

Shahid Alam and I go back a long way, though we had both half-forgotten it until recently. He was two years senior to me at ...

In his short yet impactful life span of 39 years, filmmaker Guru Dutt left a lasting impressions. Although he directed only 8 ...