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Friday, September 26, 2025
TopicUrdu poetry

Topic: urdu poetry

ThePrint Quiz, 16 Feb, 2025: 156 yrs since his death, Ghalib lives on. How much do you know him

Hailed as one of the greatest Persion/Urdu poets of the 19th Century, Mirza Ghalib died on 15 Feb 1869 at age 71. In this edition of ThePrint Quiz, let’s see how much you know him.

When Mirza Ghalib was told to his face that his verse was meaningless

In 'The Essential Ghalib’, Anisur Rahman presents an exemplary selection of Mirza Ghalib’s Urdu couplets, translated in English along with critical commentaries.

ThePrint’s Insha J Waziri wins 2024 Jawad Memorial Prize for English translation of Ali Jafri poem

Waziri says she chose Jafri's ‘Mera Safar’ not only because aligned with this year’s theme of ‘resurgence’, but also because it spoke of eternal hope in the ‘dystopian times we live in’.

Mir Taqi Mir wasn’t a poet of longing like Ghalib. He lived in the resistance space

Translator Ranjit Hoskote shared translations of Mir’s verses on social media, as part of ‘Project Mir’, which later took the shape of his recent book, ‘The Homeland’s an Ocean’.

Modern Urdu poetry is ‘absolutely merciless’. It changed after Babri

Oral historian Sohail Hashmi into a new wave of dissent in Urdu poetry at a Delhi workshop earlier this month. ‘It’s asking important questions, raising serious issues.’

This is how an Urdu weekly ‘punched’ Sir Syed’s Muslim reformist movement

While Sir Syed’s advocacy for realism and scientific thinking drew attacks such as being labelled a ‘satan’ and ‘a leader of thieves,’ Altaf Hussain Hali’s poetry, which promoted reason and advised moving away from artificial metaphors, was largely deemed un-Islamic.

Nehru’s idealism vs prejudiced Bharat. ‘Trust India’, says Javed Akhtar at book launch

The launch of Rakhshanda Jalil’s ‘Love in the Time of Hate: In the Mirror of Urdu’ brought forth a conversation between poetry, politics, and prejudice.

Sahir Ludhianvi’s words still ring true. A new play shows how

The play, directed by Danish Husain, begins when the poet was still Abdul Hayee, a boy from Ludhiana. It then moved toward his time as one of Bollywood’s most famous lyricists.

A Tamilian and a Malayali want to make Urdu accessible using Delhi’s poets

The narrator of the mehfil highlighted how Urdu, disdainfully labelled rekhta or "assorted dialect", clashed with the refined Persian monopolisation of poetry.

Mother, tears, and a handkerchief—the staple of poet Munawwar Rana’s mushairas

I don’t think I can attend a mushaira and not think of Munawwar Rana—the poet who made the audience cry with him.

On Camera

Muslims at garba—whenever a festival becomes exclusionary, we lose a piece of India

Conservative clerics warned Muslims against garba as impermissible; now Hindu right-wing groups call their presence provocative—different reasons, same outcome.

Market regulator SEBI clears Adani Group of impropriety alleged by Hindenburg Research

SEBI probe concluded that purported loans and fund transfers were paid back in full and did not amount to deceptive market practices or unreported related party transactions.

Govt inks deal with HAL for 97 new Tejas Mk1A; previous order’s deliveries likely to begin next yr

There were no plans to have Mk1A version. However, compromise was reached between HAL & IAF in 2015 since original plan for getting Mk2 would've been time-consuming affair.

India doesn’t give walkovers to Pakistan in war. Here’s why it shouldn’t do it in cricket either

Many really smart people now share the position that playing cricket with Pakistan is politically, strategically and morally wrong. It is just a poor appreciation of competitive sport.