The gentle singsong wording and wave-like storytelling combined with the vividness of English captured me like a dream. I still remember how struck I was to see the English words be played in a way that’s mostly familiar to me in other Asian literature. until I read Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things.
And most well written English literature works, including poems, embody such almost straightforward characters, both in their wording and storytelling. “As a non-native English speaker and someone who grew up in an Asian culture, English as a language appears very articulate and clear to me. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997) The story is told from the African perspective and his use of African colloquialisms and proverbs is genuinely subversive and innovative.” Nathan LoughranĢ. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe explores the colonial experience by arguably using the tools of colonialism itself, ie the English language. Black African novelists are often sorely under represented in literary criticism and lists of this kind. “It’s an excellent example of black African writing in English of which I felt your list was sadly lacking. Set in the advent of colonialism and its implications for the native people, the clash of cultures of two different worlds.A story of how a way of life was replaced by another culture.” Kinnie Hindowah “This book is a seminal piece of great story telling. “Brilliant, distinctive, thought-provoking and illuminating of a sense of place and time. Its inventive idiomatic prose highlights the malleability of the English language: no other writer (or translator) has evoked the true essence of another language in English. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958) All this while, the letters that Faiz and Alys wrote to one another in English were published in Urdu under the title “Saliben Mere Dariche Mein”, and later in English under the title "Dear Heart".1. During the trying term of 1951-1955, when Faiz was accused and imprisoned in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case, Alys provided for her two daughters and squared up to their financial expenses. Alice was a social worker and had joined the Communist Party at a young age. Is ke alawa, Alys ke Naan-o-Nafaqa (Sustenance) ki zimma-daari Faiz ki thi jab kih Alys ki kamaaii par sirf Alys ka Haqq tha.”įaiz and Alys had a successful married life. “Alys ko Khula’ (Opting out of a marriage) lene ka Haqq tha aur Alice ke zinda rahte hue Faiz ko duusri shadi karne ki ijazat nahin thi. There was also an agreement with the marriage which stated: Alys was named Kulsuum but was known as Alys Faiz. The two celebrated their honeymoon in Maharaja Hari Singh's "Pari Mahal". Renowned poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz was married in 1941 to British citizen Alys George in Srinagar and this knot was tied by Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah. He wrote his first Masnavi, ‘Shikayat-e-Sitam’, aged 16, which too, is one of his very own love stories. Apart from ghazals, he also wrote 12 Masnavis 6 of them center around his own love life. Momin fell in love quite more than once, and after reading his Ghazals one figures that the poet doesn’t have an imaginary love interest, but has fallen for a purely human beloved. And so it happened, Momin’s composed chronogram is what finally proved to be the date of death and is engraved on his shrine. After this incident, he composed a Tarikh and foretold that he would die in five months. A few months before his death, Momin fell from the roof of his house, breaking his limbs.
He was also well versed in Tarikh-Goi (composing chronograms), and would keep reinventing at every go. Momin Khan Momin (1800-1852), the poet of whom Mirza Ghalib had remarked to confer his entire Diwan for this particular couplet:īesides being a masterful Ghazal poet, Momin was also very skilled in astrology and would often reckon on future events which usually would come out to be true.
Urdu’s first book on grammar, ‘Dariya-e-Latafat’, which was written in Persian language in 1808, was actually translated into Urdu by Brij Mohan Dattatray Kaifi. Besides being well-versed in Urdu, Persian, Arabic and English, he was also proficient in Sanskrit and Hindi. Khulii.n Braham-Vidya se aankhe.n bashar kiiĭattatray Kaifi was an extremely learned and accomplished person. An insightful Nazm, it touches upon the past glory of the Aryans, the then-current conditions, and the prospects that lie in the future. Taking cue from Hali’s famous Musaddas ‘Madd-o-Jazr-e-Islam’, Kaifi composed a Musaddas of his own titled ‘Bharat Darpan’, which later came to be known as ‘Musaddas-e-Kaifi’. Initially, he not only took corrections on his poetry from Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali, but also emulated Hali’s ideas in his writings.
Brij Mohan Dattatray Kaifi Dehlavi (1866-1955), also known as ‘Ashiq-e-Urdu’, was a prominent poet, playwright, novelist and essayist.