The poetry of science exploration
Light travels at a finite speed of 300,000km per seconds – the speed of light. Because the speed is finite, every photon in every ray of light that reaches an…
Talking cricket, science and poetry
Recently our cricket team played a series of matches in the UAE against Australia and New Zealand. They played well against Australia, but the New Zealanders forced losses on them.…
Poetry in a time of terror
What they call Black Friday in the States is a Friday of big bargains for frenzied shoppers. It comes a day after Thanksgiving. This Black Friday came day before yesterday,…
Doctors and Urdu literature -Part II
In the first part of this article, we discussed the contribution of some medical doctors to Urdu literature and briefly talked about doctors Asif Farrukhi, Hasan Manzar, and Shershah Syed.…
Doctors and Urdu literature
In the past 50 years or so, Urdu literature has seen some extraordinary writers whose primary profession has been medical practice. Three of these names stand out: Dr Asif Farrukhi,…
The love-hate with Urdu
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…
Animals in Urdu: Part I
One of my readers, and a fellow columnist for Dawn, Shahzad Sharjeel, has written to me suggesting that I also write about the role of horses and other animals in…
Animals in Urdu: Part-II
Perhaps the best Urdu short story involving a bird is by Nayyar Masood. ‘Taoos Chaman Ki Mynah’ (The Mynah of the Peacock Garden) is set in the Lucknow of the…
Poetry and patronage
The year 1856 was a significant one in the history of the subcontinent, not for what had occurred during its days, weeks and months but for what had not yet…
Economics in Urdu
A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. But there are words and then there are words. Take the case of Begum Nusrat Bhutto who was a member of…
