About Urdu

اردوہے جس کا نام، ہمیں جانتے ہیں داؔغ

سارے جہاں میں دُھوم ہماری زباں کی ہے

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and it is also a prominent language (either spoken or understood) within South Asian region. Many people in countries like India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka at least understand it and may speak some broken Urdu as well. This pretty much makes it a prominent language in a region where more than one seventh population of the world lives.

Of course there are a lot of languages spoken within the region, but I personally think that most people can speak and understand Urdu or broken Urdu one way or another. It is my personal opinion and experience which I have found during my travelling within Pakistan. However, I feel to experience this a little more in India, Iran, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. My brother who has visited Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and he told me that Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi people can understand Urdu, however they termed it as “Hindi” which is not true as the term “Hindi” refers to a language spoken in India with its origin in “Sanskrit” and has a totally different lexigraph.

The word “Urdu” is derived from Turkish language which literally means “Lashkari” (a soldier who lives in a camp). According to a myth, after capturing Delhi in 1526, Mughal emperors gradually built an army consisting of Arab, Persian, Afghan, Turk and Hindustani soldiers. All these soldiers used to live in a camp outside Delhi. In that “camp” they used to communicate with each other. They shared words from each other’s languages to get the message across, this turned out to be the origin of a new language which comprises the words from every language spoken in the camp. It was supposed to be the first form of “Urdu” language. So, Urdu was a language used by soldiers from different nations to communicate with each other. However, modern day researchers do not agree with this approach. It is a very difficult task to know the exact origin of Urdu language, as there are a lot of theories about this subject. I will try to cover some of those theories in another post.

Urdu has 32 alphabets and most of these alphabets are also present in Persian and Arabic.  Below is an image which shows all of the Urdu alphabets.

Urdu Alphabets (Image Source: Arabic Calligraphy)

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Saad Anwar

سوچنے اور لکھنے کا عمل

لکھیں تو کیا لکھیں اور کیوں لکھیں؟ ایسا کیا ہے اس لکھنے میں اس کام کو پایہ تکمیل پہنچانے میں جان ایسی اذیت میں ڈالی جاتی ہے۔ سوچنے کی اذیت۔ کیونکہ سوچنے کی اذیت سے زیادہ تکلیف دہ عمل اور کوئی نہیں ہے۔ یہ ایک ایسا عمل ہے جو شعور حاصل کرنے کے بعد سے مسلسل چلتا رہتا ہے اور اگربندہ حساس بھی ہو تو یہ سوچنے کا عمل بعض دفعہ بہت تکلیف دہ ہو جاتا ہے۔اس لیے سوچنے کے اس عمل کو فی الحال ترک کرتے ہیں اور جو کچھ ذہن میں آتا جا رہا ہے اسے لکھنے کی کوشش کریں۔

کیوں تو اچھا لگتا ہے وقت ملا تو سوچیں گے

تجھ میں کیا کیا دکھتا ہے وقت ملا تو سوچیں گے

سارا شہر شناسائی کا دعوے دار تو ہے لیکن

کون ہمارا اپنا ہے وقت ملا تو سوچیں گے

ہم نے اس کو لکھا تھا کچھ ملنے کی تدبیر کرو

اس نے لکھ کر بھیجا ہے وقت ملا تو سوچیں گے

موسم ، خوشبو، بادِ صبا، چاند شفق اور تاروں میں

کون تمہارے جیسا ہے وقت ملا تو سوچیں گے

یا تم اپنے دل کی مانو، یا پھر دنیا والوں کی

مشورہ اس کا اچھا ہے وقت ملا تو سوچیں گے

7 things you may find common in Baby Bhutto and a typical Bollywood movie

It has been quite some time since Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, our "Billo" trying to rejuvenate Pakistan People's Party (PPP) with (wannabe) fiery and bold tweets. He also attends public gathering and held a huge "cultural" festival to preserve the culture of Sindh, which turned out be nothing but a political stunt to launch himself. There are few occasional speeches in public gathering and some political events from time to time; however his favorite battlefield is still Twitter.

At times, I find his tweets rather amusing and it gives me a sense of observing a typical Bollywood movie which involves a lot of false emotions, fake action stunt and a lack of common sense. He should realize that he is about to become the chairman of an old party. I think he is surrounded with too much uncle and aunties at this time and once he get rids of these advisers and learn to swim alone like her mother, he may become a good politician. We still have to wait and see. So, in the meanwhile enjoy these 7 traits of our billo and do let me know whether these observations are valid or not.

1. Typical and traditional (female) “Siyapa” style on current affairs either on Twitter or in public speeches. Just like heroines who has been molested by village's chief.

2. Emulating a lion Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (ZAB) when everybody knows that you are a dog’s son Asif Ali Zardari (AAZ). Just like Indian movie hero who yells a lot but can't do a thing about wrong deeds happening in the movie.

3. Thinks you are important, but people only notice you when you get caught in the middle of a twitter fight. Just like the movies where hero moves around with a swagger, however he didn't realizes that he is looking stupid.

4. Create events (Sindh Festival) just like unnecessary and unwanted item songs.

5. A Hero (yet to see it come true in real life) surrounded by useless friends (advisers) who are not worthy of getting anywhere else in the movie (life) if not a hero’s friend (Faryal Talpur and Owais Tappi in this case).

6. Bitching about the current situation, wasted the last 5 years when you had the chance to change it. Just like a movie where Hero wastes time around the heroine while village chief plunders and burns his house to the ground.

7. Always waste energies in useless things, just like a hero in the movie who waste his energy in dance, romance, and fight while his family needs him to do some job. We have seen him visiting hospitals and relief camps during recent Thar drought. While he should have shown some vision by ordering preventive measures which would prevent these events in the future.

Note: It is just a piece of satire, and no offence intended.