Chowrangi

Days converting into months, months into years
Years into lives of many saviors,
Humans into decayed soil,
Soil into my protective foil,
Water of eyes into tears,
Tears into further growing fears,
Wild hearts into luv birds,
Luv birds singing their words,
Words becoming rhyming schemes,
Rhyming schemes emerging as dreams,
Dreams though splitting,
Splitting but giving hopes for living.

An endless ocean of saltiest tears,
A bed of roses embracing thorns in it,
The smile of a dimpled kid
The tear of a widow
A realm of endless beauty,
An eve of festivity emerging in it,
In the shine of the eyes of a poor child,
In the laughter of newly born baby,
You can find in every bit of it,
But if you see through it.

August 21 marks the end of an era of Urdu Literature. Qurat-ul-Ain Haider known as Annie Apa among her friends and admirers, passed away at the age of 81.

She was one of the most outstanding literary names in Urdu Literature. The bold and beautiful daughter of the famous writer Sajjad Haidar Yaldram and novelist Nazr Zahra, stepped into the literary world at the young age of eleven. Her first short story, Bi-Chuhiya (Little Miss Mouse), was published in children’s magazine Phool.

Aag Ka Durya was her impregnable novel which established her career. Her other works include:

Monthly I need to detach now and then. For this purpose, I read Spider Magazine, because it’s hilarious in a morbid way. Call me a justified sadist when it comes to Spider. Every Information Technology discipline, from networks to cyber-security to blogging, turns out to be shrouded in the kind of arbitrary nonsense that is completely recognizable to anybody who has ever been called upon to present a three-year strategic plan for an organization.

Once, Intelligence and Luck were taking to one another. ‘If I enter a person, I can make him famous overnight,’ said Intelligence.

‘Yes perhaps, ‘relied Luck, ‘but if I bestow my favour on a common man, I can raise him from his lowly status to that of a king.’

Intelligence was not convinced. ‘I am better and more important than you,’ he said proudly.

‘No,’ retorted Luck, ‘I am better than you.’

Before the war against terrorism can come to any definitive conclusion, its underlying philosophy must first be identified, along with the means to be employed. The starting point is the assumption that violence is a virtue in itself and a powerful means to solve social or political problems. While killing the innocents, damaging public order, and disrupting peace, any terrorist acts under the influence of ideas that have been imposed on him, coaxing him to believe that he is engaged in a justified struggle. Terrorism can be healed only when such people understand the mistaken illogic of any ideology that inspires terrorism and incites to violence—and when they realize that going along with it can never get them anywhere. Until those ideologies’ errors and contradictions are revealed, all measures taken against terrorism can be short-term only. Soon terrorism will emerge again, in different places and under different circumstances, behind a different mask.

Many of Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s poems testify to his sincere interest in the teachings of socialism. He was drawn to socialism by the thought of unity and equality of mankind and the principle of the division of material goods according to the needs of the members of the society. On the other hand, Iqbal was unable to accept a materialistic view of the world and the scientific dialectical methods with which socialism was inevitably linked. In this he was influenced by his deep religious faith and undoubtedly also by the influence of his family environment and upbringing.

We do not, if we are honest, keep in readiness a number of different approaches to poems or to people. We try to keep our integrity. But at the same time we must recognize and accept the otherness that we face. In getting to know a person or a poem we make the kind of accommodation that we have called tact.

On the Urdu sky, there are two moons; Ghalib and Iqbal. If Ghalib represents prodigious vogue, then Iqbal is all about passionism, splendid and imperishable excellence of sincerity and strength.

Ghalib was without any doubt passionate and dauntless soldier of a forlorn ray of elusive hope, who, ignorant of the future and unconsoled by its promises and wishes, nevertheless waged against the stereotypical of the old impossible and shackled world so fiery battle; waged it till he perished, - waged it with such splendid and imperishable rigor of strength. Whereas Iqbal lived in a different world with the same vigor and with the same zeal and zest.

In both worlds, everywhere are the marks of love;
man himself s a mystery of love.
Love’s secret belongs hot to the world of wombs,
not to Shem or Ham, Greece of Syria:
a star without East and West, a star unsetting
in whose orbit is neither North no South.
The world I am setting tell his destiny,
their exegesis reaches from earth to heaven.
Death, grave, uprising, judgment are his esttes,
the light and fire of the other world are his works;
himself is Imam, prayer and sanctuary,
himself the Ink, himself the Book and the Pen.
Little by little what is hidden in him becomes visible;
it has no boundaries, its kingdom no frontiers.
His being gives value to contingent things,
his equilibrium is the touchstone of contingent things.
What shall I declare of his sea without a shore?
All ages and all times are drowned in his heart.
That which is contained within man is the world,
that which is not contained within the world is man.
Sun and moon are manifest through his self-display;
even Gabriel cannot penetrate his privacy.
Loftier than the heavens is the station of man,
and the beginning of education is respect for man.