How more Indians are exploring the Urdu language to connect with arts, culture

Because she is the answer to our prayersrdquo wrote actors Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh on Instagram in November while revealing their newborn daughterrsquos name Dua Apt memorable and shortmdashUrdu had again served the right word for the emotionIt seems to be something the language is very well suited to Never at the risk of disappearing the interest in it ebbs and flows through its many gatewaysCinema is at the forefront of course But there is also history and research theatre and calligraphy writing and singing reading poetry and ghazals And for some a connection to onersquos roots even three generations apartmdashin Punjab PakistanScriptwriter and lyricist Javed Akhtar at a Rekhta event The correspondence in Urdu between his parents Safiya and Jan Nisar Akhtar has been compiled into two volumes called ZerelabTheatre actor Ashwin Chitale says he teaches Urdu and Persian because hersquos learning the languages ldquoIf you want to learn Germanrdquo he says ldquoyou speak German more donrsquot yourdquoBased in Pune the performer runs online classes that offer beginnersrsquo courses in the languages instructing in Marathi Hindi and English He opens other portals to the languages too such as mehfils concentrating on philosopher Rumi or Amir Khusrau and their works through art and through Sufism ldquoUrdu is as Indian as Sanskrit and predates Hindirdquo he says ldquoFarsi came to India with the Persians and for official records they adapted the script to HindustaniSanskrit and Urdu was born In fact Urdu has many regional variants and it also seeped into Marathi in the 16th century Words such as lsquobaazaarrsquo and lsquosobot to accompanyrsquo come from UrdurdquoThe book Yaar Ki is part of Akshita Nagpalrsquos teaching curriculumMany of his students are language enthusiasts but also those singing ghazals or performing on stage in Urdu who want to clean up their ldquotalaffuz pronunciationrdquo Then there are those who practise the many forms of Urdu calligraphy and want to know more about what they are writingNavin Kale an entrepreneur and writer based in Versova has been interested in Urdu shayyari and poetry since college He graduated to reading and writing it and unravelled the thread of etymology to Farsi in Chitalersquos threemonth course He now burnishes his knowledge daily with the Duolingo appActor Ashwin Chitale who also teaches Persian and Urdu performing Rumi Hai in JulyMore than one Urdu teacher told us that most enthusiasts stumble upon the language in their teenage years unparalleled as it is for declarations of love and lamentations of subsequent heartache If it sticks the love blossoms in adulthood into an interest in culture history literature calligraphy and art And thatrsquos the kind of enthusiast most likely to be one of Rekhtarsquos downloadersThe name comes from the early version of the HindustaniPersioArabicDevanagari script and is a step to ldquodestigmatiserdquo the language and divorce it from an ascribed religion to give its rightful place in the culture of the Indian subcontinent The Rekhta website and app hosts crosswords events a dictionary books journals and poetry It also provides Urdu translations of ldquomodernrdquo books such as the teachings of OshoSanjiv Saraf RekhtaOrgAs per its founder Sanjiv Saraf Chairman of Polyplex Corporation Limited the app had 25 lakh downloads in 202223 which swelled by another 33 lakh in 202324 The website had 17 crore visits in 202223 and 23 crore visits in 202324 Their data says Rekhtaorg has 15 lakh daily visitors and 26 lakh monthly visitorsOn ground Rekhta holds various cultural events showcasing Urdursquos vast literary tradition bringing on stage poets writers and artistes who hold audiences captive in Delhi Mumbai Kolkata Lucknow Hyderabad and Aligarh and other cities ldquoThese events are platforms for dialogue cultural exchange and creating a deeper appreciation for the nuances of Urdu literature and artrdquo says Saraf via email ldquoWersquove seen particularly large turnouts in London and Dubai where the South Asian diaspora has a strong presencerdquo Even at Rekhta ldquoShayari is of course the centrepiece of attractionrdquo he adds ldquoWe also promote other forms of arts such as Daastaangoi a medieval form of storytelling and Urdu calligraphyrdquoNowhere does the lyricism of the language shine more than in Hindi cinemarsquos music ldquoBollywood is a museum to Urdurdquo says Akshita Nagpal who moved from Delhi to Mumbai in August 2023 to run her Urdulanguage courses She has noticed a list of gatekeepers to its authenticity and usage Lyricists Kausar Munir and Amitabh Bhattacharya are its latest champions Munirrsquosgrandmother Salma Siddiqui was part of the Urdu Progressive Writers Movement Munir grew up in a house frequented by great writers but formally learnt to read and write Urdu only during the pandemic under Lucknowbased teacher and poet Abhishek Shukla ldquoI finally became Urdu literate to help further my understanding of Hindustani lyricwritingrdquo she saysFilmmakers and writers Kabir Khan Imtiaz Ali Vishal Bhardwaj enlist the language for dialogue and literary references and ensure proper pronunciation as do Aditya Chopra and Javed Siddique who cowrote Dilwale Dulhainya Le Jaayenge Singers such as Shilpa Rao Sunidhi Chauhan and Madhubanti Bagchiensure good ldquotalaffuzrdquo as does Shah Rukh KhanTo Soha Batra a Gurugram resident Urdu is the language of her ancestors connecting her to a land and culture she cannot reachNagpal started tutoring Urdu without planning to in the pandemic with 12 students and the momentum grew to 400plus students from the Indian subcontinent diaspora India Pakistan Bangladesh passing her ShuruaateUrdu course four years on ldquoWhen I started there was no online course in Urdurdquo says the Versova resident ldquoThis is what brought me to Bombay sic which is not an easy city to crackrdquoIn the current political climate the work is to remind that Urdu is an Indian language a mother tongue to many generations of Hindus displaced by the partition To Nagpal and her student Soha Batra Urdu is a language to access a lost homeland and culture Both sets of Nagpalrsquos grandparents came from what is now Pakistanmdashfrom Lahore and undivided Punjab ldquoBoth my grandfathers went to Urdumedium school and corresponded in Urdurdquo she saysldquoMy paternal grandfather a voracious reader read the scripturesmdashBhagvad Gita Quran and the Biblemdashin Urdu The spoken language was passed down to my parents the script lost in the hustle of refugees carving a living and life post Partitionrdquo The final days of her last living grandparent were marked with a sense of loss in more than one way ldquoShe spoke of Lahore and Karachi their bazaars and halwas and I thought the land is inaccessible and so is the languagerdquoAnd suddenly she noticed the language was everywheremdashin the names of roads gates statues and bus stops of Jamia Millia Islamia where she was pursuing a Masters in Mass Communication in 201415 In the legends of radio and photography such as singeractress Begum Akhtar in the dialogues of MughalEAzam that her filmbuff father spouted by heartldquoThoda ishqmohabbat ka bhi asar thardquo she laughs She began teaching herself the Urdu script from selfhelp books bought from roadside stalls Booksellers in Connaught Placemdashlike Mukim bhai who ran a bookstall outside Moti Masjidmdashand Amrit Bookstorersquos employee Mr Momin helped her with the script and with passionate recommendation of poetry books There was a short course in Persian from Iran Culture House and reading of headlines from Urdu newspapers on her daily commuteShe now pours all this into her courses which access the language through its culture The nine to 10 classes of the foundation course promise twoline reading and writing fluency while the short workshops of progress level coursesmdashTaraqqi progress and Mashq practisemdashexplore cinema afsanche terribly tiny tales humour and satire Students read letters and correspond in Urdu which is a very vital part of literature ldquoWe read actor Sunil Duttrsquos to a fan and refer to ZereLabmdashletters by script writer Javed Akhtarrsquos mother Safiya Akhtar to his father Jan Nisar Akhtar in Mumbai over the course of their longdistance marriagerdquo she says Therersquos Mirza Ghalibrsquos correspondence to his pupils archival copies of magazines such as Shama and standalone workshops called Filmy Zabaan which delves into Urdu nuances in the filmography of actors like SRK or Meena Kumari as well as filmmakers and lyricists such as Sahir Ludhianvi One of these Filmi Zabaan sessions also studied the tawaaif culture in OTT hit Heera MandiBut the money as always in Mumbai is in the movies She tailormakes courses for actors singers screenwriters to polish pronunciation ldquoUrdu and Hindi are SitaGitamdashtwin languagesrdquo she says ldquoPoliticisation has made them different entities but they share a grammar and syntax Learning Urdu betters your HindirdquoThe education would be apparent when an actorsinger pronounces it as ldquoharjrdquo and not ldquoharzrdquo or auqaat status and position of a person within a timeframe and not ldquoaukaadrdquo as we do in Bombaiyya ldquoPhirrdquo not ldquofirrdquo in dialogues and interviews She also vets scripts and lyrics for thisRekhtaorg founder Saraf says the profile of people interested in Rekhta and Urdu poetry includes ldquoboth young people primarily aged between 1835 and older generations who have a deeper connection with the language There is a growing interest from millennials who turn to Rekhta for modern translations and digital contentrdquoAnd many of these are the third generation displaced by the Partition such as Nagpalrsquos 20yearold student Batra She is currently pursuing her English Honours from Delhi UniversityldquoMy grandparents settled in Gurugram from Mianwali district of Punjabrdquo Batra says ldquoand I saw them write in this script from right to left and not left to right like the languages I learned in school In Pakistan Punjabi is written in the Shahmukhi PersoArabic script not GurmukhirdquoThere was also the awareness that her friends inherited ancestral land jewellery or wedding clothes ldquoLike grandmotherrsquos kangan or jodardquo she says ldquoWhen I asked my grandparents they said lsquohum toh sab lootpoot ke aaye we have nothing we were looted So languagesmdashUrdu and Punjabimdashare the only way I can reconnect to my ancestral roots and culture Hindi is my Raj bhasha these are my mother tongues They connect me with my lineage history and culturerdquoOr zameen as they say in Urdu The connect of a person with their land is something historians Anita Anand and William Dalrymple deepdive into in their podcast Empire especially the chapter on the Partition The longing came up in most remembrances by refugees in their last daysmdasha connection that supersedes religion cast and cultural identityBatra has a hunger to read every book ever written in Urdu To learn Persian to speak Urdu better To visit Mianwali and Lahore Write plays ghazals nazms and her own autobiography in the language of her people ldquoUrdu is associated with Islamrdquo says Batra ldquoBut zubaan kissi mazhab ki nahin hai Zubaan usski hai jo usse bolna chahata hairdquo