THE word ghazal is derived from an Arabic root and it means ‘to talk amorously to women’. According to some scholars, ghazal also means ‘a doleful cry of pain uttered by a deer when surrounded by ...

September 6, 2018. A historic day for queer Indians and their allies. The Supreme Court decriminalises homosexuality. My friends and I celebrate by getting a cake with Azadi piped on it in white icing ...

Ali Shir Navai (left) exposed Persian ghazals to the extinct Chagatai language and Mohammad Quli Qutub Shah (right) was an early practitioner of Urdu ghazals in India The trajectory of the ghazal is ...

Could the incredible and multi-layered tale of social fraternising and spiritual intermingling be easily comprehended through a verse form which seemingly has the bearings of a foisted and derivative ...

Modern Urdu poem, or ‘jadeed nazm’, is a genre that is comparatively young. It was born in 1874. In comparison, Urdu ghazal is as old as Urdu literature itself and Ameer Khusrau (who died in the year ...

Shad Naved’s The Ghazal Eros: Lyric Queerness in History is a long-awaited study. This book has been anticipated not only as an important scholarly intervention but also as a distillation of Naved’s ...

Shadab Zeest Hashmi’s Baker of Tarifa based on the history of interfaith tolerance in Al-Andalus won the 2011 San Diego Book Award for poetry. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize ...

In four years, Rekhta has become the largest online repository for Urdu poetry and literature in the world, says Veenu Sandhu. Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com The lawns of the Indira Gandhi ...