Poetic License
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Revisiting Qalandar Momand’s landmark ‘Address to Khyber’ on his 90th birthday
This collection established Momand as one of the most influential and greatest Pashto poets of the 20th century
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Reading Amrita Pritam’s biting polemic on her 101st birthday
Amrita Pritam published more than 100 books over the course of her life
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How Fahmida Riaz and Ishrat Afreen’s writing evokes the tragedy of Karbala
The corpus of Urdu literature is rich with commemorations of Karbala and odes to its martyrs
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Reading Zaheer Kashmiri’s short and brutal dirge for womanhood on his 101st birthday
Kashmiri is regarded among the very few prominent poets who gave a new colour to Urdu poetry, especially the ghazal
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Fahmida Riaz’s dirge for Sheikh Mujibur Rahman reflects the tragedy of a nation
Rahman led Bangladesh for only four years prior to his ouster from power and subsequent assassination
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Rahat Indori’s haunting last ghazal
The ghazal is a revelation of the poet’s own awareness of his approaching death
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‘Come to Lebanon’: How Habib Jalib’s verses still urge us to not ignore the country
Habib Jalib has written numerous poems on Palestine and the Lebanese Civil War
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Revisiting Zehra Nigah’s ode to Dr Ruth Pfau on her third death anniversary
The poem compares Pfau to a blue-eyed sparrow arriving in a veritable desert
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Fahmida Riaz’s satirical poem ‘World Bank’ reminds us of two champions of the oppressed
The beauty of Riaz’s satire is that she does not turn prescriptive, as many of her contemporaries often do
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Reading Himayat Ali Shair’s ‘Lament for the Motherland’ on his first death anniversary
The original translation of this poem is thus a sobering and familiar reflection on the state of the country
