MANUU awards PhD in Journalism to Arif Moin on Monday.
Hyderabad:
The Maulana Azad National Urdu University on Monday declared Arif Moin qualified in Doctor of Philosophy in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Moin has worked on the topic “Socio-Cultural, Political and Religious Impact of Urdu Satellite TV Channels on Indian Muslims” under the supervision of Prof. Ehtesham Ahmed Khan, Dean, School of Mass Communication & Journalism.
The research topic covered four Urdu channels – ETV Urdu, Door Darshan Urdu Channel, Zee Salam and Munsif TV. Arif Moin has extensive experience in TV production and has been associated in various capacities with the programming department of ETV Urdu and News18 Urdu.
Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU) has started online admission process for the year 2021-2022 into its various programmes being offered at Hyderabad headquarters, Lucknow and Srinagar (J&K) campuses and colleges of Teacher Education (CTEs) and Polytechnics spread in different parts of the country.
Poovachal Khader, 72, passes away in Thiruvananthapuram
Poovachal Khader, who died in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday at the age of 72 while undergoing treatment for COVID-19, was a most prolific lyricist who penned several all-time hit songs in Malayalam cinema.
In a career that spanned over five decades, he wrote over a thousand songs for more than 350 films. He was so busy in the late 1970s and 80s that he took leave from his job at the Public Works Department – he had a diploma in Engineering – to concentrate on his alternative career in cinema.
Poovachal Khader, who used to write poetry from his student days and went on to pen songs for the stage and radio, caught attention right from his early days in cinema. His two songs in the 1973 film Kattu Vithachavan – Neeyente prarthana kettu… and Mazhavillinanjnathavaasam… – were hits. Then the songs of Ulsavam (Aadya samaagama lajjayil…and Swayamvarathinu) established him as a lyricist to reckon with.
Chart-toppers
Among his chart-toppers are Naathaa nee varum kalocha… (Chamaram), Shararanthal thiri thaanu… (Kayalum Kayarum), Sindoora sandhyaykku mounam… (Choola), Ente janman neeyeduthu…(Itha Oru Dhikkari), Etho janma kalpanayil… (Palangal), Ponveene… (Thalavattam), Naanamaavunno…(Aattakalasam),Poomaaname… (Nirakkoottu) and Anuraagini itha en… (Oru Kudakkeezhil).
The accent on meaningful lyrics may have become less in Malayalam film music by the time Poovachal’s career peaked, but he came up with beautiful, poetic lines in song, such as Naathaa nee varum and Aadya samaagama lajjayil…(Ulsavam). That was also the time when a tune was composed first and the lyricist was asked to write lines accordingly. He was still able to write some fine lines.
Not many know that he wrote one of the most popular light songs in Malayalam – Jayadeva kaviyude…, which was set to a lilting tune by M.G. Radhakrishnan. Through songs like that, Poovachal will always be remembered.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Kerala / by P.K. Ajith Kumar / Kozhikode – June 22nd, 2021
An excerpt from ‘A Map of Longings’, by Manan Kapoor.
Agha Shahid Ali.
In Delhi, Shahid also became aware of the city’s Mughal and colonial history, and was impressed by its architecture. In the early ’60s, the Mexican poet Octavio Paz had visited New Delhi and had been charmed by its architecture. He wrote numerous poems about the city and about all that he had witnessed here. He found Delhi’s “aesthetic equivalent” in “novels, not in architecture”, and to him, wandering the city was “like passing through the pages of Victor Hugo, Walter Scott, or Alexandre Dumas”.
Paz’s gaze, wherever he went, was directed inwards. For him, all the experiences, including the splendour of the Mughal architecture that attracted him, were revelatory and enlightening in one way or the other. In his book In Light of India, he called Delhi’s architecture “an assemblage of images more than buildings”. It was quite the same for Shahid who, after nineteen years, had returned to the city of his birth.
He was a student at Delhi University, which wasn’t too far from Old Delhi or what was once known as Shahjahanabad, the walled city of Delhi constructed by Shah Jahan – the emperor who “knew the depth of stones, / how they turn smooth rubbed on a heart. / And then? Imprisoned / with no consoling ghosts…”
The tomb of Amir Khusro at Hazrat Nizamuddin in Delhi was a place that had attracted Paz. In “The Tomb of Amir Khusro”, he wrote: “Amir Khusru, parrot or mockingbird: / the two halves of each moment, muddy sorrow, voice of light. / Syllables, wandering fires, vagabond architectures.”
The tomb attracted Shahid as well when he visited the dargah in Delhi almost a decade later: “I come here to sing Khusro’s songs. / I burn to the end of the lit essence… / The muezzin interrupts the dawn, calls / the faithful to the prayer with a monster-cry: / We walk through the streets calligraphed with blood.”
In Delhi, Shahid found poetry at each turn. In an interview with First City in 1991, he said: “For me the lanes of Delhi, particularly the ones leading to and from the Jama Masjid, hold a dazzling value. When I used to go to Kareem restaurant or was having nihari or kulfi on the steps of Jama Masjid, I used to imagine that I was living in the days of Ghalib.”
Unlike Paz, who as an outsider in Delhi could only adore the architecture, Shahid also saw history in the city. Although he had been exposed to the historical forces that had shaped Kashmir, it was in Delhi that he discovered, for the first time, history in brick walls, minarets and on the streets. In “The Walled City: Seven Poems on Delhi”, he wrote about Jama Masjid:
Imagine: Once there was nothing here. Now look how minarets camouflage the sunset.Do you hear the call to prayer? It leaves me unwinding scrolls of legend till I reach the first brick they brought here. How the prayers rose, brick by brick?
Shahid’s poetic concerns were largely a constant for most of his life, and are palpable in these early poems. His engagement with history, which he deals with as both an insider and outsider, reflects his tenderness and the experience of a poet who belongs to multiple worlds and none at the same time.
For the next three decades, he wrote about loss and the memory of loss, the burden of history and injustices of all kinds. The seeds of these poetic concerns were sown during his childhood, mostly at home. However, they were nourished in Delhi, by the city’s air and its history, which Shahid couldn’t ignore.
In the poems from Bone Sculpture and In Memory of Begum Akhtar, Shahid emerges as a poet who feels deeply about South Asian culture as well as politics. Both the collections are influenced by Delhi and reflect an understanding of history. From a very young age, he was aware of the historical movements, the revolutions and leaders who had shaped the world he lived in.
In time, he established his position as a poet of witness with the publication of his poem “After Seeing Kozintsev’s King Lear in Delhi”, which talks about the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. In the poem, Shahid makes a conscious choice as he turns from King Lear and looks at Zafar, turning away from fiction towards fact, from the stories of the colonisers to the histories of the colonised.
This turn marks an important moment in Shahid’s poetry, and it is from here that his poems and sensibility come to be defined by a certain post-colonial outlook, where he sheds light on those whom history had ignored:
I think of Zafar, poet and Emperor, being led through this street by British soldiers, his feet in chains, to watch his sons hanged.
In exile he wrote: “Unfortunate Zafar spent half his life in hope, the other half waiting. He begs for two yards of Delhi for burial.”
He was exiled to Burma, buried in Rangoon.
In the late ’60s, when Shahid joined Hindu College, the syllabus was still under a colonial shadow and predominantly included English writers like John Milton, Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy and the Romantic poets. Although he had read all their works and admired most of them, Shahid’s language was very different from the poets that were taught to him.
Shahid once said that he was often aware that the music of his language was different, that he was able to bring certain flavours to English poetry in India for the first time, which he believed was a result of the combination of Hindu, Muslim and Western cultures in him, and the fact that he had a “natural and profound inwardness with them”.
His use of these cultures was not exotic – unlike, say, Eliot importing the word “shantih” in “The Waste Land”. Shahid felt them in three languages and didn’t have to “hunt” for subjects. In an essay written much later, he reflected on English poetry in India and said that Satyajit Ray had accomplished what he had because Ray was using a specifically Indian idiom for the first time on celluloid.
“I can use the Indian landscape, and the subcontinent’s myths and legends and history from within, and I can do so for the first time in what might seem like a new idiom, a new language – subcontinental English.”
Salman Rushdie’s case was similar. Ray, Rushdie (as well as Shahid when it came to English subcontinental poetry) had an abundance of history, tradition and what seemed like an endless river of subjects that they could explore. Shahid had, in fact, acknowledged that if the novel had done it, poetry couldn’t be far behind.
Little did he know that along with poets like Arun Kolatkar and AK Ramanujan, he would become a proponent of English writing in the Indian subcontinent, a poet who had tradition and the flavour of the soil in his bones. In an essay written much later, he reflected on how the English language was changing in the subcontinent:
The colonisers left fifty years ago, and subcontinental writers, particularly poets, can breathe greater confidence into Indian English (as Walt Whitman did into American English) not only because they belong to what, with qualifications, is the international-ism of the English language (in this context, note the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Patrick White, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, and Derek Walcott) but because, by re-creating the language, by infusing into it all the traditions and forms at their command, they can make subcontinentals feel that they do not have to seek approval for any idiosyncrasy in syntax and grammar from the queens, Victoria or Elizabeth (the second, of course). As a matter of fact, for all kinds of reasons, it is gratifying to give an insult to the English language.
By the ’60s and ’70s, some young Indian English poets had started emerging on the literary scene, much of which had to do with Purushottama Lal, the founder of Writers’ Workshop, Calcutta. The publishing house started by Lal, which operated out of the library of his residence in Calcutta, had turned into a platform for publishing Indian writing in English. It published the first works of such poets as Nissim Ezekiel, Vikram Seth, Ruskin Bond and AK Ramanujan. Lal also published Shahid’s first two collections of poetry, Bone Sculpture and In Memory of Begum Akhtar.
Yet, in the ’90s, Shahid wrote in an essay that the “Indo-English scene” during those decades was “thoroughly empty and corrupt” and that “in some quarters” it continued to remain the same, singling out Lal’s publishing house, which he said had been functioning as a near vanity press.
In his essay “Indian Poetry in English”, Shahid wrote, “Educated Indians generally speak three languages, write in two, and dream in one – English.” Although they were written in English at a time when the chutnification, or what he called the biriyanisation, of the language hadn’t taken place, Shahid’s poems were indeed very Indian in nature and in terms of the subjects they dealt with.
The English language came to him naturally, while his ideas were deeply rooted in the culture of the subcontinent. Shahid’s English wasn’t the Queen’s “propah” English but a product of the biriyanisation of the language. Although as a poet he was slowly learning, poems like “Bones”, “Introducing”, “The Walled City” and others not only marked the beginning of a poetic career but also a poetic style that was steeped in a sense of loss, language and the history of the subcontinent. When at last, in the late ’60s, he met Begum Akhtar, his appreciation for the traditions of the subcontinent grew and his poetry changed in unimaginable ways.
Excerpted with permission from A Map of Longings: The Life and Works of Agha Shahid Ali, Manan Kapoor, Vintage.
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> Book Excerpt / by Manan Kapoor / June 03rd, 2021
Glossier, more attractive birding books have been published in the 80 years since Ali’s guide first appeared, but it remains indispensable.
The first edition of Salim Ali’s book appeared in 1941. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
It is a small book, my copy of Salim Ali’s The Book of Indian Birds — a hardcover version, bound in green, a mere 187 pages. I have the 1979 edition. The cover is long gone, leaving behind a few tatters of the original, but I am hard put to think of a book I have treasured and used as much. The book and an old pair of Bushnell binoculars acquired some 20 years ago are a part of my essential travelling kit, as essential as a toothbrush and comb.
The first edition of the book appeared in 1941. Jawaharlal Nehru , a keen nature lover, gifted a copy to his daughter while lodged in Dehradun jail.
Ali was quite matter-of-fact in his autobiography, The Fall of a Sparrow. According to him, the book was “acknowledged as largely responsible for creating and fostering much of the interest in birds and birdwatching seen in the country today”. Indeed, for people of a certain generation, no other guide has been valued and loved in the same way, and even among Ali’s other classic works, it is this book that has iconic status among Indian birdwatchers. While setting off on a birding trip, we would ask each other: “Have you taken your Salim Ali?” Or: “Oh, no, I forgot my Salim Ali.” It was always the small green book that we were talking of. It is the essential — the foundational — field guide for Indian birders. It is now in its 13th edition. No other book can take its place.
I came to birdwatching by serendipity. No one on either side of my family was even remotely interested in birds. By a throw of the dice, I was allotted Bharatpur for my district training in the IAS. The Keoladeo Ghana National Park beckoned. I was hooked. Ali, who had done more than anyone alive to create this “Garden of God” out of a Maharaja’s private wetlands reserve, was still alive, and visited a few times while I was there. Two bird guides, Sohan Lal and Bholu Khan, still active today, were being trained by him and other naturalists. They were to mature into fine birding guides, much in demand.
The Book of Indian Birds is where we learned our basic vocabulary of birdwatching. For instance, we learned that “pied” meant black and white, that “rufous” meant reddish-brown as in rust or oxidised iron, and that “fulvous” indicated tawny. Every carefully chosen word signified something. The clarity and the precision of expression meant that in a short half-page entry, we would have all the necessary information about a species. Each write-up was organised around five or six points — size, field characters or appearance, distribution, habits, food, call and nesting. Size was always charmingly described as myna plus, or house crow minus, or with reference to a sparrow, a bulbul or other common bird. Under “field characters”, Ali beautifully and accurately described the appearance: Colour of the feathers, the shape of the bill, silhouette in flight. A crimson-breasted barbet was “heavy-billed”, a blue-throated barbet “a gaudily coloured, dumpy green, arboreal bird” and the common grey hornbill a “clumsy brownish-grey bird”. Birds are described variously as handsome, squat, soft-plumaged, lively, dapper, dainty, spruce, slim, perky, well-groomed. The common roller or blue jay (neelkanth) is described as a “striking, Oxford and Cambridge blue bird”.
People who have always noticed the easy readability of the prose might not be aware that Ali himself gave credit to his wife, Tehmina, for ironing out the “stilted passages” and for “moderating the language”. He did not fail to praise her “remarkable feeling for colloquial English prose style”.
My Salim Ali bears the marks of the trajectory of my life, where I went, what I did. It is not merely well-worn and well-thumbed, with an unravelling spine and precarious binding; it also bears the added signs of pickle stains and tick marks in ink and pencil. Like me, it has seen better days. I know that many bird guides have been subsequently published with much better production values and better colour plates. I am aware that many of the illustrations in the Salim Ali book are decidedly not true to life. For instance, never did a rosy pastor look as pink in real life as it does in the book. But this is mere quibbling. The core and kernel of the book is that it communicates to us so successfully the magical universe of the birds of India.
The international jury which selected Ali for the J Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize of the World Wildlife Fund in 1975 said in its citation: “Your message has gone high and low across the land and we are sure that weaver birds weave your initials in their nests, and swifts perform parabolas in the sky in your honour.”
On his 34th death anniversary on June 20, it is time to remember the book that Ali gave us, which took us on this magical journey to the birds.
This column first appeared in the print edition on June 19, 2021 under the title ‘Birding with Salim Ali’. The writer is a former IAS officer.
source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Opinion> Columns / by Malovika Pawar / June 19th, 2021
Seher Latif also worked in multiple international projects including Sense 8.
Seher Aly Latif, producer of Swara Bhasker starrer Bhaag Beanie Bhaag, passed away on 7 June of a cardiac arrest. She was reportedly admitted to Mumbai’s Lilavati hospital for renal failure. Seher also worked as the casting director for Maska, Shakuntala Devi, and Durgamati: The Myth among others.
Director Neeraj Udhwani, who worked on Maska with Seher, confirmed the news to Indian Express. “It’s unbelievable. It’s so hard to process. Last week only I donated blood for her and I was told she was recovering. And this morning, I got to know about it. She had an infection due to which she suffered renal failure. She was admitted to the hospital last weekend. Doctors had put on her antibiotics, and we thought she was recovering,” he said.
Seher is remembered fondly by many people who’ve worked with her. About his experience of working with Seher, Neeraj said, “Her default expression was a smile. You would always find her smiling. She was one of the nicest, kindest people I ever met.”
Nimrat Kaur, who played the lead in Lunchbox, tweeted a picture of Seher with her cat and wrote, “One of the kindest, most loving people Mumbai gifted my life with. Still trying to process this unreal news…. Travel on into the light my dearest, sweetest Seher. The unpredictable, ghastly shortness of life remains baffling…Await to meet you on the other side.”
(Photo Courtesy: Twitter)
British singer Sophie Choudry tweeted, “A force to be reckoned with in the world of casting , started producing and more than anything just a wonderful woman. Heaven is lucky to have you, Seher.”
(Photo Courtesy: Twitter)
Made In Heaven actor Shashank Arora wrote a heartfelt tribute to the producer. “She was what Indian Cinema needed, above all she was one of the best people I had met in Bombay till date. Rest in peace friend,” he tweeted.
(Photo Courtesy: Twitter)
Seher Latif. A kind, brilliant, empathetic artist, casting director, producer, human being. A rare friend. First person to give me a job during difficult first years in Bombay. An inspiring leader. Unable to process this. World cinema lost a great one. See you on the other side,” he also wrote.
Seher’s repertoire also contains international projects including Eat Pray Love, Viceroy’s House, McMafia and Sense 8. She also founded Mutant Films with producer Shivani Saran in 2016. She is survived by her husband and parents.
source: http://www.thequint.com / The Quint / Home> Quint Entertainment> Celbrities / by The Quint / June 08th, 2021
Sweet Spot’s best-sellers include milk chocolate salted caramel cake, baklava tart and dark chocolate cheesecake. The latest entrant on the menu is sheer shahi kurma
There is a lot one can discover over dessert. As I plunge my spoon into a gooey chocolate cake, my palate is surprised by what lies beneath: shreds of coconut, coated in luscious Belgian chocolate.
Keeping me company is a soulful Nepali track — a recommendation by the Sweet Spot team. It came written on a neon sticky note, attached to the neat box laden with brownies, tarts and cookies. Sweet Spot, started in April by Zeeshan Anees, Ahad Anaikar, Mohamed Faraaz, Pooja Reddy and Mohamed Samee aims to give home bakers a platform to promote their products.
The desserts are sold under the label of the person who created them, explains Samee. The idea is not to monopolise the dessert market, but to even out the playing field. And along with the goodies come song recommendations from the team. These include: ‘Hataarindai, Bataasindai’, ‘Parchaiyon Main’, ‘Heat Waves’, ‘100 words’…
“The idea came to us during the last lockdown, when we noticed an increase in home bakers. We were ordering a lot of desserts from them,” says Samee. Soon, they transformed a small space, in the same compound as the old Nolita (in Nungambakkam), into a dessert parlour.
The team put all interested home bakers through a series of quality checks, filtering out what did not work for them. “Earlier, the concern most clients had with home bakers was, they had to order two days in advance or buy a full kilogram of cake, even if all they wanted is one slice,” says Samee. Now, these wrinkles have been ironed out.
Empowering the homebaker
On an average, the boutique features items by 15 home bakers, the number goes up to 20 during the weekends. Each bakers typically stocks two to three of her creations. “Sixty to 70% are products by our anchor brands such as Meltz by Aishwarya, Whisk by Safra, Serendipia, Chef Srishti, Coucou, Baked by Faz, Zoya’s bakes, and the rest are from upcoming bakers,” says Samee.
The best-sellers include milk chocolate salted caramel cake, baklava tart and dark chocolate cheesecake. The latest entrant on the menu is sheer shahi kurma. They are trying to bring in variety with Indian desserts as well as savoury snacks like quiches and cream cheese-filled Korean buns.
On weekends they sell out. Their clients order from as far as ECR, Chrompet, Madipakkam and Velachery. The number of orders range from anywhere between 70-100 a day.
Order via their Instagram page, @sweetspot_chennai.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Life & Style> Food / by Priyadarshini Paitandy / Chennai – June 02nd, 2021
Munawar Faruqui has been entertaining audiences with his satire routines for over a year. Photo: Special Arrangement/THE HINDU
Out on bail, the stand-up comedian is dusting himself off and moving on, strengthened by poetry and rap music
The year began on a serious note for stand-up comedian Munawar Faruqui, when he was arrested for allegedly offending religious sensibilities, along with five others, just before he was about to begin his act at a café in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Munawar spent 37 days in jail until the Supreme Court granted him interim bail on February 5.
While the comedian in him does see the absurdity in the situation — “they caught me even before I said anything,” — the 27-year-old YouTube sensation is astute enough to not discuss the matter further as it is sub judice.
“I don’t want to revisit this experience ever again in my life, and I wouldn’t want to send my worst enemies to jail. But I don’t really want to talk about it, especially on social media,” he says over a video conference call from his home in Mumbai.
Munawar got back to work barely a fortnight after his ordeal, releasing a music video titled Aazmaish featuring rapper Nazz, which earned over a million views online.
“Quitting comedy was never an option, mainly because I didn’t want to prove my detractors right,” says Munawar. “I was hurt by this whole false narrative that they had started about my ‘guilt’ that would have got confirmed, if I gave in to the pressure.”
In April, he started a new YouTube channel called Munawar Faruqui 2.0 that already has over 50,000 subscribers. (His first official channel has over 10,80,000 subscribers with 57,594,259 views for his monthly video releases).
It is hard to believe that Munawar has been on the comedy scene only since January 2020. His first ticketed show opened in Mumbai in February last year, to rave reviews. His sidelong look at society and politics is sharp and funny, with unexpected depth. “Comedy is essentially saying what you feel, especially about things that you see daily,” he says. “Sometimes a joke can highlight a major truth.”
When he is not penning his biting satirical comedy routines, Munawar indulges in his other passions: Urdu poetry and rap music. “Music is the world’s best art form. A song can convey in minutes, what a story can take four hours to narrate,” he says.
A resident of Dongri in Mumbai, the comedian is originally from Junagadh in Gujarat. After a tumultuous time in their hometown, his father, a driver, shifted the family (Munawar and his three sisters) to Mumbai in 2007, to make a fresh start.
“My father fell sick and was bed-ridden from 2008, so I had to take charge from the age of 17. I worked at a utensil store from 2007, while attending school. I taught myself English and Hindi from the newspapers that my boss used to buy, and by watching films,” he says.
Becoming a stand-up comedian wasn’t easy, though. Struggling with rejections, Munawar released his first video on YouTube on January 24, 2020 titled Politics in India, that marked his breakthrough moment.
“Last year has been testing. I lost my father in February, but also got my first shows in Mumbai, the same month,” he says.”There have been days I’d be crying in the green room just before being called up to the stage.”
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment> Theatre / by Nahla Nainar / June 02nd, 2021
Born on 21 October 1933, Shakeb grew up in Hyderabad and Aurangabad . He received a BA in Political Science from the Osmania University , and an MA from the Aligarh Muslim University in 1956. He completed his doctorate on Relations of Golkonda with Iran from Deccan College in 1976.
Shakeb together with Vasanth Kumar Bawa, setup the first-ever Hyderabad Urban Development Authority which is now referred to as Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority.
In 1962, he was appointed as an archivist at the State Archives of Andhra Pradesh in Hyderabad. Whilst here he created the Mughal Record Room. His publications include Mughal Archives Vol I: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Documents Pertaining to the Reign of Shah Jahan, in 1977 which remains critical reading for those seeking to learn how to read administrative documents in Indo-Persian. He went on to write many publications for The British Library , State Archives Andhra Pradesh and other repositories, universities, and auction houses.
From 1980 to 1987, Shakeb taught Indian history and the history of Indo-Islamic art and culture in the Department of Indology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
He later on worked as a consultant for Christie’s in their department of Islamic and Indian Art as their leading expert on Persian and Arabic manuscripts for 30 years.
He also continued to work on Indo-Persian manuscripts and Mughal documents and catalogued such manuscripts in the British Library, such as the Batala Collection of Mughal Documents 1527-1757 in 1990. Throughout this time he supervised many doctoral researchers in the fields of Mughal history, Deccan studies and Urdu and Persian literature.
Shakeb was also the Director of Urdu teachers training at Middlesex University up until 1998.
He also played a key role in setting up the Haroon Khan Sherwani Center for Deccan Studies at Maulana Azad National Urdu University and had been a member of the center’s first advisory board. He was considered a pioneer, having helped lay the foundations of Deccan Studies
Shakeb was an authority on various poets from the Indian subcontinent and Persia, writing books and organising and speaking at conferences on Bedil, Amir Khusrau, Iqbal, Ghalib and Rumi .
Shakeb died in London on 20 January 2021, aged 87. He is survived by his wife, Farhat Ahmed, two daughters, a son and nine grandchildren.
source: http://www.indianmuslim.org.uk / Indian Muslim UK / Home> Obituary / by Mohmed / April 03rd, 2021
A file photo of Prince Anjum Qudr, Dr Kaukub Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza and Prince Nayyar Qudr posing for a photo with Meerza’s daughter, Manzilat Fatima, at Imambara Sibtainabadin Metiabruz, Kolkata, sometime during 1985-1986
Kolkata / Lucknow :
Kaukub Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza, the great-grandson of Awadh’s last monarch, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, and grandson of Nawab Birjis Quder, died of Covid-19 in Kolkata on Sunday afternoon, aged 87.
Considered an authority on Wajid Ali Shah’s literary and cultural contributions, he is survived by his wife, two sons and four daughters.
Meerza may be buried on Monday at the royal burial ground(Gulshanabad Imambara), about a kilometre from the Sibtainabad Imambarah in Metiabruz, where Wajid Ali Shah rests.
A popular figure in the billiards and snooker fraternity of the country, Quder had graduated with honours in economics from St Xavier’s College in the same batch as Amartya Sen. He studied political science and then a three-year law course.
Subsequently, he studied Urdu at CU, won a silver medal in 1962 and also earned a UGC Junior Fellowship for research on the “Literary & Cultural Contributions of Wajid Ali Shah” in the department of Urdu at Aligarh Muslim University. In 1967, he joined the department as a lecturer and earned a doctorate for his thesis.
Kaukub Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza’s daughter, Talat Fatima, is now translating his book from Urdu to English. “His research was extremely rich. This book, published in the late 70s, has a compilation of some 42 works of Wajid Ali Shah. Some of them are in Persian,” she said, adding that her father preferred to be addressed as “Dr Kaukub Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza” instead of using the title of a prince.
It was his academic interest in his forefather that had also got Satyajit Ray to get in touch with him during the making of “Shatranj ke Khilari”.
On Ray’s birth anniversary this year, his daughter, Manzilat , had tweeted: “There are a couple of letters that were exchanged between Bawa [her father] and Satyajit Ray during the making of Shatranj Ke Khilari.” On Sunday, she spoke about how Ray had even visited their 11 Marsden Street residence that is popularly known as ‘House of Awadh’. “Ray could have gone to anyone else for information. But he chose to get in touch with my father. In fact, he had made many attempts to meet my father but the meeting never happened. Hence, it was through correspondence that he got the information regarding Wajid Ali Shah. I feel Ray had portrayed Wajid Ali Shah in the right light. Many often claim that Wajid Ali Shah had been exiled, but that isn’t true. He had left the kingdom of his own volition. I believe my father’s information helped him give authentic information about Wajid Ali Shah,” she said.
Quder was also a great connoisseur of food. A big photograph of him along with his two brothers hangs in the rooftop restaurant opened by his daughter. “He was happy when he saw how, in my capacity, I was upholding the family name. Awadhi food was already losing its identity. He was happy I was making the effort to popularize that food,” Manzilat said.
Incidentally, he was the chief referee of first World Snooker Championship held at the Great Eastern Hotel in Kolkata in 1963-64. He had remained the chief referee of the National Billiards & Snooker Championship till it left the Palm Court of the Great Eastern Hotel in the 70s .
“It was my father who coached me to play snooker and billiards. I became the first woman participant from India to play the games at the national level,” said Manzilat.
The rolling trophy of the IBSF World Snooker Championship, the MM Baig Trophy, was designed by him. In the 70s, he had also brought out a pioneering Billiards magazine, “The Baulkline”.
According to his son, Irfan Ali Mirza, “He was the founder-secretary of The Billiards & Snooker Federation of India, The West Bengal Billiards Association and The Uttar Pradesh Billiards & Snooker Association.
Sudipta Mitra, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Peerless Hospital and a student of Meerza, describes his mentor’s demise as a “huge loss”. “A part of our cultural history is lost with his demise. He came with pneumonia and was admitted to the ICCU. Unfortunately, he passed away today afternoon due to Covid pneumonia. Jawaharlal Nehru had initiated the idea of the government of India bearing the expense of his education. He was my research guide while writing the book titled ‘Pearl by the River: Nawab Wajid Ali Shah’s Kingdom in Exile’,” Mitra said
The Peerless Hospital CEO, said according to his research, he was “the last royal pension holder”. “In 1892, the British government had created a royal pension book where only the lineage of Birjish and his wife, Mahtab Ara Begum, who was the granddaughter of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor of India, was recognized.
Birjish, who was the only son of Wajid Ali Shah and Begum Hazrat Mahal, was the eldest surviving son of Wajid Ali Shah when the latter died in 1887. That is why this lineage has been recognized for royal pension,” Mitra said.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Kolkata / by Priyanka Dasgupta and Yusra Husain / TNN / September 14th, 2020
The nawab, who was deposed by the British, came to plead his case with Governor General Lord Charles Canning, only to be imprisoned at Fort William.
Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (Photo| Wikimedia Commons)
Kolkata :
Some 165 years ago, in the month of May, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah — the last ruler of Awadh — is believed to have written the now-famous lament “Babul Mora Naihar Chooto Jai…Mein Chali Piya ke Des” (O father, my home I leave behind…I go to my beloved’s land), as he made his way to Kolkata to live the next 31 years of his life in exile.
The nawab, who was deposed by the British, came to plead his case with Governor General Lord Charles Canning, only to be imprisoned at Fort William as the East India Company feared that he may turn into a rallying point for sepoy mutineers during the first war of Indian Independence, which broke out the very next year.
After he was freed two year later, Wajid Ali and many from his court who chose to join him in exile decided to live in his ‘Piya ke Des, gifting a legacy of music, dance, Urdu poetry, fashion and fusion cuisine to the syncretic culture of the metropolis.
“My great, great, grandfather Wajid Ali Shah, who landed here by steamer on May 13, could have chosen to live anywhere after he was freed…but he chose this city. We believe he fell in love with its culture and found remnants of his beloved Lucknow in Metiabruz or Matiaburj where he chose to settle,” said Shahenshah Mirza, 54, a civil servant and a history buff.
The nawab, over the years, built some 18 palaces and the landmark Sibtainabad Imambara in Calcutta, but his descendants live scattered as the British demolished the palazzos on one pretext or the other.
Mirza and his father, 86-year-old Sahebzada Wasif Mirza – the president of the Awadh Royal Family Association — now live in a modest though stately old house at Talbagan Lane, off Dargah Road, in the heart of the eastern metropolis.
“Just 500 of his followers came with him in 1856, but as news spread that he was building a Lucknow-like city within a city, at Metiabruz in Calcutta, many of his nobles, artisans and musicians followed and flourished here,” said Mirza.
Though much of the original mini-city which Wajid Ali built was taken over for Garden Reach shipyards, Metiabruz still exists and is now famous as a garment tailoring hub — reportedly accounting for Rs 15,000 crore worth of textile trade a year — mainly on account of the skilled tailors who came here as part of the Nawab’s entourage.
Wajid Ali, who used the pen name “Akhtarpiya” for his poetry, prose and thumris, was a known patron of arts, and with the destruction of Mughal cities in the aftermath of the 1857 revolt, Kolkata subsequently became the new cultural capital, attracting talent from all over north India.
As time progressed, Bengal’s zamindars and rich ‘bhadraloks’ (gentlemen) enthusiastically developed a taste for the Nawab’s leisure activities ‘mujra’ (music and dance soirees), kite-flying and pigeon games (kabootar baazi). “Even today some 3,000 people are engaged in the business of making kites in this city,” explained Mirza.
The nawab introduced the citys elite to Thumri, Dhrupad and Kathak. “Singers and dancers of the calibre of Bindadin Maharaj, Piyari Sahab, Gauhar Jaan, Malka Jaan, Jauhar Jaan came to settle here…Kolkata opened up to Kathak and thumris,” said well-known Shantiniketan-based musicologist Rantideb Maitra.
This, in later years, influenced the film industry and the dance and music forms became part of the pan-Indian culture.
The song ‘Babul Mora’ itself was popularised by Kolkata-based music director Rai Chand Boral when he got Kundan Lal Saigal to sing it for the movie ‘Street Singer’ in 1938, nearly 80 years after it was written.
“Kathak, though it started as a temple dance, had taken a stylised form under the Mughal patronage. When brought to Kolkata by Wajid Ali, who himself often danced as Krishna, it blossomed into a popular classical dance form,” said Shyam Banerjee, another musicologist and Urdu translator.
However, if the average Kolkatan remembers the Awadh ruler with fondness, it is because of the gastronomic legacy he left behind.
Said Manzilat Fatima, another of Wajid Ali’s descendants from his junior begum, Hazrat Mahal — who led mutineers in Lucknow and eventually escaped to Nepal — “He (Wajid Ali) tried to recreate Lucknow but with a difference…(among other things) his kitchen became an experimental centre for new dishes.”
Fatima (53), who runs the up-market restaurant Manzilat’s explained that experiments led to the inclusion of potato — then a rich man’s exotic vegetable favoured by Europeans — and eggs to Awadh’s Biryani. “New spices, coconut milk, mustard oil, all went into the making of Awadhi dishes and the result was the unique dum-pukht Kokata Biryani, now so popular all over,” she said.
The Nawab also set up a printing press in Metiabruz and came out with a weekly gazette in Urdu, adding to the literary and journalistic tradition of the city, which boasts of being the cradle to some of India’s oldest newspapers.
“We feel he was more popular in the city he chose to make his own than in Lucknow…When the legendary filmmaker, Satyajit Ray, asked my father how he saw Wajid Ali’s legacy, he had explained that it lives on, as is evident from the fact that ‘you chose to make your first Hindi movie – Shatranj ke Khilari – on a novel based on the the Awadh ruler’s life’,” added Mirza.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Kolkata / by PTI / May 23rd, 2021
