A 14-minute documentary questions the survival of Urdu—a language born and bred in our homeland, yet treated with hostility
Documentary
The title of Dr Rizwan Ahmad’s documentary Will Urdu Survive in India? is also a pertinent question asked, and often felt by lovers of the language. Despite a beautiful repertoire of memorable prose, poems, dialogues and lyrics, the language is in despair and reduced to just being linked to the Muslim community in India. We’ll leave that prejudice for another day but Ahmad, who is a linguist by training and an associate professor of linguistics at Qatar University, has been researching Urdu and its social, cultural and political aspects for the last 25 years.
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Ahmad’s research is well reflected in the documentary. He highlights interesting facets like how the pronunciation of the glottal q in ‘qila’ or ‘bekaraar’ has changed significantly over the years. References to past and present prime ministers’ speeches and comparisons of old and new songs are used in the film.
A few weeks before this Independence Day, Ahmad decided to take his research to the common people and began to look for audio and video material. “Prasar Bharati and Doordarshan Archive were very useful and after listening to a number of speeches of the prime ministers, I felt I had enough material,” says Ahmad who thinks the survival of Urdu in India is a huge challenge because the political establishment, since the Independence of India, has been quite hostile to it. “Uttar Pradesh is a great example of it where teaching of Urdu in schools has been discontinued. Urdu medium schools, with an exception of a few, have been shut down. In Bihar, recently-appointed Urdu teachers are not allowed to teach Urdu; they are asked to teach other subjects. A lesson needs to be learned from parts of Maharashtra where Urdu teaching is better,” says Ahmad.
Stills from Ahmad’s documentary
Most government institutions established to promote Urdu, including Urdu Academies and the National Council for the Promotion of Urdu language have done little in this regard, observes Ahmad. “All they do is hold mushaeras and publish poetry books... But the point is, who will read and understand poetry if there is no institution to teach the language? Urdu can only survive if there are grassroots level schools where it is taught.
Dr Rizwan Ahmad
They can use the money to build and promote language teaching institutions and we must ask governments to deliver on this. Private institutions need to come forward as well and as stakeholders; parents should demand private English medium schools attended by their children to provide the teaching of Urdu.”
Will Urdu Survive in India?, YouTube
Being invincible
Author and life coach Neelam Kumar found the air suddenly heavy with grief, dread and helplessness as the pandemic hit. “As a life coach, I was concerned by the number of people who were calling me up for sessions because of emotional turmoil. The lockdown experience was making them feel either too ‘crowded’ or too ‘isolated’ 24x7,” she tells us. Kumar herself had seen death at close quarters, having battled cancer and meningitis. “I felt strongly that I must do my bit. I knew I had to write words to uplift their flagging spirits and show them real-life examples of people who had fought the worst adversities and won.” The result was the book I am Invincible: Thirteen True Tales of Courage, Grit and Survival (Fingerprint! Publishing). She spoke to 12 individuals among whom were a gang rape survivor, a double amputee and a person who had undergone a heart-kidney transplant.
Neelam Kumar
Encouraged by the overwhelming response to the book, Kumar recently started The Invincible Talks online to showcase real-life examples of people who fought, did not give up and lived to build lives better than their pre-adversity ones. While all the accounts in the book and the series are moving, the one story that is closest to Kumar’s heart is that of Jang Jaswal’s. “Jang is an adorable, robust Punjabi who laughs all the time,” she says. “After suffering 10 heart attacks, a heart as well as a kidney transplant, he lives life king-size by travelling the world solo, joyously. My Invincible Talks video with him was a historic one. I brought together people across time zones and continents in an emotionally charged session.”
The Invincible Talks by Neelam Kumar, YouTube
Girls just don’t care
Sexual wellness is a market skewed towards men—with products made for them and by them. And Sachee Malhotra was not okay with it. So, to make sexual wellness a priority and part of a woman’s self-care routine, she started That Sassy Thing in December 2020. The aim was simple—all-natural, dermatologically-tested, safe, premium products that are not just bold and unapologetic, but normalise conversations related to a woman’s body.
Malhotra says, “We need more women taking ownership of their bodies and their pleasure, and also the products that go inside them. My aim with That Sassy Thing is to help women feel comfortable in their skin. Our organic, bold Instagram community is built on visuals that feature diverse bodies with body hair [owing to my own experiences with polycystic ovary syndrome and hirsutism].”
Sachee Malhotra
She adds that our relationship with our body hair is mostly shaped by pop culture and patriarchy. And so, with Bush, a plant-based blend of hemp oil and calming essential oils like chamomile, clary sage and lavender, they’re giving women the agency to care for their intimate areas. Owing to its light texture, it also doubles up as the perfect oil to calm dry, bumpy and inflamed skin post waxing, shaving or trimming hair. Other cool products include sexual lube for women and period cramp care roll-on.
thatsassything.com
Telugu treasury
Telugu Ghanata, a page on Instagram, has been curating Telugu history, culture, traditions, texts and temples through the use of academic sources, archival records and museum collections. They started the page last year with a post on 15th century Telugu poet Tirumalamma, one of the first female literary geniuses of the Telugu people, who wrote a work called the Subhadra Kalyanam presenting the marriage of Arjuna and Subhadra from the Mahabharata.
They have gone on to publish thoughtfully curated posts on subjects ranging from the bright Cheriyal paintings of Telangana, used by wandering bands to perform stories from the Puranas, and the connections between Buddhism and trade in Andhra, to Atukuri Molla, the first Telugu woman to have written a version of the Valmiki Ramayana. Sri Vaishnava saint and Carnatic music composer Annamayya’s questioning of casteism finds space as does the Harikatha, combining music, dance and narration to relay themes from works like the Ramayana.
@telugughanata, Instagram
Curated by Prutha Bhosle and Kasturi Gadge
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