With my broken Urdu, I read Faiz/ Bloodstreams of Persian & Urdu ghazals run through your streets/ But Ghalib’s metaphors appear on my wounds/ And Iqbal’s verses purify my sins/ Mir’s wahshat is how I make sense of God/ I decipher each and every script/ I read blood/ I wear it like skin.
In March 2015, six months after relocating to the U.S., I found myself unexpectedly back in my hometown in the UK. My grandfather had passed away less than a few hours after my arrival and a few days later, there I was in the local Sikh temple, the gurdwara, peeling potatoes. Sitting alongside my mother, … Read More
Multilingualism shouldn’t just be for immigrants. While the United Kingdom deals with the rise of anti-immigrant fervor, a new report from Cambridge University urges Britons to learn new languages to build social integration. Polish, Punjabi, and Urdu are among some of the most spoken languages in the United Kingdom, followed closely by Bengali and Gujarati. … Read More
My hand is rolled tight, pressed cold on a glass of Irish whiskey. I have just compared Debussy to Coltrane and my Indian mother has left me four missed calls to apologise for immediately. The sun has sunk into a bed of darkness like a balloon releasing its breath, hoping the air will take back … Read More
