
I. The Night the Radio Spoke It was a cold December night in 1991. We were sitting around the radio, as we did every evening. The BBC Urdu service was our window to the world. The signal crackled. Then the announcer’s voice came through, measured and grave. The Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Boris…
Marx gave the process its name. Primitive accumulation. The separation of people from their means of living. The commons fenced, the peasant expelled, the land turned into property. He wrote that it came dripping with blood and fire. But he placed it in capital’s childhood. A stage that passes. Silvia Federici corrected him. In Caliban…
آپݨی نگری آپ وَسا توں پَٹ انگریزی تھاݨے خواجہ غلام فرید In July 2026, the Punjab government published the results of its first land ballot under the Apna Khait Apna Rozgar scheme. The district register is a model of digital transparency. It carries 9,036 names. Each entry records the allottee, the father’s name, the national…
دل پریم نگر ڈوں تانگھے جتھاں پینڈے سخت اڑانگے نہ راہ فرید نہ لانگھے ہے پندھ پہوں مشکل دا The heart yearns toward the City of Love, Prem Nagar. The stages are hard and crooked. Then the couplet turns. No road, Farid, and no fords. The journey of love is a journey of sheer difficulty.…
In jealousy there is more self-love than love. La Rochefoucauld Urdu poetry has a fixed protocol for the rival. The raqeeb is cursed, mocked, or envied. He is never welcomed. Faiz Ahmed Faiz breaks the protocol in the first word of his early poem Raqeeb Se. The word is a summons: آ کہ وابستہ ہیں…
اَݨ سُونہہ دی گُھنڈڑی کھول وے اَݨ سَنگ میں سَنگ ٻول وے (Khawaja Farid) Translation: Lift the little veil of strangerhood. And without shyness, speak with me. Two people sit close enough to hear each other breathe. And still they are strangers. Nothing solid stands between them. No wall. No distance. Only a veil, and…
دیوانِ فرید وچ ترائے کافیاں (66, 67, 68) نالو نال کھڑن تے اُنہیں وچ ہک شَبد “سانگ” سانجھا ہے۔ کافی 66 تے کافی 67 دے ہر بند دا مُکیوا ایں شَبد “سانگ” تے آن تھیندے۔ کافی 68 دے پیلھے بند دا قافیہ وی سانگ بݨدے۔ اے لکھت اَنہیں ترائے کافیں کوں ایں ہک شَبد “سانگ”…
فریدݨ سئیں پریم دے پندھ پریریں کوں پَدھرا کرݨ کیتے ٻہوں واری ہیر رانجھے دے قصے کہاݨی پاسیوں وَل وَلدن۔ اُنہیں دی کافی نمبر 180 وچ ہیر سانگے کُجھ لائناں ہِن جیہڑیاں ہولیں ہولیں پڑھݨ جوڳاں ہِن۔ ہیر سلیٹی چُوچک بیٹی ناز پننی مُشک لپیٹی آ تقدیروں چاک چکیٹی ہُݨ ݙیکھو کیا تھیندے سادہ شَبدیں وچ:…
These days the word karma is everywhere. A man loses his work, or his health, or his marriage, and someone tells him gently that it is his karma. It is meant as kindness. It is meant to explain. But look at what the word does. A man is already on the ground. The word bends…
I first met Gandhi in 2000. I read Hind Swaraj. It shook me. The book did not argue with me. It spoke to something already waiting inside me. Soon after, I read The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Then I read everything about him I could find. When his words reached me I was…
Khawaja Ghulam Farid begins one of his kafis with a simple line. Meda ishq wi tun, meda yaar wi tun. My love is You. My friend is You. In one breath he names two things, love and friend, and gives them both to the same You. A reader may pass over this quickly. But the…
I I begin with a small sentence: I love her. The grammarians call this verb transitive. It takes an object. The action, they say, passes from the lover to the beloved. But sit with the sentence a while and the passing dissolves. The beloved receives nothing. The beloved may not even know that the sentence…