| Although I have made modest efforts at reading poetry in the English language as well as poetry of the masters in Spanish (Lorca, Neruda and Borges) in translation, I find that the poetry that touches me mostly deely (and without which touch, a thing can hardly be called poetry) is that in Urdu and Persian. I am still new at reading Urdu, though slowly getting better at it. And it is my aim to start learning Persian as time permits. At least for Urdu, we are very fortunate that substantial poetry is available in the Devnagari script as well as the Roman script. As for Persian, my acquaintance is limited to the poetry that is routinely performed in the form of Qawwali by singers in Pakistan and India, and to some that is available on the web in the Roman script (see below for such links). To a person with some knowledge of Urdu, a surprising amount of Persian poetry is accessible, atleast to some modest extent, since the two languages, albeit different in grammar, share a large vocabulary. On this page, in adidition to some of my favorite poetry I hope to also put up some reflections on it. Check out some of my blog entries on Mirza Ghalib and Ameer Khusrau.
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