Category: Books
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Alif Laila Series of Ferozesons and my love for books
مجھے سب ہے یاد زرا زرا– تمہیں یاد ہو کہ نہ یاد ہو کس کو یاد ہے ان 6 کتب کی قدر مشترک؟ ملکہ شہرزاد حجام اور قزاق چین کی شہزادی گنجا لنگور سندباد کے سات سفر معروف موچی 1970 کی دہائی میں یہ کتب میری اسلام آباد میں “ملت لائبریری” کا حصہ تھیں جن…
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Tarzan and My Language Acquisition
ٹارزن کے جنگ اخبار میں روز شائع ہونے والے تصویری سلسلہ سے میں نے تقریباً 5-6 سال کی عمر میں اخبار پڑھنا شروع کیا– یہ 1967-68 کا زمانہ تھا– روز صبح امی، ابا یا بڑی بہنوں سے اصرار ہوتا تھا کہ وہ پڑھ کر سنائیں، اور شروع میں دو چار دفعہ ہر ایک نے سنایا–…
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Growing up with Magazines
In 1969-70 I was 7 when I started reading Taleem o Tarbiat and other magazines. We had almirahs shelves full of magazine issues going back to early 1960s and to even mid 1950s. Old issues of subscriptions of Taleem o Tarbiat, Bachon ki Duniya, Naunehal, Khilona which were children magazines. And magazines for my elder…
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Irfan Husain, Mazdak, Begum & Akhtar Husain Raipuri and Zafar Umar
I have been reading Mazdak/ Irfan Husain’s articles in Dawn for last 20+ years. Although I often disagreed with his opinions but yet used to read them regularly. Son of acclaimed writers Akhtar Husain Raipuri and Begum Hameeda Akhtar Husain Raipuri. Begum Hameeda Akhtar, an acclaimed writer herself was daughter of Zufar Umar author of…
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My Most Memorable Readings- Tilism e Hoshrub and Dastan e Amir Hamza
My most memorable experience of reading Urdu books was the time spent in reading of Ferozsons’ Tilism e Hoshruba and Dastan e Ameer Hamza. ذندگی کے بہترین لمحات ان کتب کے ساتھ گزرے- اللہ تعالٰی مقبول جہانگیر اور اختر رضوی کے درجات بلند کرے- میں نے یہ کتب تیسری جماعت میں پڑھنی شروع کی- پہلی…
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Ferozesons Children Urdu Novels Translated from English Novels
I would like to know if you can identify which of these books are translations of which authors of English books. What a wonderful time that I spent with these books. I read them in Urdu before I read them in English later on. Once upon a time I used to have a collection of…
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Where to Download Books for Free and Legally
45 places you can download tens of thousands books, plays and other literary texts completely legally for free BY PROFESSORWUJanuary 10, 2017 In an increasingly digital world, literature is evolving. Sales of e-readers continue to rise, yet the cost of digital books and texts has not necessarily decreased to the extent to which many initially predicted.…
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Far From the Madding Crowd, Hardy and Me
Today I got off from the board meeting early and my flight was in the evening. I had a few hours to kill with nothing to do. I chanced upon a YouTube video snippet of Bathsheba Everdene and Sergeant Troy’s sword scene of 2011 remake of Far From the Madding Crowd. I didn’t like it…
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Love of Research and Books-Prof Ahmed Saleem
I went to meet Professor Ahmed Saleem at his home library. His house is in Judicial Town near Chhattar Park in a very picturesque setting at the foot of the hill with stream flowing near by. His library consists of his personal collection of over 45,000 books and a collection of newspapers since 1947 of…
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An Indecent Obsession: Of War and its Futility
Reflections on “An Indecent Obsession” a movie and book by Colleen McCullough (author of “Thorn Birds” which I read in Pakistan around 1985-86). This is a page from my diary written on September 25, 1987. I was 25 and this was my first semester at UT Austin, and was residing at Riverside Apartments. ——————- For…
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To Kill a Mockingbird: A Personal Journey
I was around 10 when I saw the movie “To Kill a Mocking Bird” on PTV in 1971-72. That was the time when I didn’t focus on the dialogues but used to only concentrate on the emotions and feelings depicted. We didn’t have access to Internet or magazines with briefs about the programs or movies…
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Last Emperor of China and Mughal Empire of India
I always recommend people to see “Last Emperor” movie about Pu Yi, who was the last emperor of China. His rule was only in name and restricted to only the Imperial Palace (Forbidden City). The movie won nine Academy Awards including that for best picture and best director in 1987. It depicts how Britishers manipulated…
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How Readers are Created. Ecosystem that Produces Readers
How can we create readers and an ecosystem where readers can thrive. How do we make reading a contagious disease when our educational institutions from schools to universities have become mass producers of functional illiterates [1]. Universities complain that they are getting intake that has studied English for 12 years but have no reading comprehension and…
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What Legal Questions Perry Mason would have raised in SC Panama Case Disqualification of PM
Why read literature and history? It had been a great surprise for me that the lawyers representing the PM have failed to raise forcefully some basic and fundamental questions about due process of law and constitutional rights in the recent SC disqualification of the PM in the Panama Case Judgement. Interestingly, if they had read…
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Importance of Literature in Law: A Case Study of the Panama Case Supreme Court Judgement
Importance of literature in law and legal judgments and arguments in the floor is an established tradition. This post collects together various quotations from masterpieces of literature in the Supreme Court judgement on the Panama Case Scandal on April 20, 2017. It also contains the references to Quranic definitions of Sadiq and Ameen. I think…
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Mukhtar Masud’s Awaz-e-Dost and Love for Literature and History
A literary social autobiography that is poetry in prose; beauty in words and imagery; each sentence contains a world of meaning, ideas, conflicts illustrated through metaphors, and references to deep historical events, people, places, contrasts, arts, architecture, insights, classics, writers, leaders, historical figures…. A book that gives a personal view of Pakistan history through hopes,…
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How Education System is Promoting Non-Readers and “Functional Illiteracy”: Top Ten Reasons
Our educational system is producing graduates who can read but are not readers, who can write but are not writers i.e. functional illiterates [1]. They do not read fiction, have often never read books except those that they were forced to read for their exams, but which mostly they cunningly avoided by cramming the notes, and…
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How Language Acquisition is Made Difficult for Children: Eight Lessons from an Urdu Acquisition Case Study
How Language Acquisition is Made Difficult for Children: Eight Lessons from an Urdu Acquisition Case Study [The later part of this post would derive the lessons that I learned from my experience of how I learned Urdu which is described first. These lessons address the problems that our faulty methodologies are creating today in language…
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How to find “Buzurg” and “Wali” of Allah
How to find “Buzurg” and “Wali” of Allah During the late 1970s I started reading extensively and would read whatever came my way. This decade was probably the peak of monthly magazines or “digests” publications. Taking cue from the Reader’s Digest and success of Urdu magazines such as Urdu Digest and Sayyara Digest, several “digests”…
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Most Effective Way of Cutting a Nation from its History and Ideals – Imposing a Foreign Language
Most Effective Way of Cutting a Nation from its History – Imposing a Foreign Language The project for cutting a nation from its history and roots always starts with the introduction of a foreign “language”. We know how Ataturk’s drive for secularism led him to change the Turkish script from Arabic to Latin script to…