Delhiwale: Poetry, in the time of job loss
Hindustan TimesHe lost his job in April. “It will be my first trip outside India,” says the gentleman calmly, while speaking on WhatsApp video from the isolation of his windowless basement studio in Gurugram’s DLF Phase 3. Meanwhile, Mr Hussain isn’t taking the job loss personally, though he does feel bad for his team as well as for his team leader—they were all told during a post-lunch meeting in the office that their contract wouldn’t be renewed, with an assurance that they would be contacted in the future. “Rahat Indori saab had a great stage presence, and had that magical ability to swiftly earn the wah-wahs and claps from the audience.” Mr Hussain writes poems in Urdu but pens them in English alphabets “because my written Urdu is very bad.” Blame his “English medium background.” Indeed, if it weren’t for Fasiha Jabin, his mother, he wouldn’t have developed a taste for Urdu, and poetry, at all. Nobody else in Mr Hussain’s family, except perhaps for his younger sister Varisha, has a pulse for poetry “but Mumma is a great poetry lover.
History of this topic
Urdu poet Munwwar Rana passes away, lives on in verse
Hindustan Times)
Jaipur Literature Festival 2021: Mehr Farooqi discusses her new biography of Ghalib, and the challenges of translation
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