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Love Sonnets of Ghalib–Ghalib in translation

January 7, 2014 / / 0 Comments

If you are a fan of Urdu poetry and haven’t had a chance to read Ghalib may be it is the time to do that. Understanding Ghalib is no easy task, though. You may not the get the real context what he wants to say in the verse. That is where some translation helps. Most of the translations from Urdu to English do kill the real essence but Love Sonnets of Ghalib (Translated by Sarfaraz Niazi) doesn’t do that. I think it is the best reference out there on Diwan-e-Ghalib; at least in English. It is a must have for any Ghalib poetry lover especially people for whom Urdu is not the native language. But I am sure people having Urdu as their native language will also enjoy reading the translations. He provides with the verse translation first and then goes on to explain the context of that verse in detail. Reading Ghalib from this book has been an absolute pleasure.

Go get it !

Here is a link on flipkart.com and amazon.com .

Give peace a chance in 2014

December 31, 2013 / / 1 Comment

meharbaan ho ke bula lo mujhe chaaho jis waqt,
main gaya waqt nahi hoon ke phir aa bhi na sakoon – Mirza Ghalib

(Turning kind towards me, call me back any time you want;
I am not like the time bygone that cannot be recalled*)

*Translation from Love Sonnets of Ghalib by Sarfaraaz Niazi

As Mirza nausha said “ke phir aa bhi na sakoon”  the year 2013 is about to say good bye and it would never come back. Personally for me new year isn’t something that grand of a celebration time but it does signify a unit of time; one more year has ended. Of course there would be many disappointments everyone of us faced in the last year but here is a chance to look forward to new hopes and opportunities in the new year.

Like last year and last to last year’s post this year again I would pray for peace in this world. Although scientists claim that we are going through the most peaceful times in the history of man kind but still the violence all around us is heart breaking. Thousands of people are losing their lives in suicide attacks, bomb blasts, wars and so on. We must not gift this violent planet to our upcoming generations. Everyone of us must work for peace in whatever way we can. Hope this year brings a new hope for peace and humanity.

As Bashir Badr saab has said:

saat sandookon mein bhar kar dafan kar do nafartein,
aaj insaan ko muhabbat ki zaroorat hai bahut

Here is wishing you a very happy new year 2014 ! Have fun !

ye na thi hamari qismat…ajab apna haal hota

December 31, 2013 / / 2 Comments

Yesterday while searching for a live version of Ghalib’s ye na thi hamari qismat on Youtube came across this brilliant rendition of the same poem by Tina Sani. It is done bit differently where she picked up another poem by Daag Dehlvi and she sings one verse from Ghalib’s poem and then next one from Daagh’s poem and so on. Verses from both the poets are somewhat related to each other in terms of the emotion that is expressed. On top of  that there is a brilliant singing by Tina Sani. Absolutely mesmerizing. Can it be a called a new year gift ? Yes I think.

Happy New Year everyone !  Enjoy the masterpiece !

Some things are just not meant to work

December 6, 2013 / / 2 Comments

Some things are just not meant to work the way you want them to. I mean no matter how much you try, you can never get some things to work.

This PC that I got almost 3 years back I think is one of such items. First I wanted to buy a powerful machine with at least 8 Gigs of RAM. Problem at that time was very few motherboards supported 8 Gigs. Finally selected all the components and got it assembled. It included a very expensive Microsoft wireless Keyboard and Mouse.

The first signs of illness were shown by keyboard itself when it didn’t work and had to get it replaced.

Then second issue was that it kept rebooting randomly. Tried different versions of Windows but same story every time. Finally after some R&D I came to know that there was some problem with the motherboard. Got a new motherboard and it worked ok for few months.

Now the problem was that Windows would hang randomly and the only option was to reset the PC. I could never solve that problem but became almost sure that it had something to do with hardware. May be the components weren’t compatible or something.

Then twice or thrice power supply unit got screwed up. Fed up of all this I got an expensive one, Corsair power supply. Even that got blasted once but the one that I got after replacement has been working fine till date (touchwood).

Now it was monitor’s turn. It started giving some flicker problem. The screen keeps going on and off randomly. Again looks like some hardware shit.

The only thing that didn’t give problems was UPS (an APC one). Recently it also started complaining about battery. Got the battery replaced but still it doesn’t work properly.

Oh I think I forgot that there was one incident with hard disk also where it developed some bad sectors and had to be replaced.

This whole thing wasn’t meant to work ! No ?

So what makes Google Search–Reunion ad click ?

November 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

The new ad by Google called “Google Search – Reunion” has almost gone viral in both India and Pakistan. It shows two friends, now in old age who were separated during partition meeting again due to the efforts by their grand children and use of Google search and other options in Google.

 

What I am wondering about is what really makes this ad click ? Given that these two countries have been in a bitter relationship since almost 1947, what exactly people are liking in this video ? Are there some deeply buried emotions or this is just an instant reaction to a nicely made video ? Not trying to be an idiotic critic but just an angle that must be given a thought, at least.

Here is the link to the same video on Vimeo as Youtube doesn’t work in Pakistan.