Urdu-in translation
By Qurratulain Hyder. Translated from the original Urdu by Fatima Rizvi and Sufia Kidwai
2024
The mouse offers the following response: ‘My Dear Lady, you will have to carry out a lot of research to write about them.’ This feels like an evasion to me. After all, the equally Ashraf Rahi Masoom Raza didn’t need to do a lot of research to write Aadha Gaon and the Hindu Khatri Krishna Sobti—whose Zindaginama, while centring her own caste, didn’t exclude anyone—explicitly rejected the need for research, arguing, much like Proust himself, that the writer just needed to notice and internalize what was around them. In a recent article on the Pasmanda experience, Khalid Anis Ansari says that he is ‘…attempt[ing] to capture the experience of the Muslim caste, not by unearthing the hidden secrets of everyday routines, but by shedding light on what is right in front of us and for which nothing more is required but “to take notice”.’
Edited by Shams Afif Siddiqi and Fuzail Asar Siddiqi Translated from the original Urdu by Shams Afif Siddiqi
After all what is the purpose of the story, if it cannot help us leave time behind?’ asks Gocharan Ray, the signalman in Siddique Alam’s story ‘The Stopped Clock’.
Mirza Ahmad Akhtar Gorgani. Translated from the original Urdu by Ather Farouqui
Farouqui’s translation of Sawaneh-i Dehli is a cultural, archaeological, historical treatise since it is not limited to simply translating the text from one language to another but also painstakingly locates factual errors in Gorgani’s original text and has elaborate explanatory footnotes: as Farouqui points out in his Preface, Gorgani knew very little of history.