Bilal

Tell us a bit about your journey with Persian. Why, how and when did you start learning? I learnt Persian formally during my MA days from the Iran Culture House in Delhi but I had been interested in Mirza Ghalib from childhood and Urdu is my mother tongue. Urdu traces the etymology for many of its words to Persian and Arabic. Ghalib’s Urdu poetry employs a more Persianized register than most poets. With Ghalib as my favourite Urdu poet, I felt pushed towards Persian to read even his Urdu poetry and eventually started…

Mirza Ghalib’s andaaz-e-bayaan, we know, is aur (ie his style is extraordinary). But many of us, who relish his poems in Urdu or translated into English, might not know yet the extent of this aur. While Ghalib’s Urdu poetry remains popular, we can’t access another part of his work. “The bulk of his work was written in Persian... very little of his Persian poetry has been translated into English,” says the introduction to the English translation of Ghalib’s long poem in Persian, Chirag-e-dair. Temple Lamp is said to be…