Archive for February, 2019
The Poetry of Parveen Shakir Posted by Rachael on Feb 27, 2019
For this week’s blog, I thought it would be interesting to delve into the world of Hindi-Urdu poetry, in the form of a ghazal by Parveen Shakir (1952-1994). As you may remember, I wrote a blog post about this poet previously, where you can learn more about her life and contributions to Urdu poetry. Below…
Learning Hindi through Music Posted by Rachael on Feb 16, 2019
When I first started learning Hindi, I did so informally by listening to music and watching movies. In this blog, I’ll discuss one of my favorite Hindi songs – क्यों? (“Kyoon”) – and translate and explain the lyrics. This song comes from the 2012 movie Barfi (बर्फ़ी), which is about the life of a deaf and…
The Romani: from India to the World, Part 2 Posted by Rachael on Feb 9, 2019
In last week’s blog, we discussed the Romani (Romany or Roma), a group (समूह/samooh) of people from the Northwestern Indian subcontinent (उत्तर-पश्चिमी इंडियन उपमहाद्वीप/uttar-paschimi Indian upmahaadveep) who, about 1,500 years ago, migrated (प्रवास करना/pravaas karnaa) from this region (क्षेत्र/kshetra) and eventually settled (बसना/basnaa) in about 30 countries (देश/desh) worldwide. In this second part of the…
The Romani: from India to the World Posted by Rachael on Feb 3, 2019
Almost everyone has heard the term “gypsy,” but very few know of these people’s origin (मूल/mool), culture (संस्कृति/sanskriti), religion (धर्म/dharm) and language (भाषा/bhaashaa). Indeed, you may be surprised to learn that the origin story of these resilient and resourceful people is inextricably connected to what is now India and the Indian diaspora. Known most often…